AAP and Muslims: How Kejriwal & Co took their biggest cheerleaders for a ride

Imagine a group of confused travellers stranded at a crossroads and hard put to decide which road to take — not because they don’t know where these lead to but because they have tried them all and found they all end up at the same place. A similar dilemma is facing Indian Muslims stranded at a crossroads in search of a new political home after dumping the Congress, accusing it of betraying their trust and using them as a proxy in its battles with its rivals, especially the BJP. And they have been through a steep learning curve having gone round the full “secular” circuit — SP, BSP, myriad versions of Janata Dal, the various permutations and combinations of anti-BJP alliances, and of course the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), once the darling of metropolitan liberals. [caption id=“attachment_10686491” align=“alignnone” width=“640”]  Indian Muslims are no longer in charm of AAP. ANI[/caption] They found that all were (rather are) pale imitations of the Congress — interested only in their votes and their usefulness as election fodder and a stick to beat the BJP with. The biggest disappointment has been AAP. The disappointment is greater because it emerged on the back of high expectations generated by its bombastic claims — presenting itself as a messiah of disadvantaged and minority groups irrespective of their caste or religion. An “Aam Aadmi Ki Party” with a progressive agenda. It appealed to Muslim voters by reminding them how the Congress and other centrist “secular” parties had let them down. I remember its volunteers knocking on Muslim doors in the lanes and bylanes of Old Delhi and telling them: “Aapne Sab ko try kar liya hai, ab ham ko bhi ek mauqa deejiye” (You have tried others, now give us a chance). Its old-style personalised campaign addressing local Muslim elders by their names and the presence of many young Muslims among the campaigners impressed the community. And it voted for the AAP with its feet in Delhi Assembly elections — not once, not twice, but three times. The AAP will not acknowledge this, but the truth is without full-throated Muslim support it would have struggled to take on the might of the BJP’s clinical election machine. But the honeymoon didn’t last long as Muslims discovered that the AAP was just one more self-serving wolf in a secular sheep’s clothes. Except that it was even more deceptive: While other parties are forthright in not just stating but flaunting their political line, the AAP is a master of dissimulation in this respect. Although officially it describes its politics as “Centre to Centre Left”, its ideological framework — to the extent there is one — is in fact so unashamedly free-wheeling that Arvind Kejriwal and his comrades are able to bend it to suit any situation they wish without blinking an eyelid. As its one-time rising star and failed parliamentary candidate, Ashutosh, wrote recently (“AAP has appropriated Bhagat Singh without understanding him” The Indian Express, 25 April 2022), AAP is “driven by political expediency not ideology.”

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“AAP, in its imagined political laboratory, has created a strange, ideological cocktail which is led more by electoral expediency than ideological purity,” he wrote, saying it was prepared to do anything to get votes. He described it as “a party devoid of any ideological framework to guide its thought process and functioning” and willing “to plunge into any political abyss to save its regime”. “If calling (Indian Muslims) Bangladeshis and Rohingyas fetches them more votes, so be it.” Here’s some more from his scathing criticism of his former party: “The AAP borrows ideas without reading the content. There was a time when Mahatma Gandhi was the icon of the party. But Gandhi was replaced by Bhagat Singh and Babasaheb Ambedkar. It seems the AAP has realised that Gandhi no longer fetches vote.” This is how shape-shifting the AAP’s politics is. And here we have a confirmation almost straight from the horse’s mouth. For, remember Ashutosh is an insider’s insider (or was), a former member of Kejriwal’s kitchen cabinet. He knows where the bodies are buried. But he is not the only one who got quickly disillusioned with the party’s political expediency and disgusted by Kejriwal’s autocratic style. There’s a long list of its founder members who concluded they had enough of it and got out. Remember Yogendra Yadav, Prashant Bhushan, Shazia Ilmi? And this is what Anna Hazare, whose anti-corruption movement Kejriwal hijacked to launch himself into politics, once said about him: “I hope no Kejriwal comes out of my movement again.” The party’s claim to fame was that it was committed to rooting out corruption, defenestrating criminals who have infiltrated politics, and fighting caste-ism and communalism. But, instead, it has been dogged by allegations of corruption itself — most recently over the distribution of party tickets for the Punjab Assembly elections. It was accused of “selling ticket” to rich and influential leaders who defected to it from rival parties. Similar allegations were made against it during the 2017 Punjab elections. Its record on defenestrating criminals is even more dismal. Many of its MLAs in Delhi are alleged to have a shady background and some are facing cases over their purported role in communal riots in the capital. And instead of challenging the allegations, the AAP has promptly disowned them admitting no responsibility for recruiting them — a classic case of using unsavoury elements to get votes and then dumping them when they risk becoming a liability. Its Okhla MLA Amanatullah Khan has been declared a history-sheeter and “bad character” facing serious cases, such as land-grabbing and assault. Another AAP activist — its former MLA Tahir Hussain — is facing allegations of conspiring to instigate violence that took place in Chand Bagh and Jaffrabad during the Delhi riots in February 2020. Its activists were also accused of role in recent Jahangirpuri clashes. So, how did such characters manage to find starring roles in a party which ostensibly came to clean up politics? Its intentions under its more idealistic founder members may have been honourable, but as they drifted away (effectively pushed out by a street smart Kejriwal and his coterie), the party dispensed with whatever might have been its founding principles — replacing them with a knuckle-duster strategy to get into power at all costs. Damn the means. And winning over minority voters, particularly Muslims looking for a political home after deserting the Congress, was critical to the success of the project. Here, Kejriwal went straight for the Congress/SP/Janata “tickets-for-votes” playbook: Picking local Muslim thugs masquerading as community leaders to get out the Muslim vote in return for party ticket, and other forms of overt and covert patronage. These self-appointed middlemen used their muscle and money power to coax Muslims into voting for AAP — promising them all sorts of favours if they won. In the end, in a replay of the Congress era, no benefits accrued to the Muslim community at large; instead, they became pawns in a larger game of electoral politics between the so-called “secular” and “communal” forces. No wonder, disillusionment with it sets in quickly and relations go sour. But tensions really exploded into the open when Kejriwal pointedly sought to distance himself and his party from Muslims — first during the Shaheen Bagh protests against the controversial citizenship law, and later when they were targeted by far-right Hindu nationalist groups. AAP leaders went to some lengths not to be seen as “pro-Muslim”. And this from a party which owed its massive mandate to the Muslim support. Muslims call it the AAP’s “Narasimha Rao-Ayodhya moment” when the then Congress prime minister defended himself against criticism that he didn’t do anything to stop the demolition of the Babri Masjid, saying that “non-action is also action”. “The AAP used the widely known fact that Delhi Police is controlled by the Union home ministry as an alibi for the silence of its chief minister. But the party ignored the fact that what Kejriwal was being asked to do was not to direct the police …but to take a stand as a leader and tell the people of Delhi what was right and what was wrong,” wrote poet Hussain Haidry and journalist Alishan Jafri in a joint article adding: “It was AAP which started the witch-hunt of Tablighi Jamaat by feeding the Islamophobic media narrative around Covid-19… not (Yogi) Adityanath.” Some of its statements and actions were flagged up even by the Delhi Minorities Commission. For all its sins, the Congress — Muslims say — didn’t at least feel embarrassed being seen with Muslims. That the AAP has “out-Congressed” the Congress in letting down its biggest cheerleaders says something about its cynical and obsessively self-centred politics. Ideology? Principles? Loyalty? What’s that? The author is an independent commentator. Views expressed are personal. Read all the Latest News , Trending News ,  Cricket News , Bollywood News , India News and Entertainment News here. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.