Apart from all its other famous attributes, civilised and vibrant Varanasi is probably the easiest place in India for a woman to walk up to a bunch of men late in the evening and ask a political question. These days, however, you don’t even have to complete the question. All you have to say is Arvind Kejriwal.
Given that Varanasi’s Lok Sabha election is nearly six weeks away, given that neither Narendra Modi nor his challenger, Arvind Kejriwal, has filed nomination papers yet, and given that one major party, the Congress, is yet to declare a candidate, the buzz might seem premature. Actually, it is not. It is an accurate reflection of the contradictory currents coursing through an extraordinary contest that is already the talk of the country.
On the one hand, the hope of becoming a prime ministerial constituency seems to be ensuring the swift spread of euphoria across Varanasi for Narendra Modi, cutting across social groups. Apart from the upper castes and traders exultantly rooting for Modi's Bharatiya Janata Party, you hear some among other backward castes and Dalits, and very occasionally, a Muslim, responding enthusiastically to his larger-than-life aura and his promise to transform a city with faltering industries and tottering infrastructure.
Yet Modi’s polarising persona creates its own tensions in a heterogeneous city: for Muslims, for the secular-minded, for communists, for anyone who does not subscribe to the Hindutva ideology, with his personality cult, his economic arguments and his Gujarat narrative.
Enter Arvind Kejriwal, who challenges Modi on most of these fronts; who recently confronted him in his citadel, Ahmedabad; who, oblivious to the BJP strongman’s chappan inch ki chhati (56-inch chest), impertinently calls him a chaiwala, a tea-seller flying around on Mukesh Ambani’s planes. His workers display slogans in Varanasi like, “Vikas ka naara farzi hai/ Insaaf se allergy hai (the mantra of development is fake, and there is no justice) and “Pehle lade the goron se/ Ab ladege choron se” (first we fought the white people, now we’ll fight the crooks).
You would think the Modi supporters who sneeringly dismiss Kejriwal’s challenge as a no-contest would just ignore him. But they don’t. They show him black flags, and hurl ink and eggs at him – anday, jhanday, danday in AAP’s inspired phraseology. Instead of intimidating the incorrigible Kejriwal, they have given him more ammunition and help build the profile of this underdog in the fight.
Since his debut rally in the constituency last Tuesday, the rumble of hostility against Kejriwal emanating from Varanasi’s famed ghats – a dense thicket of saffron activism – has only grown louder. At first, he was being flayed mainly as a “bhagora” (deserter) who had abandoned power in Delhi. Now, following Modi’s first direct attack on him, he is being denounced, in artfully managed tea-shop chatter, as “not just a 420 but a 840” who takes foreign money and a “Pakistani agent” bent on conducting a referendum in Kashmir. Corny SMSes are making the rounds saying , “Jo lad na paya khansi se, woh kya ladega Kashi mein”. (How can the man who could not fight his own cough fight in Kashi?) Every which way, Kejriwal is part of the conversation.
Kejriwal has also brought spice to an unequal battle by attracting, in a short space of time, three kinds of Banarsis to his audacious campaign.
First, Muslims who, at 300,000, are a strong presence in the 16 lakh electorate and, for the most part, viscerally opposed to a Modi victory. A day after Kejriwal’s Varanasi rally, there was discernable affection for the “Dilli Party” as it had been dubbed in Badi Bazaar, a Muslim-dominated hub of the local powerloom industry. It was clear, over several conversations, that Kejriwal had pressed the right buttons with his trenchant attack on Modi, the dexterous pluralism at his rally (chants of Har Har Mahadev counterpoised with a respectful pause when the sound of the azaan wafted over Benia Bagh maidan) and with his “different” message for Muslims.
“He is not fighting for Muslims,” said powerloom owner Ateeqe Ansari, an ardent fan, “he is fighting for the aam admi, of which the Muslim is one too. He is inviting us to become Hindustani voters, not Muslim voters.” He added with a chuckle, “I just love his antics, look how he got the gas price hike stuck in technical issues."
Secondly, in Varanasi, as elsewhere, the Aam Aadmi Party is attracting those among the educated youth who crave participation in the big debates on governance and citizenship. Scattered across Benia Bagh after AAP’s debut were owners of computer centres and tuition centres, travel executives, college lecturers and salesmen. Many confessed they had never before attended a political rally. Importantly, no hired buses had brought them there.
