Dr Prem Singh

THE secularist intellectuals and leaders of India should get united with Arvind Kejriwal on his demand of printing Lakshmi-Ganesh’s pictures on Indian currency. Rather, the secular camp should also request its new specimen of corporate politics to replace Gandhi’s picture with Ambani-Adani’s, along with the demand of printing Lakshmi-Ganesh’s. Lest the RSS/BJP take a beating in this matter. Even though Kiran Bedi had called Anna Hazare a ‘big’ and Kejriwal a ‘small’ Gandhi, Gandhi has no importance in Kejriwal’s politics. The ‘ideals’ of his politics are Bhagat Singh and Ambedkar. Hence, he is compulsively accepting the picture of Gandhi on the currency.

The secular camp should advise Kejriwal that this is the right time to get rid of Gandhi. By making such a demand, he can go far ahead of the RSS/BJP on the ‘kartayva path’ of corporate politics. The kind of constant troubles Gandhi is facing in Corporate-India alias Hindu-Rashtra, it is bound to happen sooner or later, sooner the better.

The secular camp’s support to Kejriwal is natural. Because it has a blood relation with this bearer of the new hallmark of the communal right. This is not a truth hidden in the haze of history. This is the reality of the present going on before the eyes. By mentioning the list of this relationship once again, I would not like to become a part of further anger of this camp.

However, it is now well understood that why JNU became the main focus of the Youth for Equality (YFE) campaign against the Constitutional reservation system. Formed in Delhi in 2006, the organisation tied up with the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP) in the Delhi University Students’ Union (DUSU) elections the same year. At that time ABVP said that we did not go to YFE, they themselves came forward and offered to support us. YFE’s argument on its move was that ‘they are basically opposed to the Congress-led UPA government. The issue of caste-based reservation and policies comes after that. We are supporting ABVP on the dictum of ‘the enemy of my enemy is my friend’.

India’s secular camp should not need to be told that YFE had the directions and funding of Arvind Kejriwal-Manish Sisodia and their Ford Foundation catered NGO running in its veins. The All India Students Association (AISA), which states itself as the most revolutionary student organisation, tied up with the Chhatra Yuva Sangharsh Samiti (CYSS), the student wing of the Aam Aadmi Party, in the 2018 DUSU elections. It may be noted that YFE was formed in protest against the decision of the then Human Resource Development Minister Arjun Singh to give 27 percent reservation to the backward class students in institutions of higher education like central universities, IITs, IIMs.

It can also be understood more clearly now that the secular camp, which has repeatedly sought answers from the RSS/BJP on their pseudo-nationalism, pseudo-patriotism and fascism, has not sought any answer from the guru-disciple duo  (Anna Hazare- Kejriwal) who had been active in the business of ‘social-service’ as to what was their opinion on the open dastardly killings of Sikhs in 1984, the Babri-Masjid-demolition in 1992 and the horrific communal riots that followed, the Gujarat tragedy of 2002. When I raised these questions, everyone had adopted an attitude of ‘maintain silence and ignore’. Some Marxists even started saying that I make false speculations. (Because only they have the patent for the scientific knowledge of what happened in the past and what will happen in the future.) Some socialists said that the Delhi conquest of Aam Aadmi Party should have opened my eyes. Now I must wait till it wins all the seven Lok Sabha seats in Delhi. That is, the one who wins is Alexander.

During the anti-corruption movement, when the truth came to light that Kejriwal had stolen 9 lakh rupees of the exchequer while in service, all of them lashed out at the ‘corrupt’ Congress in defense of their ‘honest’ hero through this same ‘godi’ media. Then the cheque of 9 lakhs was sent directly to the then Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. They had no hesitation in defaming him by openly calling him corrupt.

