By Swapan Dasgupta
On December 23, 1987, incensed by the Faizabad
district order opening the locks of the disputed shrine in Ayodhya, Syed
Shahabuddin and the newly-formed All India Babri Masjid Conference gave a call
for Muslims to “not associate themselves with official functions”. Although the call was quickly withdrawn
following a national outrage, it was perhaps the first time a non-secessionist
body had called for a boycott of Republic Day.
Few things in India are sacred but all political
parties and all citizens who believe that their “idea of India” must
necessarily include faith in the Indian Constitution accord a special place to
the country’s two national days. It is a measure of Delhi Chief Minister Arvind
Kejriwal’s astonishing recklessness and arrogance that he felt no inhibitions
threatening the disruption of the Republic Day parade by “lakhs” of Aam Aadmi
Party supporters.
What is equally mystifying that this grave threat
was issued because his demand for the suspension of four SHOs had not been
entertained by the Lt-Governor of Delhi. When Shahabuddin craved for attention
25 years ago, he did so for a big, albeit misplaced, cause. Kejriwal’s
iconoclasm was centred on the fact that lowly police officers had dared to say
no to one permanently angry Rakhee Birla and one Somnath Bharti who is more
caricature than real. His anger knew no bounds and TV resonated with gems from
Kejriwal: “If they don’t listen to ministers, who will they listen to?”; “Who
is (Home Minister) Shinde to tell the Chief Minister of Delhi where to sit. The
Chief Minister can tell him where he can sit.” Frankly, Cartoon Network
couldn’t have done better.
Kejriwal is an interesting human being. Like many
self-professed messiahs who appear from time to time, he believes that he and
only he has the monopoly of truth and virtuousness: those who contest his
intellectual infallibility are either Congress/ BJP agents or, better still,
plain dishonest. From swearing by his children to pretending that some things
just didn’t happen because he says it didn’t, Kejriwal is contemporary India’s
papier mache Mahatma.
Mohandas Gandhi, the other Mahatma, was one of the
wiliest politicians who left his opponents both angry and mystified. From
Viceroy Lord Irwin to the sun-hardened India hands in the colonial service,
there was no agreement as to whether Gandhi was a saint who had unwittingly
strayed into politics, a familiar seditious lawyer who had improvised his dress
or a plain oriental humbug. There was never any unanimity as to what Gandhi
stood for and, indeed, the man India venerates as its sole Mahatma stood for
different things at different times. Like most people engaged in politics,
philosophical or even issue-based consistency was not the hallmark of the
‘Father of the Nation”.
For many of his new-found supporters, Kejriwal is
indeed the new Gandhi—and they say so in their slogans. In many ways, AAP’s
supreme leader consciously cultivates that image. Like Gandhi, he has made a
virtue of simplicity which, given the lifestyle excesses of India’s political
class, is an admirable attribute. Like Gandhi, he has learnt the art of
appearing to be obstinate, particularly in his relationship with his
colleagues. He often conveys the impressionable that he is blessed with the
monopoly of both the truth and tactical wisdom. At the same time, his version
of truth is negotiable and susceptible to periodic revisions. When he contested
the elections he did so never imagining that one day he would need Congress
support to form a government which his support base desperately wanted.
Consequently, he pretended that the past go-it-alone-at-all-cost assurance
never existed and still doesn’t exist. It is a different matter that a
confused, Rahul Gandhi-directed Congress constantly gives him the opening to
persist with the charade.
Kejriwal boasted he was an anarchist and seemed to
ready to man the barricades. The very next day he went back to work, with his
smooth-talking ideologues swearing their undying allegiance to the
Constitution. What had changed? The answer lies in Kejriwal’s ability to effect
a tactical retreat when the occasion so demands. Compromise and intransigence
seem to go hand in hand with him. On the question of funding of his party and,
earlier, his movement, Kejriwal maintains a need-based flexibility that may, in
future, land him in a spot of bother. He can replace the skull cap with the AAP
cap, feign outrage at the “fake encounter” at Batla House and preach an
inclusive secularism. At the same time, he can turn a blind eye to the worst
verbal excesses of a Kumar Vishwas and a Somnath Bharti and even embrace the
regressive logic of a khap panchayat. And he piously proclaim his supporters
join him for a do-or-die battle and when the turnout proves hugely
disappointing, he first tries to manufacture a confrontation and, when that
fails, quietly negotiate a face-saving settlement—and proclaim it as a huge
victory.
Kejriwal seeks to change the rules of the political
game just as Gandhi did. The “useful idiots”—one of Lenin’s memorable
descriptions of the do-gooders who backed the brutalities of the Bolsheviks—go
along with him and wish for a bout of honest disruption. The turbulence is
backed by a media that gives AAP unprecedented and sympathetic publicity that
in turn encourages Kejriwal to press the accelerator harder.
Yet there is a difference. Gandhi was fighting for
national independence and self-rule. Under the guise of participative
democracy, Kejriwal is seeking to go beyond reforms. He wants to unsettle India
and keep it in a state of permanent turbulence. That is an agenda most Indians
can do without, even if it is articulated by a self-righteous man who wears
honesty on his sleeve.
Deccan Chronicle/ Asian Age, January 24, 2014
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