By: Shruti Kapila
There is nothing aam about the aam aadmi. The capture of the capital points only to the extraordinary arrival of a party in his name on India’s democratic landscape. Though specific to Indian conditions, the arrival of such a politics is not unique in the contemporary moment. Across the global south, from Tahrir to Taksim Square, the opening years of this decade have seen the so-called ordinary person bursting into a visible prominence. But the appearance of a global commonality might be deceptive. Delhi’s sprawling, if forbidding, architecture of political power, has over the last two winters, witnessed congregations of the self-proclaimed common man or aam aadmi.
Now and Then
AAP has created a political rhetoric that focuses on the urgency of the present, a demand of the here and now and the immediate. A brief historical genealogy is instructive. In a rhetoric filled with anti- this and anti-that, it is anti-Congressism that gives AAP its most stable and coherent reference point.
At the height of the Indian nation’s love affair with Nehru, Rammanohar Lohia had famously coined ‘anti-Congressism’, signaling exhaustion with the single national party and anger at dynastic power. In the 1960s, this politics of negation powerfully unseated Congress hegemony in several states. It was a decade not entirely dissimilar to the current one, for then as now, both violent and nonviolent communist and radical movements had appeared in the countryside. While agrarian capitalism and inadequate land reforms were significant then, today, while those older issues persist, land has become the single largest issue, in town and country alike.
Anti-Congress, anti-English and anti-upper caste, Lohia’s project, though, was not a mere sum of negations. A distinctive, if now forgotten, brand of socialism that had as much Gandhi as it had Marx, made Lohia not only an astute politician who changed the given equation of numbers, but above all a major political thinker, if not a visionary. A synthetic thinker, Lohia navigated but departed from established political languages of the day and repeatedly returned to the social question. From public expenditure to entitlement and from considerations on violence to foreign policy, Lohia mobilized the pen, the courtroom and the very object of democracy, the ‘people’. The ironic legacy of Lohia is that he is seen to be, and with some justification, the thinker behind the political and legal empowerment of the Other Backward Castes. The ‘social’ or the ‘people’ were increasingly identified in this project, and by some of his successors, as the OBC. Though Lohia coined and occasionally used the term aam aadmi, it did not gain any attention then. Was it an untimely term? Or is it that the aam aadmi belongs not so much to the social logic but to the pall of populism?
In the intervening decades, Lohia’s inventive logic of coalitions became ascendant, with the OBC emerging as a major, if not the greatest beneficiary of such a political mathematics. Mobilizations too multiplied as they became complex and mediatised. Advani’s rath yatra that captured television screens ensued from the legal empowerment of the OBC in the nineties, and inaugurated a democratic if contested mandate for Hindtuva. Like AAP today, there were others who made spectacular entries, whether it was N T Rama Rao or more recently Mamata Bannerjee, both of whom have appealed, above all, to a populist sentiment.
Political sentiment of populism
Bursting between the bipartisan poles of the Delhi city-state, AAP has articulated anger and exhaustion. It is a curious underdog, which has, unsurprisingly, received a rapturous response from a powerful media. Shorn of a political project, AAP has instead created equivalence between different demands and issues. Corruption, dynastic power, household bills, amenities, rape and now sexuality, all appear alike, demanding attention and inciting rage. Inherent to its populist logic, sentiment and a sanctimonious disposition is key to the aam aadmi’s political performance. This equivalence is, however, marked by a common antagonist or enemy, namely established political power and arguably, parliamentary democracy itself.
A handful of critics have pointed out that devoid of politics, AAP is a sign of our neoliberal times where efficiency and transparency trump more traditional political concerns, not least equality and social justice. Not entirely untrue, the current urban thrust of the party has, nevertheless, cut across sections and looks increasingly like a popular rather than a class unity. The logic of the social, that in the Indian case unmistakably carries the stigmata of caste, is singularly, if not ominously, absent. In an age of ascendant Hindutva and a time of resurgent riots, only the deliberately ignorant can declare this phenomenon as marking the end of identity politics.
A mere taunt from an established Congressman converted this ‘movement’ into a player in party politics. Though now not elusive, political power is likely to trigger an identity crisis for the celebrated arriviste. The question of responsibility for its mandate will force the party to confront its antagonism to political power and establishment. If the ‘people’ of democracy are neither a caste nor class but only signify an ordinary anger of extraordinary proportions and heightened perceptions of disempowerment, then AAP looks less like its urban global counterparts. Instead it can be compared to another configuration from the United States. American democracy, which the AAP leader Arvind Kejriwal often cites approvingly, has seen the populist appeal of the Tea Party that also authentically speaks to the concerns of the so-called ordinary and the seemingly disempowered in a bipartisan establishment. The Tea-Party too mobilized an important symbol from America’s anti-colonial struggle much like the Gandhi-cap that now announces the aam aadmi.
