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Is AAP of Arvind Kejriwal a KAP Khaas Admi Party?

• http://surajitdasgupta.blogspot.in/2013/12/khaas-aadmi-party.html Khaas Aadmi Party                                    written by Surjit dasgupta ,spokesperson of AAP (resigned recently)                   The AAP's bluff of representing the ordinary citizen must be called. In timeArvind Kejriwal and other prominent faces of the Jan Lokpal (JLP) movement that caught the imagination of the nation in 2011 did the right thing in July-August 2012 by deciding to launch a political party of their own. First, under the present system, whatever laws a group of activists think the people of the country need can be made only by getting into the legislature. Second, the mistake of the Jayaprakash Narayan-led movement of the 1970s could not be repeated; those who led the movement should not have passed on the baton to older politicians. Political observers, however, began raising some valid questions right after the announcement of the intention. How could a band of people, howsoever well-meaning, who had a single-point agenda of getting rid of corruption by instituting an all-powerful lokpal (ombudsman), and who were apparently ignorant of other facets of governance, run a party that needed to have a say in all matters of the state? Kejriwal & Co must have been aware of this intellectual limitation of the band. So, eminent psephologist and member of a little known Samajwadi Jan Parishad (SJP) Yogendra Yadav, who was watching the proceedings of the movement, made a lateral entry into the group. In the desperation to fill the policy void of the group, Kejriwal ignored the paradox that Yadav's ideas were quite antithetical to the general sentiment of the kind of people who had poured into the streets responding to the appeal of the mascot of the JLP movement, a simpleton, likeable Anna (Kisan Baburao) Hazare. Their class was middle to upper middle. They loved the good salaries they got from the corporate sector. Or they were leading comfortable lives as students under parents who were affluent enough to keep them unbothered about finances till they finished their years in formal education. A pinch of conscience that they had done little for the country made them take short leaves from offices and universities to raise the demand for a cleaner state: a state that would continue to allow money to flow, but where transparency and accountability of the executive would be so high that scandals like misappropriation of funds for the Commonwealth Games or jumping of the first-come-first-served queue in the 2G spectrum case would be unthinkable. They wanted to see an India that was wholly rich rather than one where a Suresh Kalmadi and an A Raja made a handful of rich men richer and pocketed a part of the proceeds. They were certainly not waiting anxiously for a control freak state, their fascination with the symbol of a draconian lokpal notwithstanding. They were more certainly not looking for an ideal socialist state of Yadav’s dreams. But this is a cost Kejriwal had to pay because his IIT education and training in revenue services were not adequate to make him appreciate the importance of ideology. Whichever ideologue approached him first had the chance of making it to his core team. Yadav did. In the mornings that I spent with Kejriwal having breakfast at his house, in the long drives where I would be in a car with him, over the dinners that I had with him, in the corner room of the IaC and AAP’s office at Kaushambi, Ghaziabad, I realized this man actually did not mean that he hated to be dogmatic, and hence did not want to commit himself to any ideology. Actually, this man was too intellectually challenged to be able to fathom any philosophy of governance. You raise the issue, and he would instantly get irritated. “मुझे इस पर बात ही नहीं करनी! (I just don’t want to talk about it)” was his standard response. In a morning of November 2012 when we were busy discussing the launching event slated for the 26th of the month, I was witness to Kejriwal dismissing a young woman from the Nav Bharat Party like that. The poor, energetic, young lady was trying to impress upon him the virtue of individual liberty and a free market. Paraphrasing what Kejriwal said to the young woman in Hindi, I quote him: “I have seen a lot of governments. None is either left or right. They are all centrist. As and when we make a government, we have to toe more or less the same line.” This dismissive remark exposes two things. One, he simply does not know the subject he is speaking about. Two, he is going to offer India nothing new. While this writer had no clue till October last year that this was the reality of Arvind Kejriwal’s intellect, I was unwilling to join the proposed party because of known position of Prashant Bhushan on the status of Kashmir. Of course, I knew Hazare and Kejriwal had distanced themselves from that position during the JLP movement. But how could I ignore the fact that Bhushan was a strong personality and would, hence, leave a mark in a party where everybody else was clueless about governance (unless its academic part was taken care of by Yadav)? My close friend and senior journalist Sudesh Verma was optimistic. He thought the support base of the movement was so overwhelmingly rightist that the so-called socialists would have to fall in line. I grudgingly and pessimistically agreed to join the proposed party along with him in the second week of October 2012. We had some pressing concerns to address, too. These philosophically blank people were stealing some of our longstanding ideas like decentralisation, state priority to health and education, removing government from the role of broker of petroleum companies... to name just a few. Since they spoke from a bigger platform, they looked like pioneers of these ideas, who were difficult to be accused of plagiarism. Photographed from the writer's mobile, 5 Apr 2011Further, while http://surajitdasgupta.blogspot.in/2011/05/against-or-allied-to-corruption.html, we also believed that — like the Congress founded by AO Hume that went on to lead India’s struggle for independence — the IaC was no longer caught in a vice-like grip of its creators, especially after its talks with the government via the medium