Slap dash AAP: Kejriwal must get over his thappad problem

“Yogendra Yadav is my elder brother, he can scold me and slap me if I get off track. I am human and can make mistakes,” says Arvind Kejriwal.

Kejriwal seems to have swapped his topi for sackcloth and ashes and taken on the role of the nation’s penitent-in-chief.

While the Congress assumes “collective responsibility” for its electoral disaster to shield the Gandhis from any blame, Kejriwal has sought to embrace failure head on. But then AAP is a party that always made transparency its USP. So it’s no great surprise that Kejriwal will wear his emotions on his sleeve right now as well.

Also the party seemed to be on the verge of coming apart at the seams. And Kejriwal needed to step up to the plate to contain the damage which is especially devastating for a party that is so dependent on volunteer energy.

When most of AAP’s stars had come together on stage in Varanasi on the penultimate day of the Lok Sabha campaign, the crowds had gone click-happy trying to capture that moment as a sort of triumphant climax of the electoral campaign. But at that time too, I had written, there was a So Long Farewell quality to that image as if it was marking an ending rather than the triumphant beginning of a new chapter and the days since the Lok Sabha results seemed to underscore that.

Some of its leading lights like Shazia Ilmi, Captain Gopinath, Anjali Damania tendered their resignations. Yogendra Yadav stepped down from its Political Affairs Committee. And contrary to its earlier public face of bonhomie and brotherhood, Yadav and Manish Sisodia were openly sniping at each other.

After its very high profile losses in the election, AAP’s consolation was always that people still had high regard for AAP’s integrity as a party. The narrative pretty much has become if only AAP had not quit the Delhi government prematurely Lok Sabha 2014 would have been a different story altogether. Even in Delhi, AAP supporters pointed out that the party didn’t win any seats but its vote share did increase at the expense of the routed Congress.

Delhi, of course, did play a huge role in misgivings about AAP. The BJP played that to the hilt with Modi-supporters showing up at AAP rallies in Varanasi to chant Bhagoda (runaway). But Delhi was not the only cause for AAP’s drubbing. It was more a symptom of the problem — Exhibit 1 as it were. The larger problem was there was a certain kind of buyer’s remorse of having gone for the largely untested party in order to teach the Sheila Dikshit government a lesson. AAP’s bigger image problem is doubts about whether it is a party that is too self-righteous to deliver governance. The Delhi resignation was for many proof of that larger suspicion. That could be more damaging to the party in the long run as it seeks to regroup.

And that’s something Kejriwal still does not quite get. There is a perception out there that in rough hurly burly of Indian politics AAP is not enough of a fighter. That is the dragon that Kejriwal and his knights have to slay. He has to understand that for too many who voted for him, the Janlokpal bill was a means to the end, not an end in itself. As a shopkeeper waiting for Rajmohan Gandhi and Kejriwal in Delhi said, “Didn’t Delhi have other problems that needed solving?”

AAP has to realise it is a political party who has to sell itself to the people as a party that can get things done. Turning the other cheek would work if it could demonstrate that it yields results. The stoic Gandhian resolve works well when it is exercised by activists standing in rising waters as they protest a dam. But in AAP’s case it backfired. The first slap might have worked to get the party some sympathy but then headlines like “Arvind Kejriwal slapped again” actually made him more of a target for ridicule. “What kind of leader is this Kejriwal who keeps getting slapped around?” asked an Amethi storeowner wonderingly.

He said “I feel taras for AAP”. But sympathy and pity do not translate into votes and respect. We have come a long way from Gandhi. And AAP’s never ending moral high ground started looking like weakness rather than the inner resolve and fortitude it wanted to project. In many places across India, Kejriwal’s gesture of showing up at his assailant’s home with flowers was more baffling than admirable.

In that scenario, Kejriwal’s openness to being slapped by Yogendra Yadav, even figuratively, actually backfires on him. It brings back memories of a politician who has had not just slaps directed his way but also mobil oil, ink and even an egg. And it wasn’t just the goons of a rival political party attacking him. Lali who slapped him in Sultanpuri in northwest Delhi was an auto rickshaw driver. It’s one thing for Kejriwal to be open to that kind of rebuke from a pater familias figure like Anna Hazare but a colleague, even a respected colleague like Yogendra Yadav does not warrant that kind of masochistic soap-opera humility.

In this election Narendra Modi bulldozed the opposition by projecting himself as this larger-than-life tough guy leader. Kejriwal had tried to be the David to his Goliath. And while that did not end well for him, what AAP has going for it is pluck. If it loses that, it quickly becomes a party of whiners. AAP was supposed to put the fear of God in corrupt politicians, not panhandle for sympathy votes. During the campaign it was clear that the voters like a certain degree of toughness in their leaders. One complaint heard against Akhilesh over and over again in UP was that he allowed his uncles and Azam Khan to boss him around. Even those who disliked Mayawati said wistfully that at least when she was CM you knew who was boss. People are electing leaders not friends. They want someone who they think cannot be pushed around.

It is one thing to admit a mistake and say sorry. That does not come easily to anyone leave alone a politician. And that is admirable. But it’s quite another thing to go around living up to the reputation that AAP is a party that literally gets slapped around. And Kejriwal is doing himself, and his party, no favours by reminding everyone of that. A slap this time saves noone.