The arrest of Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal, the icon of anti-corruption, on charges of alleged money laundering has incited if not passions then certainly verdicts on the temperature and state of India’s democracy anew. Kejriwal’s arrest, however, poses fundamental political questions. In this spectacular scenario — and it is a spectacle — the (new) political status and currency of corruption today remains central.
The fact that Kejriwal, a serving chief minister with a brute mandate to run India’s political capital, has been arrested during a national campaign points to a new form of authority that has become the signature of India’s democracy today. Helming the local government in Delhi has given the leader of the Aam Admi Party (AAP) an outsized persona and role in the national conversation. Blame it on Delhi and not necessarily on his famed charisma, as Kejriwal remains largely a figure of adulation — for more than a decade now — with India’s media and commentariat. Former CM and tribal leader Hemant Soren in far-flung Jharkhand is now serving time behind bars, also on charges of corruption, but has not evoked similar high-decibel verdicts. This is to say nothing on the state of democracy nor indeed on the nature of the graft charges.
The immediate effect of Kejriwal’s arrest is that he, once more, has become centre-stage in the relentless swirl of corruption-related arrests, charges, and whatnot that have all singularly been focused on India’s opposition parties. Above all, the timing of his arrest has moved the big story of electoral bonds, which is fundamentally and critically about institutional and industrial-scale corruption, off-stage. The deep and institutional story of corruption has given way to a new act in the personality-driven drama. For that, Kejriwal must be duly credited.
Also read: Electoral bonds ruling cuts down corporate clout in politics. But it’s more complicated than that
Kejriwal, redux
By avoiding nearly a dozen summons from the Enforcement Directorate (ED), Kejriwal returned to the anti-institutional style of his politics that had first installed him in the national imagination more than a decade ago. The agitprop style that Kejriwal then mimicked but which had none of the moral force or conviction of civil disobedience has now come full circle.
A quick reminder: The heady days of India Against Corruption (IAC) that mobilised the media and the Indian middle classes from 2011 to 2013 effectively placed corruption as the central but corrosive force of Indian democracy. Precisely because no one could say “I am for corruption” made this issue the quintessential anti-political — if all too emotive — clarion call. After all, politics is but the presence of two opposing ideas, if not more. It rendered the Congress-led UPA government stymied and speechless. Insidiously but surely, the IAC equated any and all exercises of government authority with acts of corruption. In a similar vein, it created a seamless similarity between issues as different as household bills and gender and culture (anyone recalls the horrific Khirkee episode?) by bounding them with a collective outrage, placing political power as the worst form of power.
All this in the name of the ordinary man (aam aadmi, indeed) as the arch-victim of India’s democracy.
It was India’s very own form of populism in our age of anger that has gripped mass democracies globally.
Crucially, IAC and Kejriwal’s mobilisations paved the way for the Modi mandate in 2014, and many today acknowledge the role of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) in the IAC that witnessed routine capture of Delhi’s public squares in righteous anger. Since then, and in holding office as CM of Delhi for nearly a decade, Kejriwal has consistently played and personified the lazy, if lighter, shade of Hindutva.
Also read: Arvind Kejriwal’s arrest caps AAP, BJP feud. If he stays CM, Delhi can face President’s rule
Corruption is now political
Kejriwal’s arrest at this point is but the forcing of a moment of clarification for his supporters in Delhi and beyond. Regardless of the BJP’s intentions, his arrest finally makes corruption a political issue—and in the proper sense. This is to say, this moment asks his supporters to stop the doublespeak they have now succeeded in delivering for two mandates. While voting overwhelmingly for the AAP and Kejriwal in running Delhi’s local affairs, his voters have, at the same time, delivered big mandates to the ruling BJP in the Lok Sabha. While no one can say “I am for corruption”, his arrest is nevertheless forcing a choice.
There are few expectations in this drama-driven ‘democracy’ to return attention to and deliberate how and why India’s deeply corrupt political system needs systemic remaking, — which the verdict on the election bonds scheme is clearly pointing toward.
Instead, if a decade or more ago, corruption became the smokescreen for the populist mandate for Modi and Hindutva, then that facade has been pulled away now. Voters, at least in Delhi, have been compelled to be less lazy about their Hindutva or more zealous about their belief in the theatrics of Kejriwal’s crusades. Hindutva and the BJP are nothing but demanding.
It would be not merely farcical but also properly tragic if the spirit of magnanimity and forgiveness overwhelms the Indian opposition and primarily the Congress party if it were to start a civil disobedience campaign for Kejriwal’s release. ‘My enemy’s enemy is my friend’ might be a catchy phrase, but as in life, so in politics—friendships should be a matter of choice borne out of mutual understanding and intuitive, if not time-tested trust. India’s democracy is greater and more important than a local government in Delhi.
Yes, Kejriwal seems to have been forgiven by the Congress party for all the damaging invective IAC and its agitprop got away with. For the Congress in particular, it places a new burden of measuring and conveying support to the very party and leader that gained its life by damaging it. The hard-won, if largely untested, gains of the Congress party’s recent reanimation of the long legacy of civil protest and principles as embodied by MK Gandhi, too, have been forced into a clarification. Is it to deploy that moral capital for a personality-driven, anti-institutional demagogue that Kejriwal is? Or is this arrest a diversionary tactic to move the focus away from the ideological contest that this election ultimately is? Either way, the latest arrest saga is, above all, a dialogue between Kejriwal and his support base that lo and behold, the BJP has set up and called the bluff on. If democracy is a matter of principles and institutional working, then the onus has indeed been placed on Kejriwal and his supporters, for starters.
India’s opposition will need precision on what exactly it is opposing. It would be a catastrophic mistake to confuse principles with personality or corruption with identity politics. To be sure, his arrest, asks and begs the question that the true shade of Arvind Kejriwal’s Hindutva be clarified and measured.
Shruti Kapila is Professor of History and Politics at the University of Cambridge. She tweets @shrutikapila. Views are personal.
(Edited by Humra Laeeq)
Corruption is already a central issue thanks to the BJPs ‘washing machine’ and the electoral bonds disclosure and the (dis) credit is not exclusively attributable to Kejriwal’s arrest. But perception seems to be gathering that the accusations of corruption against Kejriwal is to divert attention from the corruption charge against BJP. Even BJP does not seem to be convinced about its Hindutva card esp. outside the cow belt states. And hence distribution of free rations etc. Only the election results esp in Delhi will prove if your theory is correct. Till that time pl relish your line of thinking. 😊