of joint drafting committee collapsed. This was no longer a Dadabhai Naoroji-style Congress; this was an MK Gandhi-styled one, it seemed. Packed audience, but do they number 15,000?As a strategy that you cannot deny to a political group, we were also ready to overlook its exaggerations like reporting the crowd at the Ramlila Ground to be of strength 1,00,000 when its capacity is 30,000 [The habit persists. There was a concert at Jantar Mantar on 23 November apparently to celebrate the party. When the programme was on, the party's enthusiasts began tweeting attendance figures of anything between 10,000 and 100,000 sitting at homes across the world or from the venue. The fact: The maximum capacity of Jantar Mantar is 3,000]. We had been working with KN Govindacharya since early 2011. The former RSS pracharak and BJP general secretary was a transformed politician. He found the BJP no less corrupt than the Congress. He was ready to invite the Sangh’s ire, too, with constant barbs against his former party. Most important for us, not one speech of his from a big stage or a friendly chat with him at home had any anti-Muslim, Hindutva content. But there was one Sanghi hangover Govindacharya was suffering from. He never assigned work to non-Sanghis, convent-educated activists like Verma and me. Kejriwal looked more our type. We thought we would be more comfortable in the company of young people with new ideas. Behind the Aug 11 stage: Where we first metOn our way to Kaushambi the first day, we decided we would accept any work offered to us without ifs and buts. Kejriwal could recall I had met him behind the stage at the Ramlila Ground in August 2011 (when he looked a confident man) and then in January 2012 (when he was dejected due to the poor response IaC had received the previous month in Mumbai). Kejriwal asked what we had been doing all these years. We were carrying our curricula vitae. He identified us as journalists and asked us to head the media department. It included managing the social media and making press releases. Strangely, however, he did not turn up in the next meeting where he was supposed to pass on the message of his decision to his existing media team. Pankaj Gupta, who went on to become the party’s secretary, talked to us. We were supposed to get on with the job right away. As expected, the team was not willing to cooperate. Not their fault. Kejriwal had not conveyed the message to the kids that they had to. The “Final War Against Corruption” page on Facebook was messy, as is the “Aam Aadmi Party” page now. A young man made some attractive banners on Corel Draw, mostly with a quote of Kejriwal. The moment one of those images was uploaded, supporters of the movement would swarm all over it with congratulatory messages in Hindi, English, 'Hinglish' and what not. The immediacy and number of the responses were good indices of popularity. But if one in a hundred replies were to be a profound comment on policy, it had no chance of being noticed. Hundreds of more comments would soon push it to obscurity. The solution was a rule: Only one post per topic so that we had a one-stop destination to extract all valuable suggestions under a given subject from. The proposal was not heeded to, as the problems were three. One, it had the potential to thwart the banner maker’s creativity. Two, it would mean the media manager was accepting a new management. Three, which is the most important, does the party care for meaningful suggestions from the people? Surprised by the question? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rWXRn-mWJ00 (2 min 40 seconds onwards) where Kejriwal is roaming around the New Delhi constituency to ask its dwellers what he should incorporate in the local manifesto. After meeting many people, he seems to realise that the taxes in Delhi have been successively increased to such levels that most industries have left the capital; this, in turn, has created a scarcity of jobs. He would hence cut taxes drastically to make companies and jobs return to Delhi. I was elated to know the AAP national convener was getting over Bhushan’s idea of punishing the corporate sector. Alas, this point is missing in the party manifesto. Back to October 2012, being assertive and wresting control of the media team did not make eminent sense to us, as we were more eager to meet the hassled people of the country out there at the pre-hustings. We told Kejriwal the boys were doing fine and needed no guidance. He was happy to know that. But before we could move to an activity that was more political, he called me the next day to tell he was not happy with the way the department was functioning. Curiously, however, the way he was absent on the day the boys were supposed to be told they would report to us, this time the boys were not present in the room; they couldn't get the message we were supposed to be in charge! If we were encountering bad management practices, people who were once a part of the AAP’s IT team but are now estranged tell tales of utter rudeness. Kapil Rishi Yadav is one such person. He says Kejriwal told him, “Either you convince me, or be convinced, or get lost!” Several other young boys and girls who had enthusiastically expressed their will to serve the organisation were treated shabbily. They are now closer to various members of the national council. Under the condition of anonymity — at least till the day of the polls, they would not like to come out in the open, protesting — they tell me, “Leaving the IT department to a bunch of sycophants that day was your biggest mistake,” adding, “You should have stood your ground, and then thrown it open to a pool of talents.” They cannot stand Ankit Lal and Dilip Pandey, two names newspaper readers may be able to recall, as they do appear in AAP-related reports once in a while. That’s of course a bit unfair. Both are likeable characters, with the first tending to go over the top in praise of the party head on Facebook, and the second managing the party’s Twitter handle quietly. If they were protective and possessive of the turf they had been operating on since the JLP movement, it was Kejriwal’s job to separate his cosy personal bonding with them from the professional task the department was supposed to do. He seemed to do that as if not wanting to do it: by being