Some souls have ignorance so deep-seated in the innermost recesses of their being that even a lifelong association with as prestigious a university as Harvard cannot exorcise it despite all the academic excellence it boasts of. Ignorance breeds hubris, along with other banalities, and once it possesses a person he ceases to be entirely human.

Some obdurate egos cannot be tamed and some incorrigible characters cannot be schooled even if sent to Harvard or MIT. Just shows that a sound academic background does not guarantee inculcation of human values in a person.

Before proceeding any further, let us try to configure a definition for a human. To my socio-political contention, placing myself in a South Asian context, a human can very loosely be defined as someone reposing belief in plurality of religio-cultural ethos. Sadly, exclusion, either socially or religiously, has been the biggest bane to plague this region throughout its history, be it based on caste, creed, or sect (and of course religion).

In the current political scenario, the most glaring example of a prominent person seeking to defy this definition of humanity is the Indian technocrat turned politician in the service of Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), Dr Subramanian Swamy.

Swamy has served as member of the Planning Commission of India and was a cabinet minister in the Chandra Shekhar government. He was also one of the founding members of Janata Party. He served as the party’s president since its inception in 1990 till 2013 when it merged with the BJP.

He was elected to the Lok Sabha five times, between 1974 and 1999. He officially joined the BJP in 2013 when Rajnath Singh was the party president. He was a United Nations economist in 1963 and a consultant to the World Bank in 1986. Currently, he is chairman of the School of Communication and Management Studies in Kochi. At 81, Subramanian Swamy knows all about being the centre of attention.

He is known for his temerarious statements, particularly in condemnation of Muslims. I wonder if these actually serve any political purpose at all for the BJP, which has turned the politics of hatred into a central discourse.

Pleading exclusion based on religious difference seems to be his creed and conviction. That probably is the reason that despite his credentials as an economist and a statistician, Modi has not considered him for any ministerial portfolio.

The vehemence that he deploys while advocating Hindutva ideology puts him in the league of people like Amit Shah and Yogi Adityanath, despite his Harvard degree. The Indian media hails his credentials stating that “his qualifications for politics, policymaking and teaching are extraordinary, exceptional and extravagant.”

Despite the superlatives being showered on him in such a generous manner, his understanding of the Indian history and its cross-cultural ethos leaves a lot to be desired. Had he been better versed in the history of Muslims in India and their contribution to the enrichment of its culture, social values and administration, he would not have enunciated India as ‘already a Hindu country (rashtra). His sweeping indictment of Muslims (that wherever the Muslim population is 30 percent or more, there is trouble; and that Islamic ideology sanctions such trouble mongering) proves beyond any doubt that he knows absolutely nothing about Islam or the Muslims.

His academic qualifications are phenomenal and show his capacity to learn. It is reported by the Indian media (whose credibility is extremely doubtful, so that one should be well advised to take the assertions with a pinch of salt) that he was once challenged to learn the Chinese language (considered one of the hardest languages of the world) in a year. Dr Swamy, the story goes, accepted the challenge and proved his mettle by mastering it within three months.

Accepting the accounts of his brilliance, I think his venturing into politics was a faux paus on his part. It is not his cup of tea. He should have remained an academic. In that capacity he could have served his country much better than acting like a bull in the china shop that is Indian politics.

Dr Swamy earned his bachelor’s degree in mathematics from Hindu College, University of Delhi, and a master’s degree in statistics at the Indian Statistical Institute. Working under Nobel Laureate Simon Kuznets, he obtained his doctorate in economics in 1965 from Harvard. While doing his PhD, he also worked as an Assistant Economics Affairs Officer at the United Nations Secretariat in New York. In 1964, Dr Swamy joined the Harvard University. When he was an associate professor at Harvard, he was requested by Nobel Laureate Dr Amartya Sen to accept a reader’s chair on Chinese Studies at the Delhi School of Economics.

But when he arrived at the DSE, the government cancelled his appointment due to his views on the nuclear capabilities of India and his market-friendly attitude. He was a professor of mathematical economics at the Indian Institute of Technology-Delhi from 1969 to 1991. He was removed from that position by the Congress government. Dr Swamy approached a court against this decision and was reinstated in the late 1990s by the Supreme Court of India. That made him extremely bitter towards the Congress Party and provided him with a reason to enter politics.

The irony about Subramanian Swamy is that his one of his two sons-in-law happens to be a Muslim. His younger daughter, Suhasini Haider, who is known in her own right as an acclaimed journalist, is married to Nadeem Haider, son of the Indian diplomat Salman Haider.

Nevertheless, his antipathy for Muslims is an open secret. On top of having a Muslim son-in-law, his wife Roxna is a Zoroastrian by faith. Swamy had met her while studying at the Harvard University. She was doing a PhD in mathematics. They got married in June 1966 and have two daughters.

Commonsense commands that such inter-faith relationships should have made him far more amenable to people from other faiths, particularly Muslims, than is the case. But Dr Subramanian tends to defy much that commonsense dictates. This catalysed the discontinuation of a summer course that he used to teach at Harvard after he proposed to deprive Indian Muslims of voting rights unless they acknowledged a Hindu ancestry.

The Harvard University was forced to drop two summer economics courses taught by Dr Swamy from its curriculum. That came to pass in 2012 when he pleaded in a newspaper article for demolition of all the mosques in India. Such impulsive statements speak of the extent and depth of the hatred among some of the BJP’s support base. It allows Dr Swamy to say that the BJP wants to rule India by uniting Hindus and dividing Muslims. Despite his enviable academic credentials, Subramanian Swamy is a big political liability for India. Perhaps that serves India right.