NB: A much needed reminder: the loudspeakers for Lokpal fell silent after the AAP and BJP came to power in their respective bastions; the AAP’s own internal Lokpal was unceremoniously dismissed; and the party kept a safe distance from all issues of communal strife during the Delhi riots of 2020 (including opposing bail for Muslims imprisoned under the draconian UAPA). If you are afraid of working for communal harmony, what kind of alternative can you provide? It is good that Kejriwal and Sisodia have been declared innocent, and I congratulate the judge who had the conscience to release them from this fabricated case. Let them use this opportunity for self-reflection. DS
Harish Khare
The newly-acquitted Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) leadership is, understandably, in a celebratory mood. On Sunday, Arvind Kejriwal declared at a gathering of his faithful at Jantar Mantar that it was this very site from where his revolution started, a beginning that saw the end of Congress rule; and, that it was at this very site now that he was reclaiming the mantle of providing the nation an alternative to Narendra Modi’s regime. If there was any doubt about the intended message, AAP leader Manish Sisodia called upon the party’s workers to give “blood and sweat” to install Kejriwal as the Prime Minister.
The allure of Jantar Mantar is not only misconstrued but is also a dangerous obsession. Kejriwal may want to forget but needs to be reminded that “the Jantar Mantar” that he thinks was the inspiration for a new revolution and new politics was in fact a corporate project of which Anna Hazare was just the mascot; it was the corporate heft that enlisted the national media behind the ‘Anna movement” and it was the RSS that put “boots on the ground.” The only purpose of the Anna Hazare movement was to discredit the Manmohan Singh government; the UPA crowd was too gentle and too democratic by temperament to send the thanedar after the impresarios of the Anna Movement.
Kejriwal may also want to be remember that soon after the “Lokpal” battle was won, many senior functionaries of his Jantar Mantar “movement” joined the BJP. And, then, many others like Prashant Bhushan and Yogendra Yadav became disillusioned with the bossism within the AAP.
Fifteen years later, those very corporate interests that bankrolled the Anna Hazare movement are deeply entrenched in our economy and control the ups and downs of political exchange among politicians and parties. There is a neat division of labour: powerful corporate entities decide what national resources they want to appropriate, and, the Narendra Modi crowd invents the necessary “vision” and policies to carry out the corporate wish-list. There is enough surplus for the BJP leaders to dole out “revadis” as per their electoral requirements. And, the RSS bosses are allowed a free run of Vigyan Bhavan and provided official patronage to manufacture a “cultural renaissance.”
Fifteen years later, the Indian polity has lost its autonomy. Especially in the last five years, India’s powerful corporates have forged alliances with predatory foreign business interests to the detriment of our national well-being. Our national leaders preen themselves as global movers and shakers; but it is no longer easy to identify who is the puppet and who is the puppeteer.
How, then, can Captain Jantar Mantar rescue the country from the clutches of Modi and his powerful network of allies at home and abroad? How can Arvind Kejriwal re-invent himself? Not by going back to Jantar Mantar.
There is no more “Jantar Mantar,” conceptually speaking. Dissent is no longer permitted. The streets are closed to demonstrators and protestors. The Indian State has armed itself with wide-ranging legal devices and equipped itself with a sophisticated surveillance infra-structure. And, all this with judicial indulgence.
Arvid Kejriwal and his comrades are perceptive enough to recognize that the middle classes, an important and influential chunk of the original AAP constituency, have defected to the Modi camp. Subjected to an unprecedented barrage of relentless image-building around the Prime Minister, the middle classes now stand in awe of Narendra Modi. Many among them see him as a much-needed paragon of virtue and a source of national pride and dignity.
Nor can the Kejriwal crowd be oblivious of the fact that the BJP and its friends have become very good at inventing – to borrow Manish Sisodia’s words— “fake stories and lies.” The same slate of defamation strategies that the Anna Hazare backroom boys used against the Manmohan Singh government is now operational against the BJP’s rivals.
Apart from all this structured underhandedness, the Modi regime has been rather adept at cranking up what Eric Hobsbawm once identified as “patriotic mythology. ” Add to this angry nationalism, the constant stoking of the ever-green Hindu-Muslim binary, and the dice remains heavily loaded in favour of the Narendra Modi-Amit Shah team.
What, then, has Arvind Kejriwal to offer? Soft Hindutava? More righteousness? Competent municipal governance? It will require a very long leap of faith to believe the country is ready to put its faith in yet another “honest” leader in place of a self-declared selfless Modi. And, without being too uncharitable, no one has accused the AAP leader of being “prime ministerial material.”
Nonetheless, this is need not be the end of the road for Kejriwal, provided he is willing to rid himself of this Jantar Mantar obsession and prune his prime ministerial delusions. India’s voters have become far too cynical and far too transactional to be easily taken in by another dream-seller.
What Kejriwal and his dedicated band of comrades can do is to assume the role of a catalyst for re-grouping of the democratic forces and for forging a unity of purpose among leaders with inflated egos. The strategic task – indeed, a national duty — is to convince the country that there can be another India for all. Kejriwal has all the assets to re-invent himself as an anchor for opposition togetherness. The stranglehold that the BJP-RSS now has over national imagination and the national electoral game can be broken only when the Opposition leaders demonstrate a capacity for working together for an alternative future for India.
(Harish Khare is a former editor-in-chief of The Tribune.)
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After the truth-shower 