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An Apology of a Party: AAP, which set out to save India, is struggling to save itself now

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The foundation on which AAP was built has all but crumbled. And its promise of changing the system and saving India is now a fading memory.

There is no precise, carbon-dated moment of the birth of the Aam Aadmi Party. Technically, it could be 4 August 2012 when its first founders announced that after calling politics a cesspool in their anti-corruption campaign, they were themselves taking the plunge. In my book though, its origin dates back to some moment in 2010 when the India Against Corruption campaign hit the streets, and found Anna Hazare as its mascot, brand ambassador and chief trumpeter. The conductor of the orchestra, nobody had any doubt, was young Arvind Kejriwal.

This new force remained amorphous. It never had a firm manifesto or agenda, except that it wanted to fight corruption with one weapon of mass destruction (of this evil) called Jan Lokpal. There was no ideology. Which was useful as it then allowed people from all corners to come and share its stage, and bask in Anna Hazare’s new, prime time and social media fuelled glory.

Theirs was a platform so ideologically anodyne that two men in saffron, but with totally opposite world views, Swami Agnivesh and Baba Ramdev, could share it. It gave space also to both lawyer Prashant Bhushan on the Left and poet Kumar Vishvas on the Right. Many well-meaning young people in the media found its irreverence and idealism attractive and came on board. Manish Sisodia, Ashish Khetan and Ashutosh are only the most prominent examples.

It was also the big tent for activists, from Medha Patkar to Akhil Gogoi to Mayank Gandhi. Many professionals (Meera Sanyal) retired senior bureaucrats (Arun Bhatia in Pune), and judges (Santosh Hegde) were drawn to it. As were liberal intellectuals of the Left-of-Centre bent, Yogendra Yadav being the most prominent.

Shekhar Gupta, chairman and editor-in-chief of ThePrintIn those heady years, you had to be nuts to question the movement’s motivations, methods, and mythologies it was building. We did some of that, were pilloried and abused in response, as you’d expect. The main question we asked, however, was: What does the group stand for? We were directed to Arvind Kejriwal’s short, self-written manifesto: A reading of it proved it to be just a few hollow mythologies strung together. Our point was, can you build a sustainable politics without an ideology — merely being anti-corruption won’t suffice.

The question, we were told, is not only irrelevant but loaded. How dare we raise it? How can they have a political ideology when their war cry was: mera neta chor hai (my leader is a thief)? Parliament was called a den of thieves and dacoits. The Jan Lokpal was to be manned exclusively by non-politicians, including from among winners of Nobel and Magsaysay Awards; CBI was to be the new sovereign, neighbours were to spy on each other.

Inevitably, though, “left no choice if we want to change the system”, they decided to become netas one afternoon. An afternoon of happy, I-told-you-so vindication for observers like this one.

As a smart popular movement run by people a couple of decades younger than the norm morphed into a political party, they faced a predictable challenge: a lack of cohesion. With the glue of the cause washed away by power, the motivation now was not to eradicate corruption but, at best, to govern in a clean manner and set an example.

This never works. A good example is the failure of Assam’s super-popular students’ movement to become a durable political party. They swept their first election in 1985, much like AAP but with the cause (expelling foreign nationals) in suspended animation, could not stay together. Today, many of those anti-foreigner movement leaders are in the BJP. They include the chief minister, Sarbananda Sonowal, and the face most familiar to us, his most important minister, Himanta Biswa Sarma. The largest remaining faction of the Asom Gana Parishad (the political avatar of the Assam movement) is now a junior partner with the BJP, after sharing power with the Left in the past. Diagnosis: the cause gone and no ideology to fill the gap, it became every man for himself.

AAP has faced a similar situation, but with one difference. Several of its eminent founders have walked away, mostly bitter. Two of the most prominent ones, Yogendra Yadav and Prashant Bhushan, have launched a rival, more socialist political party. Some are venting their frustration in different ways: Anna, by his frequent criticism of “power-hungry” Kejriwal, to Mayank Gandhi, who recently published an angry book. And the ministers he has junked, who keep tweeting abuse against him. The latest, now, is the leadership of the party in Punjab, a state it had seemed set to conquer just over a year ago, marking its arrival as a national force. Why it failed at the last stage, we talked about in an earlier National Interest.

The one difference, however, is that unlike AGP and other smaller political forces that rose from popular movements, AAP has a pre-eminent, unchallenged Supremo, Arvind Kejriwal. Over these eight years since 2010, he has proved as ruthless a practitioner of power politics as Narendra Modi. As a result, his party has dropped old idealism, youthful innocence and grown into a personality cult with no hierarchy.

When it comes to any challenge or competition, Kejriwal, like Modi, works on the principle of jo hum se takrayega, choor-choor ho jayega, the heartland war cry translated as whoever messes with us will be crushed into rubble. But, for both challengers within and rivals outside, he has followed another tactic: of hurling the wildest abuse and accusations, mostly hitting at the other person’s integrity, often below the belt, and never mind that he has no facts or evidence.