absent from the first meeting and then by telling who would head the department in absence of other members of the department. Anyway, we came back to the media department but did not play spoilsport in the boys’ game. We thought we would concentrate on the press releases instead. That had a different problem. Notes prepared by Verma of 20 years of experience in journalism would be vetted by Gupta, a small-time NGO head! There are other journalists who soon lost interest in these control freaks. There was a policy meet, 11-13 January. Some 60 odd ideologues, including experts not from the party, had to be invited. When I called Punya Prasun Vajpayi (out of the 10 people whom I had to invite on the party's behalf), he turned down the invite, saying he was interested in furthering Gandhi's swaraj and not Kejriwal's swaraj! Elsewhere, as the need for a mouthpiece was felt, journalists from various parts of the country volunteered to help. Some were put off when Sisodia told them that his own pamphlet called Aap Ka Panna must be promoted. After keeping the rest hanging around for a couple of days, Kejriwal & Co told them he was too occupied by thoughts of the Delhi elections to spare a thought for the mouthpiece. About 70 fresh graduates of journalism were ready to work for the party. They were ready to report from all parts of the country in different Indian languages. The CVs of all who were ready to contribute for free were forwarded to Kejriwal with a copy each to Sisodia. After a while, this writer got the same response: no time to even think of a media wing of the party! Eventually, a bunch of rank amateurs were given the job. They are running the party mouthpiece Aap Ki Kranti mostly by plagiarising content from other sources or by taking dictation from the high command. Scores of activists were pouring in from all parts of the country those days. Let’s ignore some who were frivolous. They would come with the claim of benefiting the party with some out-of-the-world ideas. If the ideas were not instantly accepted, they would sulk and leave, cursing Kejriwal and the new, proposed party. Most were serious, with decades of experience in activism and processions of followers behind them. Each promised to bring in hundreds of his/her followers whom he/she had cultivated over a long period of time. And each ran into a wall! The faction of the IaC that had decided to form a party had also decided they were experts in every field of work. Even if they were not experts, they had a right by default to head the respective departments. Activists from across the country who had converged at the proposed party’s office were slighted by offers to do menial jobs like maintaining registers for visitors, attending phone calls and arranging for guests’ accommodation in the nights of 24-26 November. Kejriwal, Bhushan, Manish Sisodia, Gopal Rai, Kumar Vishwas, Sanjay Singh et al must have been busy in some political activity all this while; none of the enthusiastic activists were allowed a peep into that world. If every work of labour is dignified, one wonders why none of these ‘hallowed’ people shared a part of this dignity. Verma and I were a bit privileged. On 29-30 October, we were invited to a policy determining meet that was being held at the Indian Social Institute, Lodi Road. During the lunch hour of the first day, Kejriwal requested us to attend a meeting at Bhushan’s residence that evening to give a final shape to the proposals that would emerge from some 60-odd ideologically driven activists who were brainstorming at the institute the whole day. When the issue of organisational structure came up during the meeting at Bhushan’s place that evening, Verma proposed a huge structure with vice presidents and general secretaries slightly more than the number of States of the country (more in anticipation of a few more States surfacing soon). Since that morning, however, Kejriwal appeared fixated with the idea of a convener. That evening and the next, Verma kept insisting on a large structure to absorb and channelize the tremendous energy of people across the country who would like to change India through the instrument of this new party. He said we were supposed to fight other parties’ corruption, not their traditional structures which are fine even by the Election Commission’s standards. For the next few days, the prominent faces of the JLP movement could not be traced. We learnt that hectic parleys were still going on at Bhushan’s residence. Obviously, we were not invited. We were still a part of the team that was drafting the party constitution, though. We were needed especially for the philosophical part. As for the organisational structure, “बाद में तय कर लेंगे (we will decide that later)” was Sisodia’s response. Kejriwal would sit in the presiding chair those evenings at Kaushambi, visibly distracted. Whenever between the debates, Sisodia, Singh, Rai, Verma or I would seek his consent to a certain part of the constitution others had just agreed upon, he would just mutter, “योगेन्द्र यादव बहुत नाराज़ हैं मुझ से (Yadav is not happy with me at all).” We said individuals were not important; let everybody be a part of the process. Kejriwal said some individuals were important, and they could not be ignored. It can be fairly guessed why Yadav might have been upset. At the end of the 30 October policy meet, the JLP lot (Kejriwal, Sisodia, Singh, Rai, Vishwas) had cold shouldered his plan to turn into a national hero. He had proposed that, after the launch of the party, he would go on a nationwide yatra (walk) to propagate its message to the people. That plan of his to turn a poster boy was not sanctioned. How his displeasure was turned into satisfaction subsequently could be seen on 24 November that comes up next. That morning when the party’s national convention was to be held and the party constitution adopted by it, more than a hundred activists who had come from faraway States were not let inside the Constitution Club. Fuming with rage, they declared they were going back to Anna. Some 300 activists, Verma and I included, entered the Speaker Hall, the venue. In course of the meeting with 60 ideologues on 29-30 October, I had repeatedly urged the group to follow a proper process of internal democracy in the party. A vital aspect was the