Ex-BJP leader to stick to Hindutva

Three-time MP from Orissa and former bureaucrat M.A. Kharabela Swain has said he resigned from the BJP because his prime grudge was against the RSS, not the political party.

Three-time MP from Orissa and former bureaucrat M.A. Kharabela Swain has said he resigned from the BJP because his prime grudge was against the RSS, not the political party.

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Swain has not decided the name of his new party, but he said BJP activists would be his chosen cadres because he is familiar with them and he still believes in Hindutva.

He said the RSS was on a path of moral bankruptcy. “The RSS of these days is an organisation of characterless people who just want to enjoy money and authority.”

Swain said L.K. Advani was a great leader slighted by the sangh, and that though he had nothing against the new BJP president, he did not like the fact that Nitin Gadkari had been foisted on the party by the RSS.

During the anti-Christian riots in Kandhamal last year, Swain had written in RSS mouthpiece Organiser that Swami Lakshmanananda – whose murder sparked the violence – was killed by Christian Maoists, thus drawing a distinction between Hindu and Christian Maoists.

This conviction is unchanged even now, he said.

“Those who killed him were Christian Maoists,” he said. “The swami had devoted his life to working for the poor and preventing conversions by Christian missionaries.

“By Hindutva I don’t mean to drive out Christians and Muslims. But... if any injustice is meted out to Hindus, I am there to defend them.”

An instance of “injustice” was Dalit Christian and Muslim quotas, as the Rangnath Mishra commission has suggested, Swain said.