Grouping Of Kejriwal, Akhilesh, And Mamata: Is It Principled?

If the dissent is not properly articulated, and it only aims to register it for being noticed, it does not help build resistance. The political parties in the opposition are guilty of it. Their politicking during the Delhi elections endorses the allegation of a lack of direction in the opposition camp. How can they justify their alliance with INDIA

This is the time to evoke a couplet of popular Hindi poet Dushyant Kumar in the nineteen seventies and eighties. He calls for a radical change. “Now change the water of this pond; these lotuses are wilting,” he says.

The current Indian politics require a radical change not only in the way it is being pursued but also in its content. Many people hold that ideologies have lost their relevance, and politics is an art of manipulating things to the personal advantage of those who practice it.

They measure the success of a politician by his ability to manage his survival in the manner best suited to his interests. These interests, inevitably, are not limited to politics. They are economic as well. In contemporary India, these interests also involve survival from the onslaughts of the central agencies such as the Income Tax Department, Enforcement Directorate, and the CBI.

The onslaughts have acquired a form typical to an Orwellian world, a world where people’s mandate does not matter at all and could be manipulated as per the wishes of the ruler. The denial from the establishment to acknowledge the dissent is the first sign of the authoritarian regime.

If the dissent is not properly articulated, and it only aims to register it for being noticed, it does not help build resistance. The political parties in the opposition are guilty of it. Their politicking during the Delhi elections endorses the allegation of a lack of direction in the opposition camp. How can they justify their alliance with INDIA?

Many regional parties have come together to decry the Congress as if they are not fighting against the BJP and their principal enemy is the Congress. Is there any ideological basis for parties such as the Samajwadi Party, Trinamool Congress, and the Shiv Sena (Uddhav Thackrey) to come in support of Arvind Kejriwal? No. There is no ideological basis for it. If they are allying merely based on being regional parties, it is not solid ground for joint political activity. The support could have been extended without being too eloquent against the Congress.

An examination of the ideology of the Aam Aadmi Party will surprise us about the validity of its proximity with the Samajwadi Party. Though the SP under the leadership of Akhilesh Yadav is different from what it was under the leadership of his father, Mulayam Singh Yadav. The latter had the legacy of the Socialist Party led by Dr Rammanohar Lohia. Mulayam Singh had a background of fighting for the rights of socially backward people. He had inherited the mission of building a secular, democratic, and just society. It was against centralisation and opposed to any type of dominance.

Akhilesh, in contrast, is a leader who has grown in an environment that is dominated by liberal economic policies. The party has been transforming since the days of Mulayam Singh when Amar Singh was playing a key role in strategising the politics of the party. However, resistance to communalism and advocacy for social justice form the core of the SP’s ideology.

The party’s core voters belong to the poor sections of backward castes and the Muslim community. Its strongholds in Uttar Pradesh have been facing all kinds of atrocities, including the bulldozing of houses. Most of its Muslim leaders have been targets of police and other government agencies. The recent example is of a Samajwadi Party MP being targeted under the Electricity Act.

We witness how mosques in Sambhal are being excavated in the name of a survey. The SP cannot escape from its responsibility of resisting these onslaughts against the minority. Does Kejriwal support the SP on these issues? This is not the case.The Aam Aadmi has a very weak background so far as its secular credentials are concerned. The party has not been opposed to Hindutva. It has only been opposing the BJP or the Congress on the issue of governance.

The party has tacitly been supporting Hindutva by expressing preferences for Hindu rituals. He has been reciting and evoking Hindu deities in public meetings. Is it different from what Prime Minister Modi or Yogi Aditya Nath said? He also did not show any sympathy to the anti-CAA agitators of Shaheen Baugh. He was also conspicuous in his disappearance from the riot-torn sites of Delhi.

He left minorities to face violence.The AAP’s anti-corruption stance also hardly carries any meaning for the Samajwadi Party. The party has not been vocal on this issue. Then, how can they justify their proximity?Similar is the case with the Trinamool Congress. The TMC does not have anything in common with the AAP. Mamata Banerjee has never been an anti-corruption crusader.

The AAP also does not share TMC’s secular politics. His stand on Bangladeshis echoes his pro-Hindutva stance. Like the BJP, he evokes fear of Rohingyas. There is no meeting point for them to come together except for their opposition to the centralizing and anti-federal position of the Modi government.The Shiv Sena (Uddhav Thackrey)’s support for the AAP has certainly Hindutva as the basis of their meeting point. However, Shiv Sena’s main agenda of promoting Marathi identity hardly has to do anything with Kejriwal’s ideology.

Though Kejriwal has been trying to promote some kind of provincialism among the Delhi people, he is hardly gaining any support. Delhi has been cosmopolitan in its character since its inception. It was a center of learning during the Muslim rule, and people as far away as Persia, the Middle East, and Central Asia were flocking to the city in search of lucrative careers. Like Mumbai, Delhi is the city for all of the Indians.

Shiv Sena’s Marathi identity and Kejriwal’s provincialism cannot converse.Then, how should one analyze the AAP-centric grouping in the INDIA alliance? The grouping could be seen as the revival of anti-Congress posturing by regional parties. Is this principled politics or absolute escapism?

(The author is a senior journalist. He has experience of working with leading newspapers and electronic media including Deccan Herald, Sunday Guardian, Navbharat Times and Dainik Bhaskar. He writes on politics, society, environment and economy)