When asked if the success of the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) and the austere lifestyle of its leader Arvind Kejriwal would set an example for the national parties and its leaders to follow, a senior BJP leader retorted, “Can they hold the assembly meeting at the Ramlila Maidan?”
The leader was of course on a chartered flight, returning from Varanasi after attending Narendra Modi’s hugely successful rally in India’s oldest city. Only three days later, AAP national convener Kejriwal has decided to take oath as the chief minister of Delhi at the Ramlila Maidan. The BJP leader’s premonition about Kejriwal holding an assembly session on the sprawling ground may not be a distant possibility. Perhaps nothing has upset the traditional political parties and their leaders more than the image of Kejriwal as next-door neighbor or literally an aam aadmi (common man). The fact that he steadfastly refuses to let go of this image despite his anointment as the chief minister has hit the well-entrenched politicians where it hurts most — their sense of entitlement of perks and privileges. “The state is a temporary thing and in no way a permanent feature in human life,” said Leo Tolstoy. And those scared of Kejriwal’s “antics” challenging the notion of the state’s permanence are certainly oblivious to the deep yearning of people for a transformational change in the old political order. If Kejriwal has emerged in less than a year to symbolize this change, it is nothing but an illustrating testimony to the widening chasm between the practitioners of traditional politics and the people. Even the signals emanating from the ground are being ignored. Two remotely unconnected events, in Delhi and Varanasi, are illustrative in their own way in defining the popular political sentiment in the country. Just as Kejriwal decided to seek people’s opinion on whether or not to form the government, BJP’s prime ministerial candidate Narendra Modi addressed an unprecedented crowd at Varanasi, which buoyed the saffron brigade.
Instead, the Hindutva forces should genuinely worry about the people’s mood. Varanasi is a veritable microcosm of India. What is true of India is equally true of Varanasi, the most pious city across the country. But the city has a rich history and tradition of challenging the faithful and conventions. On Dec. 20 when Modi addressed a huge public gathering nearly 30 km away from the city, he was acutely aware of the fact that those who trekked miles in hordes to listen to him were not BJP supporters. An indication of this was available on the ground when a section of the crowd tried to heckle the sitting MP from Varanasi, Murli Manohar Joshi. Joshi is an archetypal brahmin. He should be an instant winner in Varanasi’s audience. But nobody except Modi was the star attraction. Of course, this unprecedented level of mobilization was beyond the capacity of the party’s organizational strength.
Even local party leaders admitted that given the unpopularity of Joshi and the local BJP, it would be difficult to mobilize even a fraction of this strength for any other national leader from the Hindutva stable. Then what drove people to Modi’s rally? Unlike K.N. Govindacharya or BJP president Rajnath Singh, Modi was never associated with the city and its cultural moorings. Unlike Vajpayee, he is not from a brahmin lineage.
The reason for his success was not far to seek. Fed up with traditional politics of caste and archaic idiom, Modi, rightly or wrongly, comes across as a symbol of hope. Those living in Varanasi have been facing the worst kind of infrastructure crisis in the city. Political rent-seekers have been thriving while concerns of the ordinary citizens are hardly an issue. In an atmosphere of despondency and frustration, Modi emerges in people’s perception as a leader who delivered in Gujarat. And if given a chance, he would do the same for the rest of the country.
Modi seems to be beneficiary of a political windfall because of his carefully cultivated image of a leader not cast in the traditional political mold. But won’t such a scenario change if Kejriwal with his aam aadmi image decided to change the grammar of governance in Delhi? What is particularly significant is the fact that those thronging to Modi’s rallies in large numbers are averse to the Congress and the BJP in equal measure.
This is why Modi’s magic is not expected to work in states like West Bengal and Orrisa where regional leaders have evolved their own powerful paradigm of politics. Similarly, in southern states also, Modi may find it difficult to breach the barrier beyond the Vindhya range. In such a scenario, the nation’s future political course will be largely dependent upon the Kejriwal experiment, which has the potential of redefining not only politics but also statecraft.
- Governance Now
