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AAP, Aapponents And Apne Aap

By Satya Sagar

28 February, 2014
Countercurrents.org

There is probably no other new political formation in modern Indian history that has managed to offer so much hope and also upset so many people in as short a time as the Aam Aadmi Party.

On one hand the party is steadily expanding across the country, managing to get well-known social movement activists and leaders on board as its candidates for the next general elections. From Medha Patkar and Dayamani Barla to Soni Sori and S.P.Udayakumar a remarkable set of people, long involved in mobilising people for their rights, are entering the electoral arena for the first time through AAP.

AAP is also steadily changing the political discourse in the country with its focus on corruption, improved governance and decentralised democracy. Even rival parties are rushing to imitate, adopt or at least pay lip service to the party’s policies showing the power of their ideas and the chord these have struck with the general public.

On the other hand the mainstream media and political establishment, the loony right, sections of the left and sundry others have launched vicious attacks on the fledgling formation. ‘Anarchists’, ‘mad fellows’, ‘amateurs’, ‘vigilantes’, ‘racists’ and even ‘misogynists’ are among the many extreme charges laid against a party that is barely a year old and was in power in just one state of the Indian Republic for just 49 days.

And the flak, mind you, has not been confined to mere statements or verbal abuse, with the number of physical attacks on AAP workers increasing by the day, including the vandalising on Delhi CM Arvind Kejriwal’s office by an extremist Hindu outfit. In Mumbai the AAP office was vandalised by the NCP after the former charged NCP leader Ajit Pawar of being corrupt while in Amethi Congress goons beat up an AAP election campaign team for criticising Rahul Gandhi.

Much of the backlash AAP faces though should not come as a big surprise at all. You don’t come out of nowhere, take on a slew of vested interests at once, win key battles and not expect any reactions. Even if the movement has not yet reached the depth required to bring lasting social transformations AAP has successfully managed to take the lid off the toxic confluence of corporate and feudal interests that runs the country today.

This is not to say AAP is above criticism or to justify anything wrong its leaders and activists may have done in the past few months. If they have committed mistakes they should definitely make amends and if they think they are wrongly accused they should make the effort to explain their positions clearly to the public. With its promise of cleaning up and raising the standards of current day politics AAP should respond to criticism positively and indeed how they deal with their critics will really reveal the long-term political culture they nurture.

However, not all the criticism is credible or well-motivated and often tends to lazily draw very large conclusions from specific incidents that may or may not define the party and its politics. Either threatened by its success of piqued by its audacity AAP’s opponents are often making scurrilous charges based on one-off events and are desperately trying to run it down at any cost.

The Hindu Right for example, is feeling the heat from AAP’s meteorical political rise and responding in the only way they know- through raw violence on the streets and the choicests expletives on social media- perhaps showcasing the ‘ancient cultural heritage’ they claim to be so proud of.

The BJP in particular is very upset at the way by AAP has stolen its ‘nationalist’ thunder by waving the Indian flag and chanting ‘Vande Mataram’ while attracting youth throughout the country. While how much of a threat AAP poses electorally to the BJP is still an open question it has certainly swung towards itself a lot of the anti-Congress sentiment that the latter monopolised for long in many parts of northern India, with long-term political implications.

BJP spokespersons from Arun Jaitley to Nitin Gadkari have repeatedly referred to AAP as a party of ‘urban naxals’, which in their vocabulary may be an abusive term but for others could be a compliment of sorts. AAP is threatening the overall system in ways that the naxalite movement wanted to but never managed to do by shaking up the cartelised electoral façade, exposing corruption at the highest levels and championing public say in governance.

However, it is not as if AAP has endeared itself to some sections of leftists either, who see it suspiciously as an upstart, with a very narrow understanding of ‘corruption’ and trying to patch up the deeper structural class and caste inequities that mark Indian realities. They are terribly upset for example that AAP does not seek to ‘overthrow capitalism’ (whatever that means in radical parlance these days) and instead confines itself to attacking ‘crony capitalism’ (as if this were a very small task!).

