You are like the first crush of many Indian youth who even after getting betrayed by you think that may be some day you will become old Arvind Kejriwal.
Dear Arvind,
I don’t know whether you are aware or not, but you have taken several attempts at committing political suicide. The latest one is your apology to Bikram Singh Majithia. India has seen the rise and fall of several leaders and your personal demise in Indian politics hardly matters, but the sins you have committed are much bigger than you can imagine. You have literally killed the hopes of a generation. You have forced many revolutionaries of our generation to choose the best among the worst. You are the murderer of a generation’s hope, Arvind, and it gives a lot of pain to many of your die-hard fans. You are like the first crush for many Indian youngsters, who, even after getting betrayed by you, think you will someday become the old Arvind Kejriwal again and they will unite with you.
You have taken the final step towards your political suicide. Because of your suicidal steps, the AAP is now just a regional party of Delhi and, mark my words (लिखके ले लो), you will become really insignificant by Delhi’s next assembly elections. The party, the movement that was all set to throw traditional establishments out of the India, has been marginalised to a regional party, and soon it will also vanish.
I hope you read this and do something good for the nation before dying a sad death in Indian politics.
Let me first remind you how you took the movement and yourself closer and closer to death. Below are some of your suicide attempts:
1.) Your meek surrender to Majithia
When you apologised to Majithia, a journalist who was once your fan wrote, “Five years down… with an uncharacteristic apology to Majithia, that ‘Kejriwal’ brand of politics has changed”. You have lost your most ardent fans with this decision.
Do you even realise what damage you caused to the party and its volunteers/members? Did you realise what face AAP MLAs will have in front of their people, from whom they sought votes by saying they will fight the likes of Majithia? This step of yours dismantled the Punjab unit and has left them faceless in front of the people of Punjab.
If you believe even 1 per cent in real democracy, don’t you think at least the Punjab unit should have been consulted before this decision was taken? Have your ever heard of the words, bravery, sacrifice and courage? People are ashamed that they thought of you as a courageous leader. Do you even know that so many volunteers have been facing police cases since the India Against Corruption days? They are facing their cases bravely, but you apologised like a coward.
2.) Your very famous 2G scam
You had the option to send three Rajya Sabha members from Delhi. You could have sent any three original AAP members, who could have raised the voice of the people in the Rajya Sabha. Let me give you a list of the people you could have chosen:
- Ashutosh
- Atishi
- Dilip Pandey
- Raghav Chaddha
- Kumar Vishwas
- Ashish Khetan
- Meera Sanyal
You know that there are many more. Even if you don’t like Kumar Vishwas, you can’t deny that he is an excellent communicator and he could have brought a lot of publicity with his speeches in the Rajya Sabha, which could have helped the AAP. Even if we accept that your personal problem with Kumar was so great that you could not have selected him, you still had several other good options.
But you opted for 2Gs. Even a child will understand, Arvind, that this was a clear deal. When you give a ticket to someone who joined you just a few days back from the Congress, it is evident that some kind of a deal took place. In order to raise funds for the party to fight future elections, you forgot that we had won when we didn’t have money and we had defeated powers who had mighty money power.
How can you be stupid enough to think that you can fight and win any election on money power? Winning elections with money is a traditional party’s forte; you can’t defeat them on their turf. Your USP was the honesty, conviction, and courage of mad volunteers like us. But you sold your USP to the likes of 2Gs. Punjab was an example, when you could not win the election even with lots of money and a wave going in favour of you.
3.) Dismantling the Maharashtra Unit
Let me tell you, Arvind, after Delhi and Punjab, the best performing unit of the AAP was Maharashtra. Since Mayank Gandhi exposed your conspiracy and hypocrisy of ousting Yogendra Yadav, Prashant Bhushan, Professor Anand Kumar and Ajit Jha from the party, you simply released an order that all the Maharashtra committees are dissolved? You brutally murdered the AAP in Maharashtra.
After the Delhi win, the AAP got a huge boost across the nation, and the Maharashtra unit was in the best position to ripen the fruits of our hard work. But before it could, due to your insecurity, you first removed PB and YY and later everyone who raised a voice against your wrong-doings.
Maharashtra is just an example; the organisation died in almost every part of the country.
Remember, Arvind, “Upar waala sab dekh raha hai”. I don’t know how many volunteers you talk to after every selfish decision, but let me tell you my experience. Since I was handling volunteer management for the 2015 Delhi elections, volunteers from across the nation had my number. When you were murdering the movement, there were at least 15 volunteers who cried on the phone and begged that the party be saved anyhow, but, like all the others, I was helpless. When you say “God”, “bhagwan”, “upar wala”in your speeches, trust me, Arvind, if there really is an “upar wala”, you are bound to get very big punishment.
4.) Removing PB, YY, AJ and Anand ji
Do you remember your 3Cs — crime, corruption and character? Can you tell me, out of Prashant Bhushan, Yogendra Yadav, Prof. Anand Kumar and Ajit Jha, who is a criminal? Who is corrupt? And who has a poor character? If the answer to these questions is none of them, can you try and explain to the nation why you removed them from the party? Did you conduct a poll among the AAP’s rank and file on whether these people were assets for the party or detrimental to it?
This single move of yours split the movement into two halves. Other than your insecurity and selfishness, what reason you can give for this step of yours? I still remember the volunteers cried that day. Volunteers from across the world were tense and you, the murderer of everyone’s emotions, were busy playing your cheap conspiracies. In front of me, your call came to people whom you were instructing from Bangalore to throw PB-YY out, and your puppets used to tell the media that you can’t even take calls in Bangalore.
