It was the contempt for the parliamentary process which made Prashant Bhushan, one of the stalwarts of the Anna movement, spell out his ideas in a TV programme for a “new” India in which referendums will play a major role in official decision-making, thereby putting the people ahead of the cynical politicians and their practice of ascertaining the will of the people only once in five years.

These views preceded Anna’s scheduled meeting in Mumbai in December, 2011, which was expected to set the country on its new course. However, since the meeting turned out to be a flop show, India was spared the experiment. Instead, the empty grounds in the Bandra-Kurla area apparently persuaded Bhushan and his ally of the time, Arvind Kejriwal, to switch to electoral politics although their mentor of the period, Anna, was scornful of not only the existing system, but also of the voters who he described as bikau or prone to be bought with liquor and money by the sleazy politicians.

It is this iconoclasm of AAP which has bred an overweening sanctimoniouness among its members, making them look down not only on the political class but also on other mortals, including the media, which was once threatened with imprisonment by Kejriwal. Their impatience with scrutiny was also evident when Kejriwal’s Man Friday, Manish Sisodia, told the media not to be spokespersons for the police when the AAP was under pressure from the supposedly “illegal” directives of Somnath Bharti, then a minister, to raid the residences of some Africans in Delhi’s Khirki area.

It was only a question of time, therefore, before the same feeling of impatience induced Kejriwal to oust those who either questioned him or who he perceived as threats to his position. It is not impossible that this “trust deficit” between him and Yogendra Yadav and Bhushan, as noted by an AAP member, Mayank Gandhi, is the result of the fact that the party’s formation hasn’t been via a “normal” process.

Unlike most parties which come into being when people subscribing to the same ideology come together and remain united through thick and thin, the AAP is virtually a group of activists who saw the upsurge of anger against the Manmohan Singh government on the corruption issue as an opportunity to build their political fortunes. However, there was no ideological coherence among them except that of the dreamy one of ridding the country of the widespread graft.

As a result, the AAP comprised people like Bhushan, who is seen as a sympathizer of Maoists and Kashmiri separatists, or his father, Shanti Bhushan, who was with the BJP, or Yadav, who is a “socialist” but does not go as far to the left as Prashant Bhushan, or Kiran Bedi, a former police officer, who is seemingly motivated by her anti-Congress outlook by the denial of the Delhi police commissioner’s post, and so on.

So far as Kejriwal is concerned, his primary identification hasn’t been with any ideology so much as with his anarchism which was certified by his own admission when he was the chief minister in 2014. Clearly, it would have been too much to expect such a diverse combination of people to act unitedly. Moreover, their party has always seen political success within reach unlike most other parties which can go through years in the wilderness, helping them to separate the grain from the chaff among their members.

To make matters worse, the Delhi electorate may have done the AAP a disservice by giving it such an overwhelming mandate before the party has been able to coalesce into a coherent unit. To be fair, Kejriwal apparently sensed the possible pitfalls of power considering that he called upon the party members to eschew arrogance during his speech after being sworn-in as the chief minister for the second time.

But, trying to be humble is something which is easier said than done. The remarkable success in Delhi and the possibility that it may be followed in the Mumbai municipal elections as well appear to have bolstered Kejriwal’s innate authoritarianism and made him reluctant to share the spotlight with others like Yadav and Bhushan who are his co-equals in being articulate and intellectually sharp.

This attitude is understandable from someone who was once called “power hungry” by Anna. Shanti Bhushan, too, accused Kejriwal of building a “personality cult around himself which is harming the party”. Kejriwal may have nominated Manish Sisodia as the deputy chief minister because he is sure of his servility. But, he is patently wary of anyone who can stand up to him, thereby showing that he has fully imbibed what Rahul Gandhi has criticized as the practice of political parties to be run by closed coteries. (IPA Service)