Instead of encouraging a new political outfit that has so forcefully brought the nexus between business and politics to public attention through the exposure of the Reliance Industries sweet deal on gas pricing they are being critiqued for not having a ‘maximum program’ of overthrowing capitalism! If AAP had openly declared itself to be ‘anti-capitalist’ they would have perhaps been taken to task for not calling themselves ‘anti-imperialist’ or declaring war against global warming too!

What is really frustrating a lot of leftists, for long mired in polemical debate more than mass movements anywhere, is their own inability to ideologically pin down this novel and slippery creature called AAP. The reasoning they operate with while analysing AAP seems to be ‘if they are not exactly like us then they are surely part of them!’
Some left anti-communalism activists, worried about the possibility of Narendra Modi becoming the next Prime Minister, are charging AAP with, serving to split the ‘secular vote’and thus helping the BJP! There is even an appeal by a group of secularists exhorting progressive individuals not to join AAP at all as this, according to their extremely sectarian logic, will only push those with right wing inclinations in the AAP to leave the party and join the BJP thereby strengthening Hindutva fascism!! By that logic the secularists themselves should go into hiding as their open activities may push a lot of Indians into the fold of the communalists!

However, for all the fulminations by both Right and Left against AAP the political formation that is immediately threatened the most by its rise is no doubt the Congress. The long term danger to the Congress from AAP lies in its taking over the centrist space in the country that the former has long occupied and benefited from.

AAP (with many obvious differences of course) is broadly the same kind of platform (‘Shivji ki baraat’ as Arvind Kejriwal puts it) that emerged during the freedom movement against British colonialism, attracting forces from across the political spectrum for a common cause. Being a broad united front of different forces is AAP’s biggest strength too and one that its leadership seems to be aware of and is consciously cultivating.

While all these attacks from the usual suspects of Indian politics can be seen as a compliment and a sign the party is hurting the status quo somewhere it is also true that criticism is coming from some of its own party members and well-wishers. The reasons for criticism, given the diversity of AAP’s supporters, are obviously very varied and related to questions of principles, due process and even ethics of the movement.

For some it was the alleged ‘racism and vigilantism’ on display by AAP Law Minister Somnath Bharti and his followers against Ugandan women in a south Delhi locality. Yet others are upset at the same Arvind Kejriwal for refusing to back up party leader Prashant Bhushan when he recently made a sensible statement on the need for popular consultation in Kashmir to decide the role of the Indian army there. After all if participatory democracy is what is at the core of AAP’s philosophy of ‘swaraj’, why deny Kashmiris their due share?

The headlong and seemingly hasty plunge into contesting the upcoming Lok Sabha polls, while giving up power in Delhi, also has sympathisers of AAP charging it with trying to do too much, too fast and making needless compromises as a consequence. Compromises, which include ignoring procedures for selection of election candidates in some places, lack of sufficient consultation within the party on various issues and neglecting the needs of organisation building to ensure long-term survival.

There is no doubt in my mind at all that the AAP leadership and all its members should certainly reflect on many of these criticisms and make course corrections if needed. Instead of adopting an ad hoc approach there is a need for consensus within the organisation on the details of the participatory democracy it champions and specific issues related to class, caste, gender and communalism.

More urgently, AAP also needs to figure out quickly how to engage thousands of its supporters and members who are not keen on electoral politics but would still like to contribute directly to solving the various problems plaguing Indian society. These are people who have a lot to offer but will not hang around the party indefinitely waiting if nothing is done soon to involve them in regular work.

It could be an ‘Apne Aap’ initiative of sorts- small bands of people getting together to do interventions on seemingly mundane but essential themes in the daily life of the country’s aam aadmi. For example, whether it be issues of health and education or environment and gender there are hundreds of things that many AAP members and supporters can be mobilised to do, in the process creating a constructive force for long-term national transformation. Such routine and constructive work undertaken with public participation can also help sort out those who are serious about social and political change from those who have jumped on to the AAP’s electoral bandwagon for other reasons.

Indeed the key to AAP’s future may well lie in how creatively it handles the conflicting tasks of building a movement and being a political party at the same time, while sticking to the principles that have attracted the kind of support it has got today from the people of India today.

Satya Sagar is a writer and public health activist based in Santiniketan, West Bengal. He can be reached at [email protected]

 



 

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