He is dismissed every Thursday only to be awaited with batedbreath the next Wednesday. Toast of the masses, darling of the media; thisswashbuckling newest kid of politics is apparently also the fiercest of themall. With India Against Corruption’s Arvind Kejriwal taking the centre stage inpolitics, rules of the game are being considered for a revision by the oldguard.
Kejriwal broke a code of silence observed in Indian politicson matters involving family members of political leaders when he brought tolight the nexus involving realty giant DLF, Sonia Gandhi’s son-in-law RobertVadra and the Congress government in Haryana.
Even as partymen were smarting under the attack, Kejriwaltargeted law minister Salman Khurshid for alleged bungling of funds in a trustfor the disabled which is managed by his family. Khurshid lost the plot andcool when he called a presser to clarify things and confounded them instead bya show of rashness. He spoke a language alien to politics so far when he daredKejriwal to come to his home constituency Farrukabad.
The opposition savoured the plight of the perplexedCongressmen huddled in a corner and bleating in defence of the party’sson-in-law and the law minister until the next Wednesday arrived. Kejriwal wentthe whole hog this time against Bharatiya Janata Party chief Nitin Gadkariexposing his shady land deals in Maharashtra in collusion with Sharad Pawar’sNationalist Congress Party.
While a thoroughly relieved BJP “ they expected somethingbigger and not just Gadkari whose hobnobbing with industrialists is not new tothe insiders “ rallied behind Gadkari in support, Kejriwal came out of analways suspected shadow of the saffron party.
Soon after, in an interview given to a newspaper, Gadkarisaid: “The facts that details concerning Robert Vadra’s land deals were in thepublic domain, long before Kejriwal and Co drew attention to it. The matter wasdiscussed within the party as well. But then we decided against raisingpersonal issues. But from this decision it would be incorrect to draw aconclusion that there is collusion between the Congress and the BJP.” In quickresponse to this, Congress’ “seen there, said that” general secretary DigvijaySingh claimed on TV to have evidence of former prime minister Atal BihariVajpayee’s son-in-law Ranjan Bhattacharya’s corrupt practices. The episodebrought to fore the code of silence observed across party lines so religiouslyin politics when matters involved each other’s family members.
First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then theyfight you, then you win “ is one of the most famous misquotes of Gandhi.Attributed most accurately to US labour leader Nicholas Klein (in one of hisspeeches in 1918), the statement nonetheless has become a dogma for acceptanceof political forces over decades. Going by this, Kejriwal is past the first twoand on to the third.
While Khurshid in his latest has said “an ant” cannot be achallenge to an elephant like Congress and says the activist is having a “pipedream” of taking the space of big parties by trying to “destroy” them throughallegations, the Congress’s “seen there, said that” general secretary hascalled Kejriwal “self-serving ambitious megalomaniac having a “streak” ofHitler. Such comparisons sound nothing more than their own internal fears aboutthe rise of political force which threatens to rest control over an arena theyalways considered their own.
While it remains to be seen if Kejriwal is actuallyincreasing his own political landscape Wednesdays after Wednesdays, it is forsure that he is shrinking theirs. Maybe, in the political vacuum thus created,the mango man will have an opportunity to throw in his kernel.
in association with Governance Now
