• Valson Thampu

I am struck by the unthinkable similarity between King Mahabali of the Onam legend and Arvind Kejriwal of the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP). Many in Delhi would acknowledge the benefits derived from his people-friendly governance. I won’t be surprised if they feel secretly that Kejriwal is in trouble because of his popularity based on good governance. In this age of post-truth politics, it is not corruption that matters, but the party to which one belongs. The proverbial washing-machine-effect of migrating from other parties to the BJP is too familiar to warrant a mention.
Years ago, when I first became aware of the mythological moorings of Onam, I felt tantalized. Imagine a king getting into terrible trouble, as Mahabali did, for being righteous! As if that was not eerie enough, imagine the gods feeling unnerved by his pro-people governance, conspiring against him, and bringing about his banishment from the kingdom by Lord Vishnu disguised as Vamana! Why should righteousness in governance be an existential threat for the gods? What does this curious insight, rarely expressed as explicitly as in the Onam legend, tell us of the nature of gods, of kings, of politics, and, above all, of the relationship between religion and politics?
The chronological correlation between the eruption of the now infamous electoral bonds scam -which could presage ominous electoral prospects for the BJP- and the arrest of Kejriwal may be discounted as a mere coincidence. Even then, Arthur Koestler’s definition of ‘coincidence’ will lurk in the public mind concerning this event. A coincidence, he wrote, is ‘two events held together by an unseen hand’. When it comes to political coincidences of this kind, the extent to which the ventriloquist’s hands remain ‘unseen’ may only prove the fear that prevails in this regard. Then it becomes more a matter of the unwillingness to see, than of the inscrutability of the pattern.
The sequence of events that led to the arrest, including its timing, bears on two significant political realities: (a) formation of the INDIA alliance by the opposition parties, and (b) the falling apart, via the electoral bonds scandal, of the facade of BJP’s incorruptibility under Modi. Suddenly a plethora of behind-the-scene connections and considerations -a shady world of quid pro quos and legalized extortions- came to light. This shifted the focus to Kejriwal, the main rival to Modi’s claim to probity in public life, as never before. Modi and Kejriwal had been the principal contestants for the laurel of corruption-free governance in India. All other parties were deemed corrupt and beyond redemption. Now, in the wake of the electoral bonds revelations, secured strenuously by the Supreme Court like a dentist extracting an impacted tooth, Modi’s grandstanding on zero-tolerance for corruption (na khavoonga, na khane doonga) seemed to have had the merit merely of ‘not being found out’.
That left Arvind Kejriwal as Mahabali’s sole heir to the throne of righteous governance. That was not all. The art of getting under Modi’s skin had become second nature to the clean-India protagonist. Worse, he was fearless; because there was no chink, it appeared, in his armor. And, like in a nightmare, the corona of his appeal was spreading beyond Delhi. Aggravating the pestilence, there was Kejriwal’s chiseled rhetoric, spiced by satirical wit. Oratory, armed with credibility and courage, is a terrible thing for the adversary’s electoral fortunes. A free-roaming Kejriwal pouring ridicule on the Prime Minister, for which sufficient ammo was provided by the electoral bonds scam, is a luxury that Modi can ill-afford.
This brings us back, yet again, to the Onam legend. Good governance, as a reality rather than as a propagandist flourish, is good news only for ordinary subjects, or citizens, as the case may be. It is bad news for the ruling elite that, in every society, culture and age, bridges religion and politics. This not-so-hidden truth is the operating logic of the unholy alliance between religion and politics. That ‘alliance’ is dictated and driven, not by the requirements of good governance, but by a visceral commitment to perpetuate the interests and enlarge the privileges of the ruling elite. The idea of God that prevails in every society is shaped by the dispositions of the elite. The transcendental God may sit safely in his heavenly seat; but, upon the earth, politically nuanced gods are shaped by the elite and for the sake of the elite. Such man-choreographed gods are imperiled, and rendered superfluous, by good governance. If the earthly king can ensure your well-being, why bother about a heavenly one? As T.S. Eliot said, no man falls in love with heaven, until the earth fails him!
Good governance is bad news, especially, for the political elite. The essence of good governance, as Henry David Thoreau wrote in Resistance to Civil Government (May 1849) is ‘minimum government and maximum governance’. It will render the political class progressively redundant. More precisely, it runs counter to the logic, as Carlyle said (On Heroes, Hero-worship, and the Heroic in History, 1840) of the mass psychology of hero-worship. Demagogic heroes can be invented and idolized only to the deprivation and derogation of the people. Between their worth and the contrived superhuman stature of their political hero there is a relationship of inverse proportion. Under-development is the nursery of hero-worship.
The driving force of our public life today is the State-Corporates nexus. Given that, the sort of welfare politics and pro-citizens governance that Kejriwal champions is the ‘sin that will not be forgiven’. It ruins his eligibility to govern. Like Mahabali in the Onam story, he has to suffer the fate of being pushed down to the nether world. How dare he enter politics -the cynical art of the possible played out in a theatre of propagandist make-believe- advocating clean politics and righteous governance? It spoils the elite broth, to the cooking of which the means of a nation are to be designated. ‘Government of the people and by the people’ is all right in theory. So, let’s have elections. But, ‘government for the people’? Good heavens! It is a heresy against politics-as-religion?
The arrest of Kejriwal has stung the rank and file of India. Almost everyone I have heard from on the subject feels an atavistic unfairness at play here, even those who know not quite how. One is reminded of the response of Martin Niemoller, the German priest imprisoned for opposing Hitler. Asked by a visitor: ‘Martin, why are you in prison? He merely quipped: ‘Why are you out of it?’