The enigma of Chandraswami

The death of godman Chandraswami will hopefully give a decent burial not just to one-time Rasputin of the Indian establishment in the 1980s and 1990s, but also put to rest after full 19 years the Multi-Disciplinary Monitoring Agency (MDMA) of the Central Bureau of Investigations (CBI) supposedly probing the larger conspiracy involving Chandraswami and others in the assassination of Rajiv Gandhi on May 21, 1991 at the hands of a Sri Lankan Tamil woman as a human bomb.

The MC Jain Commission, probing the larger conspiracy in the planning and execution of former Prime Minister and the then Congress president Rajiv Gandhi, was so entangled in frivolous court cases slapped by those desperate to cover up the real conspiracy, that it failed to come to any definite conclusion. But it made enough remarks to force the then government of Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee, himself a Chandraswami bhakt, way back in 1999, to set up a MDMA to further unravel the mystery about who really conspired to get Rajiv assassinated.

I remember the late 1980s when The Indian Express and its crusading editor Arun Shourie were widely viewed as going after the Rajiv Gandhi government.

In that process, one day, Shourie was apparently told by some source that Chandraswami had some vital information that could nail Rajiv in the Bofors payoff scam. Shourie immediately dispatched one of the youngest reporters then in The Indian Express team, now a noted journalist himself, Murali Krishnan. But the wily tantric kept lying on his bed for long hours, belching and farting loudly, telling Murali nothing of worth to file a story and Murali returned after hours cursing the godman. Shourie was so cut up with this betrayal that he wrote a full-length anchor next day with the bold headline: ‘Belching, farting Swamy.’

I don’t know if the Sangh eventually brought about peace between Shourie and Chandraswami. But, about this time, anyone who wanted to get rid of the young Rajiv, were regular visitors at Chandraswami’s abode in Delhi’s Safdarjung Development Area (SDA), gifted to him by veteran actor and BJP MP Dara Singh, across the road from the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT).

And, the list of Rajiv-haters was long and included, among others, several sundry Congress leaders, then Janata Dal leader and now an important face in the Biju Janata Dal (BJD) Pinaki Mishra, but most of all, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leaders starting from former Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee, Rajmata Vijay Raje Scindia, Ramnath Goenka, Hema Malini, Arun Jaitley and Rajat Sharma.

The most spiteful towards Rajiv Gandhi was Subramanian Swamy, who allegedly travelled to London and tax haven Monte Carlo with Chandraswami, according to the Jain Commission and had the closest ties with Chandraswami.

Journalist-turned-filmmaker-turned-Shiv Sena MP Pritish Nandy has written an amusing account of his interaction with the tantric in the company of Rajat Sharma at SDA, which just shows what a con man this gentleman was. Yet, from former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and Elizabeth Taylor (on the authority of a Congress heavyweight) to Kenneth Kaunda a host of other African heads of states, plus the Sultan of Brunei, were all mesmerised by this person and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) too appeared sufficiently impressed to ignore his dealings with the notorious under cover operator for the CIA, Adnan Khashoggi, and the Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI). That is how he operated with impunity, making influential contacts the world over.

Thus, when it came to suspecting an international conspiracy behind Rajiv’s assassination, Chandraswami was the logical suspect. That’s an enigma which the MDMA refused to unravel, and sat twiddling its fingers for full 19 years. Chandraswami, who had unhindered access to the Prime Minister’s house (he told the Jain Commission that his car used to drive down straight into the inner portico without being subjected to the normal security drill) during the tenure of two successive Congress governments in the 1990s, went into a shell once Vajpayee—himself a Chandraswamy bhakt—came to power. It is believed that Vajpayee had in his ministry two Chandraswami-baiters, LK Advani and Ram Jethmalani. Vajpayee had no choice but to cede their demand and follow up the Jain Commission needle of suspicion pointing against this godman.

He, thus, constituted the MDMA much against the advice of the then CBI Director Trinath Mishra, said Subramanian Swamy in his book.

In fact, Swamy quoted a report filed by a journalist-turned-politician noting how there was an animated discussion in the Vajpayee Cabinet over the Action Taken Report (ATR) on the Jain Commission report and Jethmalani made it into a prestige issue, even demanding the immediate arrest of Chandraswami.

But, despite a hostile Home Minister in the Vajpayee government and later a regime headed by Sonia Gandhi, whose entire family suspected the godman’s role, such was the clout of this person that the MDMA didn’t move a finger in full 19 years, with officers coming in, serving their tenures and then being posted elsewhere.

Even after the defeat of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) and the capture of its head Prabhakaran by the Sri Lankan forces, there is not a word on the conspiracy to kill Rajiv. This just shows that his high-profile supporters in the Congress were not the only ones shielding Chandraswami. But why?

In the Dussehra of 1992, just a year after Rajiv Gandhi’s assassination and ascendance of Rao as the Prime Minister, Chandraswami and Subramanian Swamy got on to a truck converted into a rath and traversed the entire length of the Capital’s walled city, along with the traditional Ramlila procession. Praveen Jain, then at The Pioneer, returned that evening with that photograph and, Vinod Mehta ran it prominently.

What had these two Swamys achieved in 1992, even as the BJP and VHP were readying to demolish Babri Masjid, that they stood there like two gods with their hands raised?

Surely, they had done something remarkable. They had succeeded, at least for the time being, following the assassination of Rajiv Gandhi, in defeating the Mandal forces. That was no mean achievement because the entire elite class of the country was, and is still, united in repulsing and crushing the subalterns.

Faraz Ahmad is author of the book ‘Assasination of Rajiv Gandhi: An Inside Job?’

Disclaimer: This is an opinion piece and the views are the writer’s own