The discussion about hiring bouncers happened in front of me, but on a lighter note. Later, after the national council meeting, when I heard about bouncers being actually deployed at the meeting, I felt like I had supported a goon all these days. Now all your puppets are turning against you one by one. And they were just puppets; anyone who was inside the system knew that the architect of the whole drama was you. Those who abused PB-YY in the media and ran a filthy social media campaign against them were just your puppets, Arvind. They were only acting on your directions.
Now, take a look back and try to realise what you achieved by removing the AAP’s most credible leaders and what you lost. If you had apologised to people like PB, you would not have had to apologise to Majithia.
5.) Giving tickets to tainted candidates in 2015 elections
In the 2015 election, your volunteers created such a wave in Delhi that even an unknown AAP candidate would have won from any seat. But God knows what made you think only powerful and ‘high net worth’ people can win the election for you.
Initially, I thought it was the middlemen distributing tickets who were misguiding you and giving tickets to tainted candidates. But when I visited your house with Faheem for the ‘buzz campaign’ and ‘outside volunteer management’ meeting, after hearing your conversation with Dilip, I understood that it was not the middlemen but you who want powerful candidates even if they are tainted.
Many volunteers were upset over ticket distribution; in some cases tickets were given to candidates against whom they had fought in the 2013 elections and, in 2015, they had to campaign for their rivals of two years before. I remember one volunteer saying, “I am ready to work hard for five more years but we should not compromise with such candidates to grab power.”
Prashant ji was angry over tainted candidates. As a part of the grievance team, I carried out an investigation of the backgrounds of all the candidates and, based on our investigation, we found that 28 candidates were unsuitable and, out of them, 12 should never get a ticket. After Prashant ji’s objection, the Lokpal was invoked and two tickets were cancelled and one turned to the BJP immediately after getting ticket. Now you must be realising whether it was worth it to give them tickets, or may be you are not realising it as you are blind. You can now think about yourself and no one else.
6.) Trying to form the government from the backdoor with the Congress after the 2014 Lok Sabha loss
When you had resigned after 49 days without consulting the majority of the NE or PAC members, many opposed the decision. But I was one of those who said if Arvind had not resigned I would have stopped supporting him, as I felt you were right in resigning when you were not able to pass the Lokpal bill in the assembly.
After resigning, we decided to contest the Lok Sabha elections; all volunteers faced problems answering the “bhagora” remarks because of your resignation but everyone worked wholeheartedly and everyone put their everything into the Lok Sabha elections. We were all in Varanasi to campaign day and night to fight against the might of Narendra Modi and we believe, even in the loss, it was a huge victory the way we fought Varanasi elections.
Even when we were fighting Lok Sabha elections we knew that we will not form the government at the Centre. We knew that we will lose. We knew that we will lose in Varanasi. But after losing, why did you get so scared you felt we would be finished if we d didn’t form the government again in Delhi? You started talking to six Congress MLAs through the back door, and this started the main rift within the party. Even after the majority of the national executive said that it will not be right to form the government again with the support of the Congress, you continued to approach them from the back door. Do you know that if you had made the government again with the Congress, you would have been finished in 2015 itself?
My suggestions for you
Please do something good for the nation before you die.
It is very certain that your political career is nearing its end. In the next assembly elections of Delhi, the AAP will not form the government, and if you are not in government, you will hardly continue in politics. Outside Delhi, you know the condition for yourself.
The damage you have caused to this generation of India can hardly be repaired, but before your political career ends, at least do the following so there can be some hope for the future:
- Accept all your mistakes in public, explain to people how you conspired against your own people, and let everyone know your mistakes. You are good at apologising and you can do this. Do this for the nation.
- Apologise to people like Prashant Bhushan, Yogendra Yadav, Prof. Anand Kumar, Mayank Gandhi, Admiral Ramdas and, most importantly, to all the volunteers across the globe. Make this apology in public.
- Hand over the AAP to the rightful people. Before handing over the reins, read your book ‘Swaraj’ once and create proper systems of internal democracy, transparency and accountability. Whatever happens, there is no doubt that you are the best administrator among all the old and current AAP members, and only you can make those systems. I can help in creating those systems with the help of information technology.
- Call a global volunteers’ meet; ask all the volunteers to come to a meeting at Ramlila Maidan or at any suitable place and tell them that you made mistakes, you had become selfish and now you will never repeat such mistakes.
- Take a pledge that, in the next five years, you will work in the AAP under another leadership that should emerge from a democratic process and, for the next five years, you will not hold any position in the party or in the government.
Arvind, if you could do this, maybe the movement will get reenergised and reach its conclusion of removing corruption from the country. Before you die due to your political-suicide attempts, please do something good for the nation. Otherwise, history will remember you as a fraud who killed a generation’s hope for his personal hunger for power.
I want to end this with the example Atishi gave at a meeting before the 2015 elections. At PB’s house, she cited the example of the ‘Boiling water and dying frog’ when we were discussing about the tainted candidates. She said that when you put a frog in boiling water, it jumps out, but if you put the frog in cold water and start heating the water, the frog is unable to realise when the water gets too hot, and dies. She said that we made one compromise and we thought maybe this is necessary and this much is fine, then we made another and so on and now we are in a position that we can’t jump out of the boiling water and will die. By this example, I want to say, Arvind, that you crossed the elasticity limit long back and maybe it can’t be restored to its original. However, I will love to see you giving it an honest try. As Kumar always recites the lines of Dushyant Kumar, “कैसे आकाश में सूराख़ हो नहीं सकता, एक पत्थर तो तबीयत से उछालो यारो”
Neeraj Kumar worked for AAP from 2013 to 2015. He is now the founder member of Swaraj Abhiyan. He had joined the AAP after leaving his job at Infosys, and worked with various teams of the party.
By Special Arrangement with newsato.com