Anti-establishment conformist’s age

Even as it seeks political power, AAP has maintained anti-establishmentarianism as its core.

File photo | AAP supporters carry a placard of Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal during a roadshow | ANI File Photo

The Anna movement began nearly eight years ago with an anti-politician war-cry. All that was wrong with Indian society, polity and economy was blamed on our politics and leaders. The word “neta” became a pejorative. He may not wish to be reminded of it now, but best-selling writer Chetan Bhagat coined the leitmotif of the movement: mera neta chor hai (my politician is a thief). The anti-corruption movement soon evolved into a kind of middle-crust, urban professional revolt against the “rotten” political class and system.

A good example of its appeal cutting across ideological lines was that we saw well known RSS people and sympathisers and established Left-liberals, from Baba Ramdev to Gen V K Singh and Kiran Bedi to Prashant Bhushan, Shabana Azmi, Om Puri and Aamir Khan turn out to support the movement. Anna Hazare and his stormtroopers, led by Arvind Kejriwal, rode the same angry bandwagon. Electoral process was for the corrupt, people voted for a bottle of liquor or 500 rupees, parliament was a chamber of rapists and thieves. Power had to be devolved, the system turned inside out. Nothing short of a revolution was now needed.

While Anna pretended to be Gandhi, and was hailed as such by fawning activists, sundry socialists and TV anchors. He also borrowed Gandhi’s weapon: fasting. But the iconography he leaned on wasn’t Gandhian. It was, in some ways, un-Gandhian: Bhagat Singh, Subhash Chandra Bose, even Maharana Pratap and, in some striking moments from more contemporary Bollywood: Anna stretching his arms out at Ramlila Maidan and chanting Dilip Kumar’s line from Karma. “Dil diya hai jaan bhi denge, ai watan tere liye”, or Kiran Bedi, while being taken away in a police bus after courting arrest shouting at the TV cameras: “ab tumhare hawale watan saathiyo”. I am not sure if she was echoing Kaifi Azmi’s line from the old, immortal classic Haqeeqat (more like her vintage) or the more contemporary rubbish starring Amitabh-Akshay-Bobby Deol. The message was, a revolution was on, to change the “system”, and least of all for political power through it.

Now Anna himself is back where he was, fighting his imaginary demons in the distant isolation of Ralegaon Siddhi and occasionally headline-hunting by praising the odd action of the prime minister’s or criticising some of Arvind Kejriwal’s. Kiran Bedi, Manish Sisodia, Yogendra Yadav, Prashant Bhushan (he hasn’t contested an election personally yet), Gopal Rai, his articulate spokesperson from an MNC bank, Meera Sanyal, and the reigning empress of Left-activism, Medha Patkar, have all joined electoral politics. As for those who questioned the method and motivations of the Anna movement (this writer included), we can now declare that we won the basic intellectual argument. That to change the system, you have to embrace it, for power to make a difference, you need to wade into electoral politics, even if you call it a cesspool. It follows that the only way to win power is through the ballot and the process is fair, the voter smart, by and large incorruptible.

Having swept Delhi, being poised to make a national mark in Punjab and Goa and now threatening to be a challenger in Gujarat, Kejriwal and AAP can no longer claim that politics and elections are all a farce. Isn’t this precisely what some of us (a tiny, thick-skinned minority though) were saying in our criticism of the anti-politics pretense of the Anna Movement? For clearance of all doubts, here is what we said: be honest and say what you want is political power. Or, in the language Kejriwal prefers to use with his critics: agar rajniti karni hai, toh khul kar saamne aao.

Whatever AAP’s ranking in Punjab and Goa, it is incontrovertible that it’s finding traction. That’s the sense from Gujarat too. It is remarkable how, even while seeking political power, AAP has maintained anti-establishmentarianism as the core of its appeal, laced and garnished with ultra-nationalism to rival the BJP’s (Bhagat Singh is still there) and povertarianism more convincing than the Congress party’s. Kejriwal would rarely attack any particular party in his campaigns, but all other parties, in effect all “establishment” politicians. His core brand appeal is still the Grand Disruptor.

That he and his key followers are all young and generally seen as incorruptible (nobody buys Delhi Police and CBI’s creative FIRs) gives him a headstart with the large, young voter-base. Some of his other rivals, Sukhbir Badal, Rahul Gandhi, aren’t much older, even younger. But they represent politics of entitlement, while he is self-made. He is using absence of a track record, inexperience, as an advantage, synonymous with innocence: give us at least one chance, therefore, sounds that much more convincing for younger voters.

He swept Delhi because he vacuumed out the Congress vote. In Punjab, on the other hand, he might get more of his votes from the Akali-BJP combine. Count that as an advantage of being a party with no real ideology, or an evolving one that can be totally fungible with the political needs of a state.

Beyond this, is there much to differentiate AAP from established parties? List all our big complaints with them, besides corruption, age and a dodgy track record: personality cult, absence of internal democracy, a high command culture, intolerance of media, deep illiberalism, an supremo-style leader who brooks no dissent. Check which one is not to be found in ample measure in AAP. Its leader is so supremely powerful—and popular—now that he can spend months campaigning outside the state he is sworn to govern (Delhi) and then carry on for nearly a fortnight’s recuperation, more or less incommunicado, in a distant city. Rahul Gandhi, on the contrary, is pilloried for taking a week off at year-end while he has no constitutional responsibility or even political accountability as far as his own party is concerned.

Nearly eight years after it began, the Anna Movement has now risen as the new pan-national political force with a formidable leader, in search of an ideology he probably believes it doesn’t need. It has brought a new dimension to our stalled, boring politics and will make our jobs as political reporters and opinion-writers more fun. So what if some more abuse is a part of it too.

Postscript: After my ‘Writings on The Wall’ last week noting the rise of AAP in Punjab, I’ve been besieged with a question: how could you give a “positive” report on AAP after its chief had addressed you in particularly abusive language on social media recently? I have a counter-question: Just because someone abuses me, should I get even by lying about what I see as a reporter? And thereby abuse my readers instead?

It’s instructive to read the brilliant memo from Reuters editor-in-chief Steve Adler to his staff on how to cover President Trump. His key point: stay with facts, do not start believing we are part of the story, needs to be remembered, whether you are covering Trump, Narendra Modi, or herein, Arvind Kejriwal.