It is a journalistic reflex, while reporting from Uttar Pradesh, to try and gauge the caste of an interviewee, on the presumption, often correct, that it shapes what he or she says. But it was not happening in these conversations about AAP. Here were Brahmins, Yadavs, Patels and Muslims with similar-sounding passionate arguments, even copious statistics, on corruption, development and political accountability.
The third point to note is the emerging class dimension to this feisty contest. Some of Varanasi’s underclass, for example waiters in hotels and rickshaw-pullers, show some sympathy for the broom-weilding “common man’s politician” and contest the dominant narrative that Kejriwal dumped office because he was a neophyte politician who could not handle power and responsibility.
Animated talk in the squalid lanes of Passiana, a semi-urban ghetto largely inhabited by members of the Scheduled Caste Pasi community, showed that AAP’s projection of Kejriwal as a fakir “who owns just three shirts, one now ink-stained”, and who had renounced power for principle, has filtered down.
If a week is a long time in politics, six weeks is eternity, especially in the treacherous terrain of Uttar Pradesh. Last week, there were already signs of the battle getting murkier, with the announcement that Mukhkar Ansari, the mafia don who was narrowly defeated by the BJP’s Murli Manohar Joshi in this constituency in 2009, was once again entering the ring in Varanasi. As theories flew around about “a BJP plot” to divide the Muslim vote, Kejriwal’s nonplussed Muslim supporters, who had already put effort into persuading Ansari not to stand, redoubled their efforts.
Ateeqe Ansari, who had campaigned vigorously for Mukhtar in 2009, suggested earlier this week, in a phone conversation, that they may have succeeded. “I told Mukhtar’s political advisers,” he said, “that Muslims will feel even more sorrow than they did at his defeat in the last Lok Sabha election if he enters the maidan this time against Kejriwal.”
That is quite a testimonial for the Dilliwala to receive from Purvanchalis one week into his campaign.
One the other hand, as new candidates enter the fray, this riveting contest will no doubt slip and slide in many directions. It cannot be predicted whether the “crazy man who has taken on Modi” will get all that he wants from his electoral adventure in Varanasi. But that, then, is the essence of Arvind Kejriwal’s politics – to take actions whose consequences cannot be predicted.
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Given that Varanasi’s Lok Sabha election is nearly six weeks away, given that neither Narendra Modi nor his challenger, Arvind Kejriwal, has filed nomination papers yet, and given that one major party, the Congress, is yet to declare a candidate, the buzz might seem premature. Actually, it is not. It is an accurate reflection of the contradictory currents coursing through an extraordinary contest that is already the talk of the country.
On the one hand, the hope of becoming a prime ministerial constituency seems to be ensuring the swift spread of euphoria across Varanasi for Narendra Modi, cutting across social groups. Apart from the upper castes and traders exultantly rooting for Modi's Bharatiya Janata Party, you hear some among other backward castes and Dalits, and very occasionally, a Muslim, responding enthusiastically to his larger-than-life aura and his promise to transform a city with faltering industries and tottering infrastructure.
Yet Modi’s polarising persona creates its own tensions in a heterogeneous city: for Muslims, for the secular-minded, for communists, for anyone who does not subscribe to the Hindutva ideology, with his personality cult, his economic arguments and his Gujarat narrative.
Enter Arvind Kejriwal, who challenges Modi on most of these fronts; who recently confronted him in his citadel, Ahmedabad; who, oblivious to the BJP strongman’s chappan inch ki chhati (56-inch chest), impertinently calls him a chaiwala, a tea-seller flying around on Mukesh Ambani’s planes. His workers display slogans in Varanasi like, “Vikas ka naara farzi hai/ Insaaf se allergy hai (the mantra of development is fake, and there is no justice) and “Pehle lade the goron se/ Ab ladege choron se” (first we fought the white people, now we’ll fight the crooks).
You would think the Modi supporters who sneeringly dismiss Kejriwal’s challenge as a no-contest would just ignore him. But they don’t. They show him black flags, and hurl ink and eggs at him – anday, jhanday, danday in AAP’s inspired phraseology. Instead of intimidating the incorrigible Kejriwal, they have given him more ammunition and help build the profile of this underdog in the fight.