manner in which critical issues would be voted in or out. I said only the secret ballot would be a fair process, as people did not like to be identified as dissenters when they wished to object to a decision. The apprehension proved right on 24 November. As 23 nominated members of the national executive (NE) were announced, rather imposed on the group — that, Yadav said, would be referred to as the national council (NC) — boos and hoots from unidentifiable persons could be heard in the hall. But no one showed the courage to raise a hand in objection when the NE members were paraded on stage one by one, and Rajan Prakash (a past Sangh-affiliated journalist who is now the party’s candidate from Kirari) read out their CVs in brief. Some people stood up in protest only when the names of Ilyas Azmi and Prem Singh Pahari were called out. Their record of having hopped from one party to another made all of us frown. “क्या इन का सच में ह्रदय परिवर्तन हुआ है (Have these people really undergone a sea change in mentality)?” a backbencher cried. Azmi was in the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP), Welfare Party of India (WPI) and Rashtriya Inquilab Party (RIP). He had also extended support to the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) once. Pahari had arrived from the BJP. Composition of the rest of the NE showed how Kejriwal had managed to pacify Yadav, whose ‘resentment’ was troubling him through the previous week when we were drafting the constitution. Yadav pushed his friends from the virtually dysfunctional SJP into the NE so that he could leverage their support during debates on policy. Many others in the NE were insignificant politically; if an Ajit Jha would be Yadav’s ‘yes man’, supported by Prof Anand Kumar, entrants like Christina Samy of Women’s Front, Tamil Nadu, and Habung Pyang, past information commissioner in Arunachal Pradesh, have so far not been noticed contributing either to the party’s policy or mass mobilisation campaign. Out of the JLP lot, Kejriwal is ideologically non-committal. ‘Poet’ Vishwas is good at rhetoric, dud at substance. Sisodia is smart, but that’s all about him. Singh would probably fare better in a street fight rather than a talk show on television. The most frequently seen AAP face on TV, Shazia Ilmi, is naïve. No activist worth his salt in Haryana knows what Naveen Jaihind’s claim to fame is. Gopal Rai used to cool his heels below the stage during the August 2011 movement, after his fanciful Teesra Swadheenta Andolan found no takers. Current members of the AISA, of which he was once a part, say that the bullet shot he had sustained, which left him partially paralysed, had nothing to do with a political struggle; it was a result of some personal feud. He must be indebted to the party for his inclusion in the elite club. Mayank Gandhi tilts towards freedom of the market, but whenever approached with a request to speak his mind, he says he does not want to antagonise the rest of the leadership. That leaves us with formidable human rights lawyer Bhushan, whose leftism was evident in his interview with a newspaper where he said the AAP could someday ally with the Communist Party of India (CPI). When I was disturbed by the constant tilt of the party towards populism, knowing Gandhi as a person whose economic thinking was close to mine, I shared my angst with him. He sent me a copy of a letter he had written to another founder member, Prithvi Reddy, which is as follows (unedited): If you think deep, the kind of economic and social issues that we are espousing, are the exact ones I used to dislike. But, I am convinced that these are impractical and ,once and if, you are in government, you will be forced to take the appropriate route. I dont get worked up about these issues. My views are There is status quo in the nation, every party is more and less following the same policies and no original ideas are coming in the public arena (unless they are propped by vested interests). Status quo is not acceptable in a nation where 40 crore people sleep hungry and there is so much disparity and injustice. The licence raj is replaced by crony capitalism. The incestuous relationship between all - politicians, judiciary, bureaucrat, media, contractors and industry will always find a way to make corrupt money. The electoral system is the core of the problem and has an incessant need for this money. All the existing parties have tasted power with this electoral system and no one wants to change it. The top-down decision- making needs to be over turned. So, what is needed is churning, unrest and challenge to this status quo. I do not see too many hopes in the existing parties, for they have a deep interest in the continuation of the system. While India against Corruption did lead to mass awareness, questioning and boldness in the populace, it was just a blip political landscape. Once, the movement lost steam, the churning would stop. And therefore formation of a political agitation is something we supported. The extent of churning necessary is pretty torrid and therefore there is a need for some electoral successes and some major "bees" to be released in the static atmosphere. That may hopefully make a major dent and lead to rethinking, policy upheavals and systemic changes. Electoral success in Delhi can be the litmus test for this. And the revolutionary ideas that Arvind has of ward wise free education and free medical can lead to lots of soul searching and re-prioritization by mainstream parties. I am not too concerned about some of the documents coming out of our stable, thinking them to be maverick thinking that is theoretical right now, but will mold itself,once it hits against the rocks of reality. I am not too worried about any one else's views on my position and usefulness. My mind and body is just a tool that is taking part in what I believe is the cyclic growth of this nation. Similar to Anna, Arvind, IAC or AAP - these are just tools and nothing more. Giving it too much importance is counter-productive and emotionalism. Among the rest, how many in politics have heard of Yogesh Dhahiya, Ashok Aggarwal, Subhash Ware and Rakesh Sinha? Dinesh Waghela might have been noticed for his flowing white beard by some. Mukesh Kothari, a former NC member who left the party disgusted by the