Everything in real life comes with a use-by date. The tactic of intimidate-by-wild-abuse was based on three factors: First, that his own incorruptible image would make the charges stick. Second, the belief that he is such an intrepid insurgent that these attacks would draw popular adulation and demoralise his targets. And finally, that even if his victims go to court, the process will go on for ever. That created a sorry political paradox – that India’s youngest political party, with the best educated leaders, was also its coarsest.

All three factors have now changed. Three years in power, where he has had to drop his own hand-picked partymen from his cabinet on charges ranging from corruption to moral turpitude, have taken away the sheen of incorruptibility. The speed with which the legal processes moved in his face-off with Arun Jaitley intimidated Kejriwal himself instead. He knew that the legal challenges he was facing—more than 30—from victims of his abuse were formidable and hopeless from his point of view. That is why this retreat. Which, in turn, takes away the second of the three reasons for the success of his shock-and-awe politics: his image as an intrepid insurgent.

AAP is a fraction of the political power it was three years ago. It is still powerful in Delhi: Its populism, combined with the diligence of some of its volunteers, having built a strong constituency among Delhi’s poor. The middle class has dumped it, but it would still win a re-election in Delhi today. But to be a Mamata Banerjee equivalent confined to the half-state of Delhi is not what Kejriwal and his party had set out to be. They had come to change the system, save India (hum desh ko bachaane aaye hain, was an often used line). That is now over. Can they raise themselves again? You can never say never in politics. We may still see the return of AAP, but hopefully not of the same abusive politics again.

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12 COMMENTS

  1. Sir, Now Mr. Aravindji is in the right mood, he should also apologise to Mr. Prashanth Bhushan and Mr. Yogendra Yadav, and start rebuilding AAP.

  2. Uncle ji also forgot to mention, he called the them corrupt, to prove he would have needed investigative agencies help. After the courts concluded 2G was not a scam how did you expect him to prove anything.

    If I was sued, I would have apologised twice!

  3. This article disappointed me. Coming from the editor and he being Shekhar Gupta disappointed me further. First is the use of the feature image. It is typical to the core of shamelessness to bask in the fame of sensationalism. A positive or a neutral feature image is expected out of Shekhar Gupta.

    Secondly, the editor knows, and the sentiment is echoed by the Wire team as well, that Indian judicial system is a big deterrent for honest men willing to target big powers. The big powers use the judiciary to scare the activists and the supposed trouble makers. So he could have, in his analysis, mentioned about that aspect. That this could free Arvind Kejriwal to concentrate on AAP.

    Thirdly, the editor has dismissed all the positive achievements of AAP in Delhi specially its focus on education and health. In his dismissal of the party, he could have spared a line about their achievements. It seemed to me that the editor is on his ego trip over some squabbles he may have had with Arvind Kejriwal and now he is taking a personal revenge for a good night sleep.

    Fourthly, Shekhar Gupta with his experiences in the corridors of power and politics would know that India has dynastic politics and Godman politics. He knew Jayalalitha, MGR, Mamta Banerjee etc to name a few, and it is mostly about one leader or one family that carries any party. It was Prafulla Mahanta for AGP in 1985, and he too had a fair share of allegation of autocratic behaviour. So pinpointing Arvind Kejriwal and comparing him to Modi is an injustice to both Kejriwal and Modi. An autocrat in a party is not necessarily bad for the nation or the state.

    Also, the current politics in India is between BJP and the Others. The Others as we speak is getting formed. Parties like AAP or AGP will lose significance temporarily in that power tussle. Today, India is practically bipolar and even a diehard AGP or an AAPtard will vote for Congress or the ante-BJP party in his or her constituency.

    Fifthly, any political party with whatever ideology is formed by the society. If the society has 50% dishonest citizens, then any party formed in that society will have a percentage of dishonest citizens. For an anti-corruption party like AAP, the percentage will be lesser, say, 30% dishonest citizens. That is reality and it somehow misses the intellectual faculty of Mr. Shekhar Gupta when he blames a whole anti corruption movement by the youth of the country of utter failure.

    Like a clever politician himself (read editor), he writes in his penultimate line, “You can never say never in politics. We may still see the return of AAP..” but after writing the sub headline of the article as “The foundation on which AAP was built has all but crumbled. And its promise of changing the system and saving India is now a fading memory”

    Sad.

