A month after it stormed to power in Delhi, the Aam Aadmi Party has tarnished its image by taking three false steps. First, its law minister Somnath Bharti and women and child welfare minister Rakhi Birla indulged in obnoxious vigilantism. Second, the AAP’s top leadership, including Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal, defended them and publicly commended Bharti’s actions.
Third, the AAP’s official Hindi organ recorded on its website “shortlisting of Bangladeshi infiltrators” as one of the 15 achievements of its government. This was disturbingly reminiscent of the Hindutva forces’ past attempts to illegally expel Bengali-speakers by branding them Bangladeshis.
The touting of this ‘achievement’ greatly embarrassed some AAP leaders and the e-magazine was eventually withdrawn. But the offending sentence showed that communal prejudice and xenophobia are alive in the party’s ranks; their votaries have no qualms about using words like ‘infiltrator’, which suggest dark intent to ‘subvert the nation’.
Public attention was diverted from the first misstep by the Rail Bhavan dharna – which provoked charges of ‘anarchism’. But the AAP should not be faulted for occupying a visible public space in central Delhi, as distinct from tiny Jantar Mantar, where protests are confined and made invisible, unlike in any other democracy. Nor should its demand for making Delhi’s police accountable to its elected government be dismissed. This isn’t enough: the crucial issue is police reform, and how the force should be used.
The AAP’s real culpability lies elsewhere: most gravely, in Bharti’s attempt to bully the police to arrest four African women in Khirkee village, alleged by their hostile neighbours to be involved in drug-peddling and prostitution, without evidence.
When the police rightly refused, citing lack of a warrant, and the rule that no woman be arrested after sunset, a rowdy mob surrounded the women. They were racially profiled, abused, manhandled and subjected to humiliating medical tests. Videos show Bharti saying the Africans “are not like us”, inciting the mob, and insulting policemen.
Nine women’s organisations condemned Bharti for racism, xenophobia, male-supremacism, and human rights violations. He was cynically trying to exploit the prejudice in India against Africans because of the colour of their skin.
Medical tests showed the harassed women hadn’t consumed drugs. This made the injustice more egregious. Such treatment of Africans reveals a lack of civility and respect for natural justice. Africans living in Khirkee are routinely pelted with pebbles, and subjected to humiliating taunts.
If AAP leaders had any civility, they would have deplored Bharti’s actions and sacked him from the cabinet pending the results of inquiries against him by a judge and the Delhi Commission for Women. But they backed him and staged a dharna against police “insubordination”. This ended with the wrongful transfer of two officers.
The AAP beat a retreat, like any other party, for political reasons, but called it a “victory”. AAP leaders have since practised the tactics of denial and prevarication typical of political parties.
Kejriwal displayed crass gender illiteracy in saying that “rape tendencies arise out of” sex, prostitution and “drug rackets”. This shows a failure to grasp that rape has little to with sex, and even less with drugs. It’s about subjugating women in a patriarchal society. Kejriwal’s remarks are far worse than the comments of policemen and politicians who attribute rapes to women’s ‘provocative’ attire or their outdoor presence at night!
AAP leaders equate good policing with control of the police by ‘the local people’ through mohalla and village committees. The AAP’s vision document wants police stations to be “directly accountable to” mohalla sabhas – never mind rule of law, proper procedures, and giving accused persons the right of legal defence.
They obviously haven’t heard of Dr Ambedkar’s warning that the village and the mohalla are the worst repositories of casteism, patriarchy and parochial prejudice; excessive powers for village committees in the absence of structural social change and anti-caste reform would produce greater Dalit enslavement.
There is only a thin line of demarcation between mohalla-based democracy and majoritarianism. If a majority is allowed to summarily punish anyone who is different or ‘deviant’ in defying ‘customs’, it will act exactly like khap (clan) panchayats. Brute majorities can do terrible things – including mass killings.
The concept at work here is ‘the people’ as an undifferentiated, homogenous entity, with equal distribution of power, and without divisions along class, caste, religion, gender and ethnic lines. This is a dangerous myth. As is the AAP’s woolly notion of the aam aadmi, which includes everyone from the ‘honest’ billionaire, through the schoolteacher, to the pauper.
‘The people’ defined thus can be manipulated by dominant classes to collectively oppress minorities. Blinded by prejudice and narrow self-interest, they can exercise power untrammelled by law, ethics or compassion – with horrendous consequences.
What we need is not ‘people’, but citizens committed to universal values of democracy, who give primacy to marginalised and excluded groups within a common project to build a better, more humane, more equal and compassionate society. Such citizens alone are true agents of progressive change.
The AAP lacks this vision. Its dogmatic, a priori rejection of ideology and any broad programmatic perspective deprives its ‘solutions-based’ approach of the moral compass necessary to judge what’s in the public interest.
Unless the party acknowledges its blunders and corrects course, it will betray its promise of providing an alternative to the Congress and the Bharatiya Janata Party. The AAP is young and still evolving. So it would be wrong to judge it harshly. But its missteps and leadership divisions shouldn’t be ignored.
Some AAP leaders, perhaps a majority at the top, are conservatively inclined. They want the party to focus primarily on the upper-middle and middle classes and adopt right-of-centre policies in line with pressure from the corporate-controlled media.
On the other hand, a number of well-regarded left-wing individuals have joined the AAP because they believe that the AAP, not the Congress, can effectively impede Narendra Modi’s bid for power by taking votes away from the BJP.
But the AAP has a long way to go. A CSDS-Lokniti-CNN-IBN poll estimates its national vote-share at just four percent and its likely Lok Sabha seat-tally at 6-12. The vote-share will probably grow because the party is recruiting hundreds of thousands of members. But to make a real impact, the AAP’s growth would have to be backed by left-of-centre, staunchly pro-poor, policies.
It would make good practical sense too for the AAP to fill the left-of-centre space which is opening up as the BJP and the Congress move rightwards. This space is likely to be partially vacated by the traditional Left parties. The CSDS poll gives the Left just 15-23 Lok Sabha seats in place of the present 24.
How the AAP makes its policy choices is an open question. The composition of its economic policy team, with an over-representation of pro-business individuals, doesn’t inspire much confidence. The party should not accept its report without broad-based consultations and thorough debate.
If the AAP wants to put up a spirited fight against Modi, it must take a clear stand against Hindutva and also adopt an economic agenda that provides an alternative to his neoliberal policies. Modi personifies three extremely negative traits: raw corporate power, virulent Hindutva, and authoritarian cult-based politics.
Defeating Modi is a high priority for those committed to defending India’s democracy. It’s not clear if the AAP can rise to that challenge.
The writer, a former newspaper editor, is a researcher and rights activist based in Delhi. Email: prafulbidwai1@yahoo.co.in
Praful Bidwai, "Aam Aadmi’s missteps," The News. 2014-02-02.Keywords: Political science , Political issues , Political parties , Economic policy , Politicians , Accountability , Democracy , Dr Ambedkar , CM Arvind Kejriwal , Bangladesh , India , AAPs , CSDS