A governance system that lets former civil aviation minister Praful Patel off the hook but incarcerates Arvind Kejriwal has much to answer for itself. The BJP had for years accused Patel of wrongdoing in the leasing of aircraft for Air India and Indian Airlines. Once Patel entered what the opposition political parties have termed as the ‘BJP laundry’ he has come out clean. While an over-zealous vice president may go ballistic questioning the democratic credentials of the US when its government raises concerns about Indian democracy, the fact is that many friends of India around the world are concerned about what is happening in this country.
The last time the democratic world was so concerned about political developments in India was when Indira Gandhi used the emergency powers granted by the Constitution to curb individual freedoms. As sociologist Gyan Prakash noted in his book, The Emergency Chronicles, that episode constituted the ‘lawful suspension of law’. What we witness today is the adoption of unlawful means in the name of law.
How else can one term the manner in which the popularly elected chief minister of Delhi has been jailed based on statements extracted from individuals in an almost mafia-like operation? In his nine-minute statement to the court, Kejriwal has pulled the rug from under the feet of the Union government, the political party in power, and the investigative agencies. He has exposed beneath that carpet of deception the ugly events that preceded his arrest.
Individuals whose statements are used to make the case against the chief minister are not only shown to have acted under duress, but Kejriwal points to the manner in which these individuals “bought protection” from the Union government. Some enterprising journalists have exposed the links between party political donations made through electoral bonds to the BJP and the relief given to specific business leaders and firms from the provisions of law. This information by itself indicts the electoral bonds scheme that writer Parakala Prabhakar has dubbed the ‘biggest scam in the world’. What the arrest of Kejriwal has done is expose the politics behind the actions of investigative agencies.
There is a history to Narendra Modi’s pursuit of Kejriwal. In the summer of 2014, Modi led his party back to power in Delhi and declared that he would establish a ‘Congress-mukt Bharat’. Eight months later, Kejriwal led the Aam Aadmi Party to an impressive victory in Delhi, worsting the BJP. Modi governs India from New Delhi, but Delhi is not yet in his grasp. It was easy for the BJP to go after the Congress and it did so facing little resistance, till Rahul Gandhi launched his Bharat Jodo Yatra and reclaimed power in Karnataka and Telangana. But Kejriwal has remained a thorn in Modi’s flesh.
It is not just that AAP challenges BJP, but that it does so in a manner that the BJP has been unable to counter. Kejriwal has used all the Hindu platforms of the BJP even as he retained minority support. It was widely rumoured in 2015 that large sections of the Delhi BJP and even the RSS resented the manner in which Modi was securing his dominance and sidelining an earlier generation of leaders, and had quietly lent their support to Kejriwal. The AAP leader, some believed, had even been an RSS loyalist.
Delhi was a government city till the 1980s. Over the past three decades, Delhi and its neighbourhood have become home to many millionaires and billionaires. The wealthy, upper-caste Delhi quickly deserted a Congress in retreat and hitched its bandwagon to the BJP. While Modi and his acolytes kept mocking “Lutyens ki duniya” and the “Khan Market gang”, the latter in turn easily adapted themselves to the power transition. It was Delhi’s under-privileged who remained loyal to Kejriwal. “Lutyens ki duniya” is now full of Modi bhakts.
AAP has emerged as the voice of the poor in the increasingly unequal social milieu of the nation’s capital. In the last elections to the Delhi state assembly, it was autorickshaw drivers, vegetable vendors, household helps and such who were canvassing support for AAP. As a watchman in my locality said to me, “Those who live here support the BJP, those who work here support AAP.”
The mistake that Kejriwal made was to assume he could strike out nationally. Punjab fell into his lap only because the major political entities in the state had lost the confidence of an increasingly alienated people. AAP entered that vacuum. But AAP came a cropper elsewhere. The Congress also took its own time understanding the AAP phenomenon and coming to terms with it. When AAP and Congress sealed a deal earlier this year, the BJP and Modi appear to have become desperate in their bid to claim Delhi.
Having premature national ambition was not Kejriwal’s original mistake. Parting company with his comrades in India Against Corruption was his first error of judgement. In seeking to establish his hegemony over AAP, Kejriwal was doing only what every other national and regional party leader has done. In following in their footsteps, Kejriwal lost the halo he acquired as a crusader against corruption.
All those mistakes have come to bite him. However, given the manner in which the Modi government has gone after AAP and its leadership, public sympathy has already turned in their favour. Delhi is still not in Modi’s grasp. It is not just the treatment meted out to Kejriwal that many in Delhi disapprove of. Consider also the treatment given by Modi to the last BJP chief minister of Delhi and his own cabinet colleague, Harsh Vardhan. In a party of aggressive and loud local leaders in Delhi, Harsh Vardhan was a soft-spoken gentleman. He had endeared himself to Delhi’s citizens but failed to secure control of his party and its machinery. Modi made him the scapegoat for the Union government’s mishandling of the Covid pandemic.
It remains to be seen how Kejriwal proposes to deal with his situation. His arrest, and indeed that of his soft-spoken colleague Manish Sisodia, are Modi’s own goals.
(Views are personal)
Sanjaya Baru | Former newspaper editor and writer. His latest book is India's Power Elite: Class, Caste and a Cultural Revolution