Decoding the pragmatism of AAP

Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal’s advocacy of the idea has generated a lot of interest (or outrage) in recent weeks. The “secular” camp has held this as the ultimate proof of Kejriwal being nothing but another Hindutva prop. The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has said that these statements are nothing but desperate attempts to cover up for what they describe as AAP’s “anti-Hindu” politics. Is either of these assertions true?

The truth, at least from a realpolitik point of view, is complicated.

The personal and electoral

It is best to start with a historical anecdote.

Vinayak Damodar Savarkar, in many ways the father of modern political Hindutva in India, was a self-declared atheist. Mohammad Ali Jinnah, under whose leadership the Muslim League successfully created a Muslim nation partitioning India, lived a westernised lifestyle which would have scandalised some of the conservative Muslim leaders of his times. The larger point of these examples is that politicians are perfectly capable of successfully preaching a kind of politics which is completely at odds with their personal beliefs and value systems.

In all probability, this is exactly what Arvind Kejriwal and the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) seem to be trying to do at the moment.

Gujarat, the BJP’s bastion and ideological lab, is scheduled to go to polls next month. AAP has been campaigning relentlessly in the state. It is more than clear that even if it manages to finish a credible second leaving the Congress behind, AAP’s political stock will increase significantly before the 2024 Lok Sabha elections.

It is impossible to defeat the BJP in Gujarat unless a large section of Hindu voters desert it. From keeping silent on the remission of sentence for convicts in the Bilkis Bano case to demanding photos of Hindu gods on currency notes, the AAP seems to be pulling every trick in its book to not anger Hindus in the state.

The question is, will this work? It is pointless to try and answer this question before the election results are out. A more meaningful exercise at the moment can be to trace AAP’s evolution as a political force, and the pros and cons of such a strategy.

The driver of the strategy

To be fair, the AAP has never portrayed itself as a political party established on the left-liberal principles of secularism based on a clear separation of church and state. Invoking god and religion has been integral to the AAP’s or Kejriwal’s political rhetoric from the beginning.

However, one can argue that the watershed moment, as far as AAP’s realisation of the costs of taking on Hindutva is concerned, came in the 2020 Delhi assembly elections when its deputy chief minister and face of education reforms in Delhi, Manish Sisodia, almost lost the elections. His victory margin was just 2.2% of the votes polled. Sisodia had endorsed the (Muslim-driven) Shaheen Bagh protests against the enactment of the Citizenship (Amendment) Act or the CAA in January 2020, and the BJP made this into a big issue.

Sisodia’s election scare, in this author’s view, was a clear message that a significant part of the electorate was willing to punish the AAP for crossing the Laxman Rekha despite a good performance on other parameters of social democratic governance.

AAP’s politics in Delhi, after the 2020 elections — the 2022 Jahangirpuri riots are a good example — has pivoted towards attacking the BJP from the Right rather than associating with the left-liberal criticism of majority communalism.

The minority vote

Is the AAP not scared of losing the minority vote by indulging in this kind of rhetoric?

It is often argued that the AAP can afford to do this kind of politics because Muslim voters do not have a credible alternative which can defeat the BJP. Whether or not this logic holds anymore will be known when the Municipal Corporation of Delhi elections are held. Even the results of Muslim-dominated assembly constituencies in Gujrat will be a good pointer to how the minorities have taken to this kind of “do not antagonise Hindutva” rhetoric by the AAP.

If the AAP does well in these two elections, then, whether or not one agrees with its politics, Kejriwal’s stock as a pragmatic politician will increase further.

The limits of the strategy

There is another, perhaps a more important, dimension to this debate. Can a political party make a dent into the BJP’s Hindu vote bank by portraying itself as “more Hindu than the BJP”, which is exactly what the AAP seems to be trying to do?

BJP’s political Hindutva is not just about mainstreaming and institutionalising Hindu culture. Some political analysts see it as much a project of “othering” India’s religious minorities, especially Muslims, and “avenging historical wrongs” which have been committed against the Hindu majority population.

To be sure, the assertion of Hindu religiosity is an important component of the BJP’s political strategy as can be seen in Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s big-ticket visits to Hindu religious sites. But the BJP’s historical evolution as India’s dominant political party cannot be understood unless one engages with its stance on India’s religious minorities, especially Muslims.

Such attempts have sometimes taken an explicit form of religious mobilisation and, at times, relied on subtle communal dog-whistling. While such political tactics do not always succeed, it has brought significant political dividends for the BJP, especially in the Hindi-speaking states and in its strongest bastion Gujarat.

If a political party does not use this kind of rhetoric on minorities – the AAP, barring stray instances, seems to be staying clear of it – the BJP and its larger ecosystem will still have a unique weapon in its arsenal which might tilt Hindu votes, and the elections in its favour. If the AAP loses Muslim votes because of such rhetoric, it will of course be a lose-lose proposition for the party.

If the AAP does resort to the use of such tactics in the future, the only question which arises is: How is the AAP then different from the BJP? From the Asom Gana Parishad in Assam to Shiv Sena in Maharashtra, the BJP has successfully appropriated large parts of political parties which once championed a radical Hindutva or ethnic politics. This is where the AAP is flirting with the threat of liquidation while trying to be too pragmatic a political force.

Of course, it is early days to say with certainty whether the AAP will gain or face liquidation as a result of the competitive Hindutva game it is playing with the BJP. While the BJP might be feeling irritated, perhaps even tense, because of the AAP’s tactical deployment of Hindutva in elections, chances are that its ideologues in Nagpur will not be displeased with India’s most promising political start-up of the 21st century pivoting more to the Right. This is where Narendra Modi’s BJP has made the biggest contribution to the Idea of India which was originally propagated by Savarkar.

Every Friday, HT’s data and political economy editor, Roshan Kishore, combines his commitment to data and passion for qualitative analysis in a column for HT Premium, Terms of Trade. With a focus on one big number and one big issue, he will go behind the headlines to ask a question and address political economy issues and social puzzles facing contemporary India.

The views expressed are personal