Since his debut rally in the constituency last Tuesday, the rumble of hostility against Kejriwal emanating from Varanasi’s famed ghats – a dense thicket of saffron activism – has only grown louder. At first, he was being flayed mainly as a “bhagora” (deserter) who had abandoned power in Delhi. Now, following Modi’s first direct attack on him, he is being denounced, in artfully managed tea-shop chatter, as “not just a 420 but a 840” who takes foreign money and a “Pakistani agent” bent on conducting a referendum in Kashmir. Corny SMSes are making the rounds saying , “Jo lad na paya khansi se, woh kya ladega Kashi mein”. (How can the man who could not fight his own cough fight in Kashi?) Every which way, Kejriwal is part of the conversation.
Kejriwal has also brought spice to an unequal battle by attracting, in a short space of time, three kinds of Banarsis to his audacious campaign.
First, Muslims who, at 300,000, are a strong presence in the 16 lakh electorate and, for the most part, viscerally opposed to a Modi victory. A day after Kejriwal’s Varanasi rally, there was discernable affection for the “Dilli Party” as it had been dubbed in Badi Bazaar, a Muslim-dominated hub of the local powerloom industry. It was clear, over several conversations, that Kejriwal had pressed the right buttons with his trenchant attack on Modi, the dexterous pluralism at his rally (chants of Har Har Mahadev counterpoised with a respectful pause when the sound of the azaan wafted over Benia Bagh maidan) and with his “different” message for Muslims.
“He is not fighting for Muslims,” said powerloom owner Ateeqe Ansari, an ardent fan, “he is fighting for the aam admi, of which the Muslim is one too. He is inviting us to become Hindustani voters, not Muslim voters.” He added with a chuckle, “I just love his antics, look how he got the gas price hike stuck in technical issues."
Secondly, in Varanasi, as elsewhere, the Aam Aadmi Party is attracting those among the educated youth who crave participation in the big debates on governance and citizenship. Scattered across Benia Bagh after AAP’s debut were owners of computer centres and tuition centres, travel executives, college lecturers and salesmen. Many confessed they had never before attended a political rally. Importantly, no hired buses had brought them there.
It is a journalistic reflex, while reporting from Uttar Pradesh, to try and gauge the caste of an interviewee, on the presumption, often correct, that it shapes what he or she says. But it was not happening in these conversations about AAP. Here were Brahmins, Yadavs, Patels and Muslims with similar-sounding passionate arguments, even copious statistics, on corruption, development and political accountability.
The third point to note is the emerging class dimension to this feisty contest. Some of Varanasi’s underclass, for example waiters in hotels and rickshaw-pullers, show some sympathy for the broom-weilding “common man’s politician” and contest the dominant narrative that Kejriwal dumped office because he was a neophyte politician who could not handle power and responsibility.
Animated talk in the squalid lanes of Passiana, a semi-urban ghetto largely inhabited by members of the Scheduled Caste Pasi community, showed that AAP’s projection of Kejriwal as a fakir “who owns just three shirts, one now ink-stained”, and who had renounced power for principle, has filtered down.
If a week is a long time in politics, six weeks is eternity, especially in the treacherous terrain of Uttar Pradesh. Last week, there were already signs of the battle getting murkier, with the announcement that Mukhkar Ansari, the mafia don who was narrowly defeated by the BJP’s Murli Manohar Joshi in this constituency in 2009, was once again entering the ring in Varanasi. As theories flew around about “a BJP plot” to divide the Muslim vote, Kejriwal’s nonplussed Muslim supporters, who had already put effort into persuading Ansari not to stand, redoubled their efforts.
Ateeqe Ansari, who had campaigned vigorously for Mukhtar in 2009, suggested earlier this week, in a phone conversation, that they may have succeeded. “I told Mukhtar’s political advisers,” he said, “that Muslims will feel even more sorrow than they did at his defeat in the last Lok Sabha election if he enters the maidan this time against Kejriwal.”
That is quite a testimonial for the Dilliwala to receive from Purvanchalis one week into his campaign.
One the other hand, as new candidates enter the fray, this riveting contest will no doubt slip and slide in many directions. It cannot be predicted whether the “crazy man who has taken on Modi” will get all that he wants from his electoral adventure in Varanasi. But that, then, is the essence of Arvind Kejriwal’s politics – to take actions whose consequences cannot be predicted.
