New Delhi: “India ko number one banana hain” is the new slogan of Delhi’s CM and Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) chief Arvind Kejriwal. According to several of his party colleagues, the Delhi CM seems to be strategically using the tricolour to not only give competition to Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s call for “har ghar tiranga” but also in pitching himself as a national leader at a time when the AAP is trying to expand its footprint across states.
The Kejriwal government in Delhi Sunday gave four full-page advertisements in prominent newspapers, urging every citizen of the country to come together to sing the national anthem at 5 pm.
At an event later in the day, he also urged people to personally invest in a cleanliness campaign — quite similar to Modi’s Swachh Bharat Mission.
The first page of Sunday’s newspaper advertisement has a photo of Kejriwal waving the Indian flag. It carried a message that said: “Har haath tiranga lehrana hai, India ko number one banana hai” (There should be tricolour in every hand and we should strive to make India the number one nation). It further urged people to come together at 5 pm and sing the national anthem to celebrate India’s 76th Independence Day.
The second page had an elaborate first-person message that read: “My life has only one mission: I want to see India as the number one country in the world. We have been an independent country for 75 years now”.
“Some people ask me: Can India lead the world? I say why not? India has the best engineers, doctors, lawyers, and scientists… I urge all 130 crore Indians to unite. Seventy-five years ago, when we joined hands, we got Independence. Let’s unite again, and take an oath on the occasion of the 75 years of Independence Day (sic) to make India the number one nation in the world.”
The third and fourth pages had the tricolour, which Kejriwal claimed was done to ensure every subscriber of that newspaper got access to at least one.
“There is clearly a competition over using the symbol of the tiranga (tricolour) as a mark of nationalism,” a senior AAP functionary who did not wish to be identified told thePrint. “And, at this stage, when the AAP is trying to expand across states, standing against the BJP in poll-bound Gujarat and Himachal Pradesh, we cannot afford to lose this competition.”
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The clash of the ‘patriots’
While addressing a gathering in Thyagraj stadium in the evening, the Delhi CM appealed to people to come together with tricolours and sing the national anthem at 5 pm, as he briefly mentioned the legacies of BR Ambedkar and Bhagat Singh — the two political leaders, sources said, his party has decided to cling on to in pursuit of their larger national expansion ambition.
He said, “The whole nation is celebrating 75 years of Independence with har ghar tiranga, har haath tiranga (tricolour in every household, tricolour in every hand). Today, it is also the time to remember the sacrifices of those who helped India become an independent nation”.
“I would like to mention two such personalities. Babasaheb Ambedkar, who struggled not only for [the] Independence of India but also for the rights of marginalised Dalits, and Bhagat Singh, who is the epitome of supreme sacrifice. At 23 years of age, people either pursue engineering degrees and girlfriends or spend time watching movies. Bhagat Singh sacrificed his life for the country,” he said.
Elaborating on how his government has installed 500 large flags across locations in the national capital, Kejriwal further said: “Delhi has become the city of tricolours. No other place in the country has so many flags installed on high-mast poles”.
He added: “I have one more request for people. I urge all to ensure that we won’t litter the streets. At least on a personal level let us all ensure that we dispose of garbage only into dustbins. And, if we spot garbage lying on the roads, let us also try to put those into the dustbin. Let us begin with such small things”.
The Delhi government also distributed 25 lakh tricolours among school students, the CM said. As he chanted the new slogan “India ko number one banana hai” (We have to make India the number one country), the crowd in the stadium cheered him. The event was broadcast live in the AAP’s social media handles and tv news channels.
It is not the first time that Kejriwal had picked up larger national issues in his Independence Day speech, another Delhi-based AAP functionary pointed out.
In his Independence Day address in 2018, Kejriwal lamented about India being a backward nation and expressed concerns over the rise in communal violence. But in the next three years, his addresses mostly focused on his government’s schemes in Delhi, fighting the Covid-19 pandemic, and things such as introducing “deshbhakti” (patriotism) curriculum in schools and yoga classes in residential areas.
“A lot has happened politically between 2019 and 2021, if you see. It was the time AAP was focusing strongly on making its ‘Delhi model’ stronger and the national ambitions were temporarily thrown into the backburner. Things have changed again after the Punjab victory,” the senior AAP functionary mentioned above told ThePrint.
In the 2019 general polls, the AAP unsuccessfully contested all seven parliamentary seats in Delhi but made a comeback the next year — winning the Delhi assembly polls with a big majority once again. In January 2021, Kejriwal announced that his party could contest elections in six states.
Come 2022, the party won the Punjab polls with a thumping majority – and, with that, they started giving a fresh push to their national expansion ambition.
The party is now preparing for polls in Gujarat and Himachal Pradesh — both ruled by the BJP.
(Edited by Uttara Ramaswamy)
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