Three decades after the corporate-communal nexus, the truth has well come to the fore that the ‘new’ India created in the last three decades could only become a ‘Hindu’ India, and that is what it has become. The RSS/BJP call it Hindu-Rashtra. The intellectuals and leaders of the secular camp try to hide the truth from the working people of the country, the new generations and most of all the minorities by creating various illusions that Corporate-India alias Hindu-Rashtra is being formed with their approval and participation. If these people, as it seems, were true opponents of communal fascism, they would have at least opposed Kejriwal’s communal politics in some way. It is now clear that the threat of communal fascism is not the genuine concern of the secular camp. It is a pastime under which the flag bearers of the secular camp take pleasure in bashing the RSS/BJP and Narendra Modi.

The secular camp had laid the chess-board of the anti-corruption movement and paved the national highway for Narendra Modi on the one hand, and placed its bet on Kejriwal on the other. It was a truly an astounding period of political bankruptcy of the secular camp. The entire camp used to sit and stand, wake up and sleep with Kejriwal’s acrobatics. It used to daydream that the international rating of Kejriwal’s popularity has gone above that of Narendra Modi. That whole story is recorded in the book ‘Bhrashtachar Virodh: Vibhram Aur Yatharth‘.

Since then, Kejriwal has become Robin Hood for the secular camp to stop Narendra Modi riding on the communal politics of Hindu majoritarianism. Just like Narendra Modi’s ‘godi media, similarly Narendra Modi’s opponent media is sitting on Kejriwal’s lap. When Narendra Modi bought the media for building his image, he had been the chief minister of Gujarat thrice, and had become the trust-bearer of select industrialists. The secular camp is in a hurry to elevate Kejriwal to the status of Narendra Modi. This camp is often a victim of attraction-repulsion regarding Rahul Gandhi. However, it has full faith in Kejriwal’s prospects. It was on this belief that its future ‘Hindu-Hridya-Samrat’ reaped the entire crop of the peasant movement in Punjab.

Needless to say that in this camp one has to become a royal man, one has to get foreign funding, someone has to take prizes, and one has to earn a reputation of being an expert. This business of the secular camp is going to grow in Corporate India alias Hindu-Rashtra. It has made good inroads in the private universities opened under the aegis of Corporate-India. All its members will be available for service in the foreign universities that will open here soon. Tomorrow foreign channels and newspapers will also come to India. In them too, the secular camp will get an opportunity to serve. There will be no dearth of posts and awards for them in the country and abroad.

The secular camp doesn’t have to do much for this business to flourish. At present, elections are to be held in Gujarat and Himachal Pradesh. The camp has to mobilize Muslims in favor of the Aam Aadmi Party especially in the Gujarat Assembly elections while ignoring Kejriwal’s communal gimmicks as usual. Muslims are negligible in Himachal Pradesh. There it can play a supporting role in selling the ‘Delhi model’ to the voters. Municipal Corporation elections are also going to be held in Delhi soon. Like in the earlier four elections, the secular camp should gear up to get the total votes of Delhi’s Muslims in favor of the Aam Aadmi Party.

New readers may inquire as to who figures prominently in the pro-Kejriwal secular camp. Their brief description can be as follows – democratic, progressive, secular intellectuals, including many eminent journalists and scholars; the three communist parties and their leaders who first recognized the ‘ideology’ of ‘Kejriwal-revolution’; the weeds of the socialist movement, who were busy propagating themselves as the true harvest of the socialist movement; NGO personalities receiving international funding and awards; Dalit ideologues/organizations that operate with the intention of getting their share in every corridor of power; feminist scholars who cover up Kejriwal’s opportunistic tricks on incidents of atrocities against women in lieu of getting posts-awards and for whom Kejriwal is the lone lion; and the intellectuals of the backward society, organized in recent years, who are ready for any compromise to increase their strength.

It is true that the Indian nation and society is going through its biggest crisis ever. The apoliticization of the last three decades has had a profoundly negative impact on the generations of this era. Still, in every generational consignment, many conscious and sincere youth/young women keep arriving on the socio-political stage. They have to understand that the claimants to the solution of the crisis are in fact part of the crisis. Only then will they be able to assume their independent role apart from Team-India, which is involved in building Corporate-India alias Hindu-Rashtra.

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The writer associated with the socialist movement is a former teacher of Delhi University and a fellow of Indian Institute of Advanced Study, Shimla. The article first published in Counter Currents.