Kejriwal stop! How the aam aadmi is forcing a truce in the AAP war

Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal can learn from a memorable scene in Vishal Bhardwaj’s Maqbool. In that film, Pankaj Kapoor (Abbaji) gets irriated by a politician, thrusts a paan into his mouth and menacingly tells him, “Gilori khaya karo, Gulfaam, zubaan kaboo mein rehti hai.”

Chewing too much betel leaves (gilori) could be injurious to health. But there is certainly some merit in the other suggestion: a politician should think before he speaks, especially in public.

Or he’d be forced to eat his own words, like Kejriwal.

From calling the desire for nationwide expansion a reflection of the hubris (ahankar) of some of his colleagues, Kejriwal has made a quick turnaround by saying that the AAP will now contest elections in other states.

At a meeting of the truncated political affairs committee of the party on Tuesday night (March 16), Kejriwal and his coterie decided to contest elections “wherever the organisation is strong.”

If the earlier resolve was rooted in ahankar, the decision to go national is a sign that bloated egos in the AAP have been deflated. The oligarchy in the AAP has realised that volunteers also have a voice in decision- making; ignoring them would have been suicidal for both Kejriwal and his party.

Kejriwal’s climb-down from the high horse he had mounted at the Ramlila Maidan, when he publicly rebuked those advocating the party’s expansion, is not insignificant. Headstrong, impatient politicians like Kejriwal generally do not reverse decisions they announce publicly unless a volte-face becomes inevitable. The alacrity with which Kejriwal has swallowed his pride and words shows the pressure from the grassroot workers must have been immense and irresistible.   This is a rare instance of internal democracy performing a bloodless coup against an evolving dictatorship.

Kejriwal’s unilateral decision to focus on Delhi was flawed from the very beginning. By vetoing future electoral battles, Kejriwal had ignored the cardinal rule of political warfare: you do not put together an army of volunteers and workers only to disband or send it back to the barracks.

During the Delhi election, volunteers from across India—and from many other countries—had participated in the campaign with the hope that this was the beginning of the war against established political parties and prevailing systems. Imagine their consternation and frustration then when Kejriwal announced soon after the Delhi win that the war was over and everybody could go back home. What were the volunteers and workers, for instance, in Mumbai expected to do: go back to their pre-AAP lives and wait for the next round in Delhi?

Kejriwal had, in fact, ignored the basic principle of Indian politics: a party can’t survive unless it agrees to share the benefits of power right down to the grassroot level. To ensure loyalty and participation, parties have to devolve power and delegate responsibilities; they have to be built right from the bottom. But Kejriwal was trying create a crony-heavy pyramid without a base. One of the reasons why Yogendra Yadav and Prashant Bhushan were able to muster the support of a large number of party volunteers and state units (like Rajasthan, where the office-bearers had passed a resolution supporting them) was that they were seen advocating expansion and autonomy to state units. In Maharashtra, Karnataka and Punjab too, many local leaders were keen that the party consider Yadav’s argument.

Volunteers and leaders in these units, who had bravely battled on for the party with the hope that their state’s turn would be next, were dismayed when Kejriwal did not even bother to seek their opinion. For a party founded on the principle of ‘Swaraj’, a leader who had sought the opinion of voters (even if it was a farce) before forming the government in Delhi in 2013, the decision taken behind closed doors was an unmitigated disaster.

In the end, Kejriwal has taken the right decision, but only after an acrimonious war with dissenters like Yadav and threats of rebellion from the state units.

If only he had listened to party workers before shooting from the lip in public. Or, being a film aficionado, remembered those famous lines from Maqbool.