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The atmosphere was carnival-like yesterday around Kalibari temple, near Gole Market, in the heart of Arvind Kejriwal’s New Delhi constituency. The ability of the Aam Aadmi Party’s volunteers to mount a vibrant show of strength on an urban street, apparent in Delhi 2013, in Varanasi 2014, and now in Delhi 2015, was on full display on the last day of the campaign. There must have been nervousness over opinion polls predicting a nail-bitingly close contest for the Delhi Assembly between AAP and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), but it was not visible among the cheeky volunteers distributing pamphlets saying “15 ko shapath” (oath taking on February 15). Nor could you detect anxiety on the face of Kejriwal, who suddenly appeared at Kalibari and theatrically sent a cluster of blue gas balloons soaring into the sky against the background music of “Dilli mange, dil se”. In the middle of this melee stood a youth in a sweatshirt that caught the eye for its off-beat message. This was not the ubiquitous Panch Saal Kejriwal, but: “The curious case of Mufflerman”.
At the end of a rollercoaster election campaign, the case of Mufflerman, aka Arvind Kejriwal, is curious indeed. Watching him on the stump, and on television, it has been hard to remember that this was a man who, at the peak of the anti-corruption movement, fired verbal bullets like: “All politicians are thieves, throw them to the vultures”, “If the Lok Pal bill was passed, half of the MPs would go to jail” and even “All judges are corrupt”. This was not just the calculated rudeness of a self-appointed truth-teller to the powerful. In 2011, in a perceptive profile of Kejriwal in Caravan magazine, Mehboob Jilani wrote: “When he talks strategy with his staff, he refers often to Gandhi’s mobilisation tactics and the need for self-restraint. But when he’s in front of a camera, Kejriwal has a hard time restraining his own flair for provocation.”
But the Delhi campaign of 2014-2015 unveiled a Kejriwal who had finally mastered that difficult art: self-restraint. Leading AAP’s strategy of projecting itself afresh as a virtuous standard-bearer of “positive” messages to the electorate, he stayed on-message even as the rival campaign grew more ferocious by the day, with the Prime Minister himself wading in to call Kejriwal names. In 2013, AAP was far from subtle in its invective against Sheila Dikshit, and in the 2014 Lok Sabha election, the attention-seeking gadfly on the national stage impudently dubbed Narendra Modi a “chaiwala” roaming around on Mukesh Ambani’s planes. But this campaign has instead seen Rahul Gandhi striving for attention by portraying Modi as a plutocrat in “10 lakh rupee suits”, and Kejriwal reserving his salty jibes, not for the personal attributes of Modi, or his ministers, but the new government’s performance.
In its initial response to the surprise announcement of Kiran Bedi as the BJP’s chief ministerial candidate, AAP no doubt sent out autos bearing posters calling her an avsarvadi (opportunist), but what remained in the public mind, in the end, was Kejriwal’s tongue in cheek, subtly patronizing characterization of her as “a nice woman in the wrong party”. In the run-up to polling day, the enfant terrible of Indian politics was being challenged on the Rs 2 crore-“midnight” donation saga, and was typically taking the war into the enemy camp with a defiant “arrest me”. Even so, he seemed to have erased much of his old “if you’re not for us, you’re against us” stance from his TV persona, as he smoothly shared the screen with a celebrity journalist that a prickly AAP had once dubbed an enemy of “the cause”, transmitted teasing jocularity to anchors, and injured decency to the public, listing the insults the BJP had flung at him.
At the end of the campaign, it is also striking how differently Kejirwal has handled the messy issue of his resignation, last year, as Delhi chief minister this time around. As one followed AAP’s Delhi candidates around in April and May 2014, it was hard to miss the anger and confusion, even in the modest lanes and bylanes of old Delhi, at Kejriwal’s abrupt resignation, and the BJP’s skill in crystallising this sentiment in one word: bhagora (deserter). But AAP’s star campaigners, Kejriwal included, appeared oblivious to the rage, as they took a self-righteous position on his resignation, with frequent references to the Jan Lok Pal Bill.
In Varanasi, they thundered from the stage at the Beniya Bagh Maidan, “Kejriwal has kicked his chair away for a principle”, and even projected him as a fakir who owned just three shirts. In his fresh bid for chair that he “kicked” away, Kejriwal has largely junked the moral high ground for the simple, uncluttered message: “Sorry we got it wrong.”
Moving among voters in New Delhi yesterday, it seemed it had played well among poor and the lower middle class voters, even those who had voted for the BJP in the 2014 Lok Sabha election. How successful Kejriwal has been generating ”forgiveness” among his one-time supporters among Delhi’s upper middle class and rich, is of course, one of the key questions of this election.
In Varanasi, they thundered from the stage at the Beniya Bagh Maidan, “Kejriwal has kicked his chair away for a principle”, and even projected him as a fakir who owned just three shirts. In his fresh bid for chair that he “kicked” away, Kejriwal has largely junked the moral high ground for the simple, uncluttered message: “Sorry we got it wrong.”
Moving among voters in New Delhi yesterday, it seemed it had played well among poor and the lower middle class voters, even those who had voted for the BJP in the 2014 Lok Sabha election. How successful Kejriwal has been generating ”forgiveness” among his one-time supporters among Delhi’s upper middle class and rich, is of course, one of the key questions of this election.
A third striking aspect of the campaign has been Kejriwal’s expansion from a one-issue activist to one able to deftly play on a range of issues. It is true that at his rallies, two issues, prices and corruption, were discussed threadbare in every which way, but on the margins many others popped up. The full array was evident amid the chaos at Kali Bari yesterday, as volunteers walked around with their “home made” cardboard placards advertising “panic buttons” for women’s safety, education loans for students, free wifi for students, relief from VAT raids for businessmen. Not just pani and bijli, the election saw Kejirwal, who has sought in rallies to tap angst, especially among the young, over injunctions by the ruling party’s more extreme elements for women to have more children, not wear jeans, not use mobile phones, being asked for his stand on Section 66A and internet freedom.
What has held this all together is, of course, an unabashedly personality driven campaign, with one man looming over it, and no attempt to project collective leadership. At some rallies, even the formality of introducing MLA candidates was dispensed with. Who would have thought that Kejriwal’s extraordinary journey, which once saw him enlisting a more acceptable Anna Hazare to front an anti-corruption campaign masterminded by him, would lead to a moment when volunteers would be strutting around – as one or two were yesterday – with their faces covered with Kejriwal masks?
What has held this all together is, of course, an unabashedly personality driven campaign, with one man looming over it, and no attempt to project collective leadership. At some rallies, even the formality of introducing MLA candidates was dispensed with. Who would have thought that Kejriwal’s extraordinary journey, which once saw him enlisting a more acceptable Anna Hazare to front an anti-corruption campaign masterminded by him, would lead to a moment when volunteers would be strutting around – as one or two were yesterday – with their faces covered with Kejriwal masks?