lack of accountability of its leaders, says, “This man is not taken seriously by his own family. He is taken seriously by no one I know of. He has no vision to transform India.” When there are so many empty brains, a few beholden ones, some muted mouths, an exception who is timid, and the only one with knowledge (who is also vociferous) is a hardcore leftist, there is no prize for guessing what direction the party would take in politics. This is more so as the only voice among the others, that of Yadav, is a socialist, too. Who cares what the rest of the party, comprising thousands of people, wants? Kejriwal & Co did not care that the middle class that had poured into the streets in 2011 were not looking for a socialist party to transform India. They had seen enough of it till the 1980s. So that there is no opposition to fanciful, obsolete, obscure ideas ranging from Indira Gandhi’s vintage to theoretical socialism of community ownership found only in textbooks, 300 thinkers of contrarian schools of thought were dumped into the NC. Ergo, on the very day of its inception, the AAP took a decisive turn towards the left, which was against the grain of the JLP movement that was largely supported by the middle class who wanted a free market, albeit with transparent observation of regulations. However, we kept quiet, hoping that the supporters’ base was so overwhelmingly right wing that a balance in policy matters would have to be maintained: to stem revolt, if not for anything else. The hope was belied in the course of the past one year. The NC has not met even once in the last one year of the party’s existence, against the constitutional requirement of being convened twice a year. The world outside must note, the NC is simmering with discontent. “Except a voice or two, those in the hall did not protest because we thought another meeting of the NC would be called soon and we would have the right to recall the NE,” says an NC member from Rajasthan, adding in despair, “But no meeting of the NC has been convened in this past one year whereas the party constitution mandates that the NC meet twice a year.” The NC takes serious exception to Kejriwal’s Batla House faux pas and Maulana Tauqeer Raza blunder. It has reservations about the economic viability of the offer of freebies. “They never ask for our consent to any action they take,” each one of them complains. The member from Rajasthan says, “Members of the council posed various questions, offered advices, raised objections, but no leader responded.” Equally disturbing is the fact that both the leaders and followers of this party start salivating at the prospect of celebrity endorsement. Is this supposed to be the character of a party purportedly standing for the common Indian? Bollywood actress Amrita Rao happened to endorse the AAP the day after the concert at Jantar Mantar through a tweet. And the party's gang of fans went ecstatic! Why does a party that claims to be of the aam aadmi start jumping up and down in joy whenever a Khaas aadmi or auratendorses it? This is the very mentality that made them invite a serial abuser of an entertainment channel — Rajiv Laxman of MTv — to campaign for the party, which went on to embarrass them and they had to apologise for it. The story of being flattered by Rao's tweet is related, as is that of the concert led by Vishal Dadlani the previous day. As citizens, they all have the right to have political opinions. But what do these characters understand about politics and nation building that their advice to support a certain party to power should be heeded by the people? More so when some of them shower expletives in speech, use offensive words in parodies and make indecent gestures? I dismissed the party’s euphoria over the coming of Laxman for campaign immediately on noticing it on Twitter by calling him “funky”. A founder member sent me a message via WhatsApp immediately: “I wanted to say the same thing, but couldn’t garner the courage to say it.” Anyway, the AAP fanatics were in no mood to hold themselves back. Watching the way the party is shaping up from a distance, Avinash, a software developer who became a member of the party out of the hope that it could improve the conditions of governance in the country, notes, “For me, the AAP and Kejriwal came as a ray of hope in this grim political situation. I loved both as they took the problems head-on and never shied away from answers. For the last one year, however, it seems that things have started to change. The concept of Swaraj (self-rule through the process of decentralisation) should have been observed inside the party structure and ought to have been visible to the people at large. That is not happening. Even though it is talked about by the AAP often, the decisions taken inside the party don't follow that principle — whether it’s in the case of candidate selection or in the case of policy directions.” This is another professional who had tried to help further the party’s interests with his expertise and skills, but was thwarted by the incompetent coterie that wanted to keep all powers restricted to it. Being trained in his profession from IIT – Delhi, he took exception to the proposal that, in the process of developing the party’s website and mobile application, he would have to report to people who did not have half the clue as he did as to how the job is done. Kejriwal had tried to pacify us in the evening of 24 November 2012, sending an SMS to Verma, assuring him and me of a role to play in building the organisation in the State of Delhi. I was not happy with my close friend. It seemed to me that he looked too politically ambitious, and that made the men of the JLP movement get into an impregnable shell. I called up friends based in different parts of the country to tell them what had happened and to solicit their advice. Rajarshi Nandy, a technical writer and passionate theologian, made me see reason in Verma’s stand. I realised after several months lapsed the importance of a key position in a political party. If we had been in the national executive or the political affairs committee, we would not have allowed Kejriwal to turn communal or populist. Then we joined the Delhi team. There too, giving two hoots to democracy, we saw that power was flowing top-down and not bottom-up. Instead