    • Durlov Baruah, I bothered to read this article thinking it was from Shekhar Gupta and would be an unbiased and objective one. But even a journalist of his stature and reputation has apparently preferred to remain silent on the positive things Kejriwal/AAP has done and play safe by finding faults with Kejriwal, knowing fully well he is a soft target. Soft, because he stands there like a badly bruised man with not even a small stick in his hand, ring fenced and trying his best to fight off an army of adversaries armed to the teeth with lethal heavy weapons . The heavy weapons – the all-powerful, highly compromised and bought out media ever ready to pounce on him even if he sneezes, the state machinery of police, bureaucracy and judiciary and finally the big parties armed to the hilt by the cash-rich corporates who don’t see him or AAP as a worthy investment. And then there are those whose feathers AK has ruffled in the past – rightly or wrongly. The author has mentioned a few of them e.g. PB, YY, Mayank Gandhi, etc. This is a god-sent opportunity for them to get back hard at him.

      With his apologies, AK of course looks a sorry figure but isn’t that because in India no prominent figure (read ‘leader’) ever apologises even for murders, genocides, scandals, rapes, mismanagement, you name it. It’s just an accepted view that if you say sorry, you are guilty. If you don’t you are not, no matter how serious a crime you may have done.
      Very Tom, Dick and Harry (including Capt. Amrinder, Sidhu, Bajwa, etc. accuses Majithia of drug-peddling, but the case is filed only against AK. Kirti Azad accused Jaitley of DDCA scam but case is filed only against AK. Ram Jethmalani has repeatedly asked for Gadkari’s head on charges of corruption but case is filed only against AK.
      As for Kejriwal making allegations against his adversaries, it appears no one has done it before. He is the first one to do it. Modi doesn’t ever accuse his adversaries, Rahul doesn’t and neither does any one else.
      As for evidence before accusing, no one, not even the common citizen should call our ‘leaders’ corrupt, scamsters or criminals. Because there is no evidence.
      Finally, I feel AK simply has decided not to oblige the two big parties and walk into the trap that they have laid for him by his defiantly sticking to his accusations and lose the cases knowing fully well he stands no chance in winning them. The investigative agencies or the judiciary will not help him there. And his adversaries have the financial muscle as well as power control to trap him as and when they wish.
      Whether all this leads to AK being ‘finished’ as many are now saying, well if that is the price to pay, then so be it. India then will have got rid of the biggest threat to its progress and obstacle to a corruption-free society.

      • I agree with both, this is a sponsored article from the India’s 5% rich that have taken the loans and run the GOVTS with money. They know AAP will disrupt their plans and give the control back to the citizens.
        I came to the site from dhruv rathee’s article I am sure if he read this he would be disgusted to!

        Another attempt by a paid celebrity to promote congress, like the wire’s vinod dua… we see through you uncle ji!

      • The scene is sad. Nehru has very rightly wrote after the 1937 elections that democratic elections will slowly filter out the good, replaced by the thick skinned, compromised conscience and the loud voice. He had requested the future generations to think of reforms to counter that.

  4. AAP is a party that has been built up by media. It is high time for the media also to introspect on why it allowed itself to get carried away by someone as shamelessly power hungry as Arvind Kejriwal. Comparing him with Narendra Modi is lazy, as Shekhar Gupta has done here is lazy journalism. Modi has been in politics for decades. If he looses the next election, BJP will choose another leader, as it did when it removed Advani after 2009. Such a possibility does not exist in AAP. It is Arvind Kejriwal first and last.

  5. People could not see through Kejriwal’s superficiality in time. His playground was much smaller; but it was prominent enough for him to play well enough to make a lot of money, which was his final goal – name & fame or abuse & infamy did not make any difference. Currency is accepted at face value everywhere if you don’t question the exchange rate!

  6. Trying to uplift and give a good life to the Indians and to show them the real meaning of Democracy who otherwise has been destined to become and live like slaves to the kings, Britishers and now the Netas and Corporates. Arvind Kejriwal and Aam Aadmi Party is the biggest threat to the Nation at this moment and should be condemned beyond existance.

  7. Stephen Hawking’s quote “Quiet people have the loudest mind” does NOT apply to SHRI Arvind Kejriwal. He is a one-trick pony and that trick is tantrums. His biggest strategic mistake is that he played with his positioning, and as a result ends up as befuddled and self-destructive. His other blunder is that he could neither build bridges with BJP nor Congress (his recent ‘SOS’ to Rahul Gandhi is an example of too-little-too-late), and now both parties will either treat him as political waste or use him as an instrument for their gains (which he will sure allow for his survival, given the latest development). He should have quickly realised that he is a regular run-of-the-mill politician, and made Sharad Pawer his role model instead of Mamta Banerjee.

  8. For AAP to become a political force at the national level, propelling its leader to the PM’s post, was never a realistic proposition. However, having won such an overwhelming mandate in Delhi, a prosperous city state with a lot going for it, it is a pity the party’s government has not been allowed to work, to exercise even the constrained authority the Constitution provides for. 2. Having read Animal Farm in high school, one did not take seriously AAP’s claims of being different, existing on a higher moral plane. Primus inter pares works even less well in India than it does elsewhere in the world. Almost all political formations end up being close to a one (wo)man show. Why that is so could form the subject of another fine weekend column.

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