He shunned politics, agreeing with his then mentor, Hazare, that the political system required a total overhaul since the existing set of politicians were all bikau or purchasable.

But after the agitation fizzled out, Kejriwal did a u-turn – the first of several – by becoming a politician himself by forming the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) which was hailed at the time as the harbinger of a new era in Indian politics.

The party’s image of being cleansers of the supposedly rotten system with a jhhadu (broom), its election symbol, enabled it to gain power in Delhi. But Kejriwal’s anarchic instincts made him stage a dharna on the road and threaten to disrupt the Republic Day parade over a charter of demands even while he was the chief minister. When his melodrama failed to produce the desired results, he resigned after 49 days in office.

But the Delhi electorate kept its faith with him, electing him back to office with 67 seats in the 70-member assembly in 2015 and 2020. However, Kejriwal’s personality underwent a change during this period. Although he retained his penchant for dharnas – sitting inside the Raj Niwas this time rather than on the road – his party and government found the key to electoral success: the well-known “B-S-P” (bijli-sadak-pani) formula.

He also turned from an anarchist to a conformist – an abrupt u-turn – but his conformism was to what he apparently considered the dominant political discourse of the time: Hindutva. Hence, his slogans at a rally to mark his latest electoral victory were Bharat Mata ki Jai and Vande Mataram.

Both have the BJP’s stamp on them along with its hallmark, Jai Shri Ram, but if Kejriwal did not use the last named slogan, it is presumably because he is trying to steer a careful course between the two poles of the political scene at the moment – the BJP on the right and its “secular” opponents on the left. However, the line which Kejriwal is following is generally characterized as soft Hindutva as opposed to the BJP’s hard version

There are other parties which have adopted the same stance, mostly because it enables them to remain in power either in the states or as a part of the BJP’s government at the centre. Among them in the states are chief minister Nitish Kumar’s Janata Dal (United) in Bihar and Naveen Patnaik’s Biju Janata Dal (BJD) in Odisha along with Prakash Singh Badal’s Akali and Ramvilas Paswan’s Lok Janshakti Party (LJP) at the centre.

Although there are occasional differences between them and the BJP such as the Nitish Kumar government’s opposition to any changes in the national population register and the LJP’s criticism of the BJP leaders who incited violence that led to the Delhi riots, the proximity of these parties to the ruling party at the centre draws a sharp distinction between them and the “secular” opposition.

Is Kejriwal on his way to becoming another Nitish Kumar, or Naveen Patnaik? Up until his latest posturing, Kejriwal was considered close to the BJP’s opponents if only because he was battling the BJP in Delhi. But even while taking on the BJP, Kejriwal distanced himself from issues which rile the BJP, such as the student unrest in the Jamia Millia University and Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) and the anti-citizenship law protests by Muslim women in Delhi’s Shaheen Bagh locality.

Before the election, this circumspection was interpreted as a tactical ploy by the AAP to avoid falling into the BJP’s trap by enabling the latter to portray Kejriwal as anti-Hindu. The same caution was seen in the AAP’s overt demonstration of its devotion to the Hindu deity, Hanuman. If the BJP worships Ram, the AAP prays to Hanuman.

So far, so dexterous. But two developments have cast doubts on the AAP’s politics by tending to show it as opportunistic rather than principled. One is the curious failure of its 62 MLAs to play an active role in dousing the communal fires during the Delhi riots. The other is the permission given by the Kejriwal government to the police to prosecute the former JNU student leader, Kanhaiya Kumar, and several of his colleagues on charges of sedition.

Since Kanhaiya Kumar, now a CPI leader, has been a thorn in the BJP’s flesh with his fiery speeches, the BJP has long wanted him to be put behind bars. But apart from this objective of the ruling party at the centre, what stands out is the AAP’s distance from the “secular” camp which is coming around to the view that the colonial-era law on sedition should be dumped. It will be interesting to see whether this distance increases or becomes less. (IPA Service)