of building wards, and then Assembly and finally the Lok Sabha constituencies, the party had given the charge of Delhi to 7 favourites who were manning one LS seat each. In mid-December 2012, Verma appeared for an interview for a television news channel and joined it in mid-January. He says, “I had joined the AAP, wanting to help it in mobilising people. We had already done a lot of mobilisation for Youth for Democracy and also for the Anna-led movement. But I soon realised that AAP leaders were not interested in mobilisers. I would go to the party office and just be around, wasting time. This continued for a few months after which I left.” “I realised that Kejriwal neither had the vision of institutionalsing democracy nor the patience to experiment. A high command culture has already set in. Those who can manipulate will thrive in this new party. Arvind knows how he was pressured to include undeserving people in the leadership. I can say so because the leadership was handpicked rather than thrown by a democratic process. If one has to do traditional politics, why do it via AAP? I don’t see it going far because of the hurry that plagues its leaders,” Verma concludes. This want — of being a decision maker in a party or of creating a mass base for the party — is not the same as wanting to fight elections and grab governmental power. If ideologically committed people are not decision makers in a party, the party runs around like a headless chicken, chased by activists and so-called experts who come up with outlandish ideas every other day. The story of the self-styled Bharatiya Aam Aadmi Parivar or BAAP is different. Greed was apparently the reason for its formation. It’s a bunch of disgruntled elements that were denied election tickets. If they had been allowed to contest on AAP tickets, every AAP ideology would have appeared fine to them. When some BJP supporters in the social media were celebrating the split of the AAP, circulating links of the breakaway faction’s Facebook page, I visited their posts and https://www.facebook.com/SwarajWithBAAP/posts/562761410452558?comment_id=5107325&offset=0&total_comments=57 of Kejriwal being corrupt. I wrote to them on 2 August 2013: हो सकता है कि आप के तमाम इल्ज़ामात सही हों, परन्तु क्या यह पार्टी नेतृत्व द्वारा की गई पहली ग़लती थी? जिन लोगों का राजनीति में कोई अनुभव नहीं उन्हें आये दिन वर्गलाया जा सकता है। ऐसा कई बार आम आदमी पार्टी के साथ हुआ और इससे पहले इंडिया अगेंस्ट करप्शन के साथ भी। ऐसी परिस्थितियों में विवेकशील सहयोगियों ने लगातार पार्टी/समूह के नेतृत्व को टोका और कई बार दबाव डाल कर उन्हें सही रास्ते पर ले आए। इस समूह में ऐसे विवेकशील, चिंतनशील, सैद्धांतिक, ज़मीर की आवाज़ सुनने वाले लोग नज़र नहीं आते। ऐसा कैसे हो गया कि पार्टी के सारे दोष आपको तब दिखने शुरू हुए जब आपको चुनाव लड़ने के टिकट नहीं मिले? आज तक आप लोग कहाँ थे? They protested. One of them, Abhishek Bhardwaj, wrote: If someone wants to serve nation and mother land what is wrong to have a desire to fight election. If you are saying that fighting election is bad, why is Kejriwal fighting the election? I responded: I am not saying that. I'm saying how come everything about the leadership was alright according to you before the election season. If Ashish Malviya and you are right in saying that you had protested earlier, too, where is the proof of that protest? Written proof? Photographic proof? Audio proof? I can show a hell lot of emails, for example, to show how I differed with the party leadership on quite a few points. I differed on the FDI issue. I differed on the question of secularism. And I also posted my displeasure on Facebook. At the same time I noticed that constant pressure on this party's leadership works. There are several examples of that, too. I'd started pressuring Kejriwal since August 2011 to form a party. He finally agreed in August 2012. The flagbearers of the Jan Lokpal movement was adamant about bringing judges under the jurisdiction of Lokpal. Several jurists convinced them it is akin to mixing the judiciary and the executive. It's better to deal with it through a judicial review commission. There was initially no demand to confiscate properties and bank accounts of criminal politicians. My persuasion introduced this provision as well as provided for prohibition of such candidates from fighting elections. There are at least 7 changes I can count in the vision document that were carried out under the pressure of party workers like us. In the latest controversy over the party's statement on the Batla House encounter, the party diluted its original statement following a furore among the cadre at the suggestion that the encounter was fake. Three days of intense pressure from us worked. Note that all these are issues of principles, issues of policy. When you raise them, you get public support and sympathy. If you have kept quiet all this while and begun protesting only when election tickets were denied to you, you look like disgruntled elements even if your grouse over that limited aspect is valid. My response gives an indication of the nature of things accepted by Kejriwal and that which is not. One and two, your proposal should be socialist as well as populist; perhaps some proposal from me would have been accepted if it had been a strategy to hoodwink Muslims and get their votes. Three, it should not affect the structure of the party decided between members of the political affairs committee behind closed doors. Because our long-standing demand of making health and education state priorities was socialist in nature, it was lapped up by the AAP. We had also demanded that, along with the institution of a powerful Lokpal, a charge-sheeted politician must be debarred from contesting elections and that his property confiscated and bank accounts frozen. It synced with Kejriwal’s rabble-rousing persona; so it was accepted too. Before I proceed further, an explanation would be in place. I am going to cite from several email exchanges and a few more online debates that I was a part of. If one thinks I was merely an online activist, he could be shown https://www.facebook.com/surajitdasguptarandomthoughts/media_set?set=a.10151525432074680.555713.679309679&type=3. The electronic exchanges became inevitable because of another thoroughly undemocratic practice of the closed club called the political affairs