“I ain’t never gonna be scared no more. I was, though. For a while it looked as though we was beat. Good and beat. Looked like we didn’t have nobody in the whole wide world but enemies. Like nobody was friendly no more. Made me feel kinda bad and scared too, like we was lost and nobody cared…. Rich fellas come up and they die, and their kids ain’t no good and they die out, but we keep on coming. We’re the people that live. They can’t wipe us out, they can’t lick us. We’ll go on forever, Pa, cause we’re the people.”
Ma
Joad (John Steinbeck’s Grapes of Wrath)
In an interview given hours
before announcing his candidacy against Sheila Dixit in Delhi, Arvind Kejriwal
had given a glimpse of his belief system. He spoke about how it has evolved
from a child’s religious leanings into an agnostic life of a youth in the IIT
and now exploring a new found faith – where destiny and circumstances lend
space and time for a cause much bigger and complex than what mere mortals could
conjure up. How else could Arvind explain the phenomenon of harnessing the
yearning of a billion nobodies of a nation who have been oppressed and enslaved
for centuries to a force that is poised to change the political destiny of
India? It’s not any ideology imported from the west, but a tacit
acknowledgement of a consciousness he has seen awakened in the battered and the
harassed.
Shock
and Awe
One could see Arvind engage
anyone with a question with absolute clarity of thought and earnestness to
share what he thought to a degree of exhaustion. On the other hand you could
see the politicians and their proxies squirm uncomfortably at his questions. He
hurt their egos like nobody else did. Their sense of self-righteousness and
entitlement has been badly damaged when Arvind’s words went straight to the
millions of people who were in a quest to articulate their disgust and a way
out of the labyrinthine rut of political edifice.
The political class
regardless of their size and affiliation are now in shock and their confusion
is palpable. Suddenly they are not special anymore. They undergo spasms of
self-doubt. Their fear of discomforting possibility of the loss of mystique
that separated them from whom they’ve ruled appears real now. Their understanding
of the world order is crumbling. For the first time, the ruling class cutting across
all brands is scared ever since their original colonial masters, the British imperialists
helped establish their brown supremacy to exploit their own countrymen in the garb of governance. The
awakening of consciousness in common man is the ultimate threat to the political
elite and the sons and daughters of their class like the Rajes, the Scinidias and
the Gandhis. The people can now easily see how small these selfish hoarders are
and know that they will be brushed aside soon to make way for the future.
The
Awakening vs. An apolitical pipedream?
The fiercest critics of
AAP, especially left leaning intellectuals harp on the term apolitical to
define the movement – meaning the party is a ramshackle expression of faux
outrage, cult following devoid of any serious foundation of sound ideology. They
dismissed the movement predicting an imminent demise. But the stunning debut in
Delhi shook the pundits of traditional politics to the core. They are at a loss to explain
the phenomenon.
What ideology better than
Swaraj as envisioned by Mahatma Gandhi would suit Indian ethos and model for
an equitable and inclusive growth? Arvind himself has written a book titled Swaraj. The
common folks in Delhi however have figured it out already. They understand that
the democracy in India has a structural problem as highlighted when each case
of corruption has been fizzled out at the altar of democratic institutions. They realize that the
Constitution of India gives the framework for good governance. They know that
there are several solutions to one problem and they have a say in choosing what
is right for the common good. They debunked the myth of expensive elections by
financing the process themselves. They after all voted in Delhi for a good candidate
irrespective of his or her identities such as religion, economic and political
stature and caste. Traditional politics with its caste, cash, top down high
command calculations and irrelevant ideology have been put on notice.
Politics in India is not a
cynical exercise of right wing strategists or leisurely activity for liberal intellectuals anymore. It takes
place in the middle of throbbing crowds in markets, places of worship and
entertainment in each cranny of the country. They always longed to take back
their long lost rights to a just and dignified everyday life from the corrupt
and regressive political class. The difference now is they know how!
“Men who have created new fruits in the world cannot create a system whereby their fruits may be eaten. And the failure hangs over the State like a great sorrow. ...and in the eyes of the
people there is the failure; and in the eyes of the hungry there is a growing
wrath. In the souls of the people the grapes of wrath are filling and growing
heavy, growing heavy for the vintage.”
- Grapes of Wrath
