The Story of a Missed Call

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AAP has a more humanist agenda – education, healthcare -- than pure polarization agenda of its main adversary. This has been well received by the voters. But did AAP succeed in shifting the ideological spectrum of Delhi’s politics to the centre? Did AAP succeed in bringing in a more Constitutional narrative and therefore a more emotionally mature narrative into the electoral discourse?

Aam Aadmi Party swept Delhi. For a moment I felt as if Indian politics had given a missed call to the missed call party.

How does one interpret these results? Can polarization fail in a fundamentalist nation like India to such an extent that the National Capital Region jointly ruled by the BJP and the AAP can slip away from the hands of the powerful BJP? What is the possibility that AAP can attain similar results across other states? These are but natural questions to ask.

AAP has a more humanist agenda – education, healthcare -- than pure polarization agenda of its main adversary. This has been well received by the voters. But did AAP succeed in shifting the ideological spectrum of Delhi’s politics to the centre? Did AAP succeed in bringing in a more Constitutional narrative and therefore a more emotionally mature narrative into the electoral discourse? The answer to both these questions has to be in the negative. Kejriwal summoned Hanuman and Christ and every other God in the Indian skies to his electoral propaganda. Even his slogans like Vande Mataram and Bharat Mata ki Jai were borrowed from the BJP RSS.  Then why did he get the minority vote? My view is that the Muslims are so scared about the clear and present danger to their institutions and indeed to their very existence that they did not bother about the Vande Mataram they once opposed. They did not mind the soft, humanist Hindutva of Kejriwal – and they decided to vote without exception for the AAP.

I would say that had Kejriwal fought the polarization that BJP brought in head on, he could not have won. This would mean that the agenda of polarization does appeal even now to the middle class, well heeled, Hindu voter of Delhi and therefore, perhaps, the nouveau riche voter of the majority community of the entire nation. I say nouveau riche taking from the fact that Delhi is a sample of such voters.

Congress lost completely in the entire scenario despite the fact that it remains the only national party to have contested Delhi elections that can bring in an effective ideological shift to a more Constitutional position, thereby also bringing about an emotional shift in the Indian society to more compassionate and empathetic position vis a vis the disadvantaged sections – even at the national level. This feat is  something that the AAP cannot achieve. Despite this, the minorities saw AAP as the local quick fix to the programmatic anticonstitutionalism of the BJP. So did the poverty stricken Hindus in need of jobs and education.

One lesson that the weaker sections of Indian society can take from the approach of Muslim voter of Delhi is to stand solidly and unequivocally behind the party that promises to bring about a humane, emotionally and ideologically mature, Constitutional spectral change in the politics of this country. Don’t throw your votes to any party that has an anti constitutional program.