committee. The five odd ‘stars’ of the party do not attend calls from anybody except members of this club! They may also receive calls from some high profile journalists and celebrities. Who says it is an aam aadmi’s party? Kejriwal did not receive a call even from Dr N Jayaprakash Narayan, in November 2012 when people thought the new party was interested in expanding across the country, say sources in the Lok Satta Party. The AAP’s yet-to-be-declared national convener texted JP instead of receiving his call, say people close to the latter. The head of the LSP must have felt slighted. When it was not a matter of policy, but one of refining our language, my intervention was appreciated (one can note that the crassness of the MTv order crept in after they were no longer talking to me). For example, following the 16 December gang rape, the party issued a press release that went: क्या भारत अपनीबहन-बेटियों के लिए इतनी सुरक्षा की गारंटी भी नहीं दे सकता कि वे सड़कों पर निर्भय होकर चल सकें? … आम आदमी पार्टी बलात्कार की शिकार छात्रा और उसके जैसी सैकड़ों मजबूर बहनों और बेटियों को इंसाफ दिलाने के लिए सड़क पर उतरेगी. I shot back immediately: जब तक औरतों को केवल माँ, बहन, बेटी समझा जाएगा या पूजा में देवी का दर्जा दिया जाएगा तब तक इस समस्या का हल नहीं निकलेगा। वक्त आ गया है कि भारत के लोग इस बात को भी मानें कि औरत साथी भी हो सकती है, दफ़्तर में सहकर्मी भी हो सकती है और किसी पुरुष की तरह एक अनजान लेकिन स्वतंत्र और मर्यादित व्यक्ति भी। अगर कोई औरत वेश्या है तो भी उसकी मर्ज़ी के बगैर किसी को उसे छूने तक का अधिकार नहीं। अगर वह हमारी माँ, बहन, बेटी या पत्नी नहीं या पूजा के स्थान पर लगी किसी देवी की तस्वीर या मूर्ति नहीं तो इसका यह मतलब यह नहीं कि उससे दुर्व्यवहार करने का मर्दों का अधिकार बन जाता है। आम आदमी पार्टी के पत्राचार और अन्य साहित्य में नारी का वर्णन केवल माँ, बहन या बेटी के रूप में हो इससे मुझे एह्तिराज़ है। यह पिष्टोक्ति (cliché) है; इसका प्रयोग व्यवस्था परिवर्तन का नारा बुलंद करने वालों को शोभा नहीं देता। क्योंकि व्यवस्था परिवर्तन का एक अभिन्न अंग मानसिकता परिवर्तन भी है। इस दर्जे से महिलाओं की वश्यता (subordination) और उन पर देवत्वारोपण (deification) के सामंतवाद (feudalism) की बू आती है। Yadav appreciated it. He wrote: सुरजीत भाई, मैं आपकी बात से सहमत हूँ और शुक्रगुजार हूँ की आपने हमारी भूल की तरफ ध्यान दिलाया, उम्मीद है आप धरने में आएंगे। Of course, I went to the dharna (sit-in demonstration). I also happily bore with blows of a colonial-era police’s lathis. I used to be so happy to be a part of the party back then. It did not matter that I was not an office bearer. The changes made in the vision document had indicated it was possible to keep the movement on track. I told Kejriwal during a meet of the Delhi team in December that farmers’ plight could not be addressed without amending the APMC Act. God knows whether he could make head or tail of the suggestion. He did nod to it nevertheless (now I see that there is no mention thereof in the AAP manifesto). In that same meeting, an activist from the Muslim-dominated Okhla village complained that he had no answer to the query of local residents as to what special package the party was offering to Muslims. Kejriwal snubbed him, “You think all the measures we are promising will benefit all Indians except Muslims? Is it health and education as state priority for all except Muslims? Will increasing the minimum support price for farmers not benefit Muslim farmers? …” The head of the AAP has obviously taken a policy U-turn since then. It became obvious during thesatyagraha he held to make people revolt against unfair electricity and water prices in March-April. I protested right on the first day (23 March), when Shahnaz Hindustani, an activist from Rajasthan who is the inaugural speaker in all campaign fixtures of the party, made an outrageous announcement from the stage: “People ask me, ‘You are a Muslim. Yet you are a patriot, How come?’” In the morning of 24 March, I shot an email to all members of the national executive in protest the next morning. A debate ensued as follows: Dear friends, I point out, with some distress, the invocations of religion in the speeches made from our stage officially. By speaking of the Mahabharata and Karbala (26 November 2012) and the Qur'an (23 March 2013), our orators are taking us along the same path of distorted secularism — appeasing all communities in turns, as if we were separate electorates — that has plagued the Indian nation state for the last 65 years. The party needs to emerge from this mindset, which was also betrayed during India against Corruption's August 2011 movement, whose epicentre was the Ramlila ground, where first Iftar was conducted ceremoniously in front of the stage and the next day, in a bid to 'balance' it, Janmashtami was celebrated! Yesterday, a speaker insisting he was a patriot despite being a Muslim was altogether unwarranted. Why is he suffering from a My Name is Khan kind of complex? Individually, let every member of the party be a believer, an agnostic or an atheist. But when one is using the party's platform, there should be total indifference to communal identities. Those who got a copy of the mail lauded my intervention when I reached Sundar Nagri (I was in charge of the Seemapuri constituency then). Bhushan patted my back and encouraged me to keep pointing out mistakes of the policy makers, as and when they caught my notice. Was that mere courtesy? The party leadership refused to mend its ways thereafter. On the concluding day of the hunger strike, Kejriwal paraded clerics of different religions on stage, each of whom declared that his community supported the party, as if all members of each of these communities were their slaves! I was terribly disturbed. I shot off another mail on 6 April: The practice of the distorted version of secularism continues unabated from our party platform in the form of parading padres, maulanas, swamis on stage. This is the road the Congress has travelled with disastrous results for the nation. By adopting the same means, can we reach a different end? I don't understand why we need 'contractors' of religious communities to declare from our stage that 'their people' are with us. For one, 'their' people did not send them elected to us. And what has religion got to do with the city's water and electricity supply? Only Prof Anand Kumar liked it. He wrote: This is a very important suggestion from