Why I endorse the Congress despite supporting the Aam Aadmi Party

In the present scenario, I am strongly in favour of the Aam Aadmi Party, not as a party but as a movement. To explain why I like it, I would have to go back to Gandhi. In him I see a great combination of societal concern and a streak of anarchy. But after independence, we accepted only one part of Gandhi—the worship-able one—and forgot the Gandhi who walked to Dandi and made salt. Quite a few of his actions went against the law and can be interpreted as anarchy.

Then we saw the “Gandhian”-like old man Anna Hazare, and with him the return of the khadi cap and public fasting. Anna Hazare is simple and not as intelligent—but frankly, we are tired of intellectuals. Hazare unleashed a new energy that the Aam Aadmi Party has inherited.

Despite corruption, some development is taking place in the country. But it is limited to certain pockets—like Gujarat, as Modi claims. Gandhi was a universalist. Modi is not. Modi symbolises all the greed that development has brought—heartlessness, the lack of sense of duty, and intelligence. It has all been lost to development. And they become blind to hungry children and mothers, schools without teachers, bad roads. It is a nightmare. Modi stands for that more than anyone else.

In India, there is a concept that if you want to build something, you have to first make a sacrifice. There is a popular Kannada folk story about a landlord who was building a lake for the entire village. When no water filled into the lake, he was told that he would have to make a human sacrifice. He chose his daughter-in-law, whose husband was away fighting a war. What he did for the entire village was considered pious.

I often use this story to explain bali (sacrifice) in today’s context. Modi has built his political fortune by giving a big bali during the Gujarat riots. He silenced the Muslims.

The minorities are also a reluctant bali in India’s modernisation. They refuse to be modernised and we are impatient. When I was chairman of the Review of School Education Committee in Kerala a few years ago, when AK Anthony was chief minister, I found that in Calicut’s Muslim areas girls wanted modern education but the timings clashed with their traditional classes at the madrasas. For me the solution was to just change the school timings. But such a solution would not occur to a “strong nation” advocate, because he would want uniformity. India has a multiplicity of castes, tastes, and customs. Uniformity doesn’t always work here. Besides, uniformity is most uncreative.

Gandhi projected decentralisation. He wanted little governments in all the villages and some central institution with no sovereign powers that would help them work together—what I would like to think of as a porcupine-like state, with decentralised defense. We should at least have an idea of that kind to give the world as an alternative.

This AAP’s agitation and thought process—which share some bold ideas of Gandhian anarchy—has some ancestry in our own times. Back then, Ram Manohar Lohia had advocated land acquisition. He had said not to wait and ask the government for permission to cultivate vacant land. This is right to life as opposed to the excessive right to property. In Karnataka, Professor MD Nanjundaswamy had organised the peasants to disobey the inhuman destruction of peasant society across many districts in the state. On Mondays, no government official was allowed to enter villages because it was to be observed as a holiday, since traditionally Monday is a holiday for the bullocks that plough the land.

Kejriwal has predecessors in both small and big leaders like Gandhi, Tolstoy, Lohia, Jayaprakash Narayan and Nanjundaswamy. The legal and the moral often clash in our country where inhuman customs of the past linger on. Which is why movements like the Aam Aadmi Party should be able to develop and grow in the darkness of Indian politics.

But despite being a supporter of AAP, I feel that they are not going to make a major breakthrough in Karnataka. Instead, what I forsee is that they will eat into Congress votes, and that is something that worries me because it will mean advantage BJP. In fact, I have had this discussion with many AAP leaders recently, whom I meet often. I’ve explained to them that while I fully support them, I am endorsing the Congress in Karnataka for the upcoming polls. The present state goverment under Chief Minister Siddaramaiah needs to be strengthened for the good of the state.

Coming together with other writers under the banner of Samakaleena Vichara Vedike, I just want to tell people not to support Modi. His brand of nationalism is dangerous. He will shut everyone up.

As told to Anuradha Nagaraj