you that we should be careful about remaining within the citizen-centric framework for our Party activities. The practice of political balancing has to be de-learned. Your polite reminders about the correct way of approaching the people in our work of mobilizations are very appreciable. With best wishes... The sentiment did not reflect in the constitution of committees that were to look into possible means to change the way the country is governed. It was not a problem that the party made a community-specific committee. Some communities indeed face some typical problems not observed in the midst of others. The problem was with the AAP’s erroneous understanding of the fundamentals. The name of the committee for Muslims figured under the topic, secularism! This is how I reacted, beginning 30 April: • May the people please know the credentials of the persons in the list above who have not been a part of the Jan Lokpal Movement, and the factors that led to their inclusion in the respective http://www.aamaadmiparty.org/MeetTheTeam.aspx? • What is the party trying to achieve by speaking of secularism and minorities in the same breath? Do the benefits of sections C1 - C5 and D1 - E3 exclude the 'minorities', because of which two separate sections C6 and C6a had to be created to address them? This, by the way, was a question Arvindji had thrown at a volunteer working in the Okhla area, who had demanded 'special packages' for the community that is dominant in his Vidhan Sabha constituency (this conversation took place in the first week of November 2012 in the PCRF office in Kaushambi, which is now our party office). Are the 'minorities' capable of thinking only about themselves, and not the remaining Indians, because of which they do not find a place in other committees? Most importantly, how do we plan to reach a different destination by traversing the same path as that of faltering political parties before us and the British Empire that looked at Indians as separate electorates? Even if we have a plan, is that intellectual or academic exercise discernible for the masses at large that are expected to distinguish between the likes of the Congress, SP, BSP, JD(U), JD(S) etc on the one hand and the AAP on the other? I guess not. At the hustings, the BJP can quite easily club us with them and make itself look distinct in the whole lot. The psephologists among those I address can figure out what that implies in terms of election results. The party turned defensive about its position this time. Yadav wrote: Surajit bhai, I have followed your mail and appreciate your vigilance in ensuring that we do not turn into a standard hypocritical party when it comes to secularism. Indeed we need to be watchful. we have to avoid three ways of being secular: there is Congress secularim which is often about selective appeasement of minorities and overlooking their real and substantive issues, the BJP secularism which wants to reduce the formal equality before law just to a formality and make the Muslims a second grade citizen and the communist secularism that treats anything religious as untouchable. We need to evolve a principled approach that can relate without any guilt to religious and cultural symbols and discuss the material and community related difficulties of any community whether it is majority or minority. On the Committee on Muslim Affairs, the simple reasoning is as follows: we have special policy groups looking at the condition of various social groups who are known to be be disadvantaged. so we have groups on women, urban slums, dalits, adivasis. it is in this spirit that we have a group on Muslims, but not on Sikhs or Christians. The Muslims are not just a minority, they are (according to the data published by the Government and a report placed before the parliament)disadvantaged social group: their education, economic and employment profile places them at par with or below dalits. This is a good reason to have a group to look at their issues. Hope this clarifies. On 1 May I responded: Yogendraji, a question remains unanswered. Why do our Muslim friends figure only in the committee for Muslims? Are they incapable of thinking about other Indians? Also, going by your reasoning, the category should have been named "Social justice and Muslims" rather than "Secularism and minorities". The nomenclature shows we, as Indians, continue to distort the meaning of secularism/laïcité and wantonly subscribe to the distortion. Hindus and Muslims alike will trust such a party/government to deliver justice on occasions of dispute that demonstrates that it does not view Indians through the religious/communal prism. Secularism means being non-religious. And that is distinct from being irreligious, a synonym of immoral. The second is a canard spread to malign the noble philosophy so that politicians continue to play footsie with one community at a time like the British did (today it's euphemised as "sarva dharma samabhav"). I am not asking my party to follow France to ban pagdis or Iceland to proscribe minarets. Neither am I pleading with you to emulate the CPI that had issued a show-cause notice to Indrajit Gupta for getting his head tonsured following his father's death. These are instances of Stalinism, not secularism. I only pray my party stays aloof from religious/communal considerations in public view, while its individual members continue to be theists, atheists or agnostics at home.” Yadav wrote back: Surajit bhai, There are two separate entities here. One is a Policy Group on "Secularism and Minorities" that is looking at what should be our version of secularism and how should religious and linguistic minorities be treated in a secular state. The second is a Task Force exclusively devoted to the Muslim issues. This is exactly like our structure on the caste question: we have a Policy Group on Caste and reservations and Task Forces on Dalit and Adivasi issues. You seem to be convinced that Secularism is synonymous with French style laicité and religious is synonymous with communal. I hope that the party would have an open mind about these questions. Since you take a lot of interest in academic literature, I would like to draw your attention to t

• Answer:

  no,I guess its totally different but yes,the views and notions and the pomises are same.