AAP’s achievement thus is not the wedge in bipartisan poles that have appeared with regularity, inasmuch as bipartisanism in India remains elusive. Rather, the aam aadmi’s greatest achievement is its name, which, as of now, remains a name without content.
The writer teaches modern Indian history at the University of Cambridge
There is nothing aam about the aam aadmi. The capture of the capital points only to the extraordinary arrival of a party in his name on India’s democratic landscape. Though specific to Indian conditions, the arrival of such a politics is not unique in the contemporary moment. Across the global south, from Tahrir to Taksim Square, the opening years of this decade have seen the so-called ordinary person bursting into a visible prominence. But the appearance of a global commonality might be deceptive. Delhi’s sprawling, if forbidding, architecture of political power, has over the last two winters, witnessed congregations of the self-proclaimed common man or aam aadmi.
Now and Then
AAP has created a political rhetoric that focuses on the urgency of the present, a demand of the here and now and the immediate. A brief historical genealogy is instructive. In a rhetoric filled with anti- this and anti-that, it is anti-Congressism that gives AAP its most stable and coherent reference point.
At the height of the Indian nation’s love affair with Nehru, Rammanohar Lohia had famously coined ‘anti-Congressism’, signaling exhaustion with the single national party and anger at dynastic power. In the 1960s, this politics of negation powerfully unseated Congress hegemony in several states. It was a decade not entirely dissimilar to the current one, for then as now, both violent and nonviolent communist and radical movements had appeared in the countryside. While agrarian capitalism and inadequate land reforms were significant then, today, while those older issues persist, land has become the single largest issue, in town and country alike.
Anti-Congress, anti-English and anti-upper caste, Lohia’s project, though, was not a mere sum of negations. A distinctive, if now forgotten, brand of socialism that had as much Gandhi as it had Marx, made Lohia not only an astute politician who changed the given equation of numbers, but above all a major political thinker, if not a visionary. A synthetic thinker, Lohia navigated but departed from established political languages of the day and repeatedly returned to the social question. From public expenditure to entitlement and from considerations on violence to foreign policy, Lohia mobilized the pen, the courtroom and the very object of democracy, the ‘people’. The ironic legacy of Lohia is that he is seen to be, and with some justification, the thinker behind the political and legal empowerment of the Other Backward Castes. The ‘social’ or the ‘people’ were increasingly identified in this project, and by some of his successors, as the OBC. Though Lohia coined and occasionally used the term aam aadmi, it did not gain any attention then. Was it an untimely term? Or is it that the aam aadmi belongs not so much to the social logic but to the pall of populism?
In the intervening decades, Lohia’s inventive logic of coalitions became ascendant, with the OBC emerging as a major, if not the greatest beneficiary of such a political mathematics. Mobilizations too multiplied as they became complex and mediatised. Advani’s rath yatra that captured television screens ensued from the legal empowerment of the OBC in the nineties, and inaugurated a democratic if contested mandate for Hindtuva. Like AAP today, there were others who made spectacular entries, whether it was N T Rama Rao or more recently Mamata Bannerjee, both of whom have appealed, above all, to a populist sentiment.
Political sentiment of populism
Bursting between the bipartisan poles of the Delhi city-state, AAP has articulated anger and exhaustion. It is a curious underdog, which has, unsurprisingly, received a rapturous response from a powerful media. Shorn of a political project, AAP has instead created equivalence between different demands and issues. Corruption, dynastic power, household bills, amenities, rape and now sexuality, all appear alike, demanding attention and inciting rage. Inherent to its populist logic, sentiment and a sanctimonious disposition is key to the aam aadmi’s political performance. This equivalence is, however, marked by a common antagonist or enemy, namely established political power and arguably, parliamentary democracy itself.
A mere taunt from an established Congressman converted this ‘movement’ into a player in party politics. Though now not elusive, political power is likely to trigger an identity crisis for the celebrated arriviste. The question of responsibility for its mandate will force the party to confront its antagonism to political power and establishment. If the ‘people’ of democracy are neither a caste nor class but only signify an ordinary anger of extraordinary proportions and heightened perceptions of disempowerment, then AAP looks less like its urban global counterparts. Instead it can be compared to another configuration from the United States. American democracy, which the AAP leader Arvind Kejriwal often cites approvingly, has seen the populist appeal of the Tea Party that also authentically speaks to the concerns of the so-called ordinary and the seemingly disempowered in a bipartisan establishment. The Tea-Party too mobilized an important symbol from America’s anti-colonial struggle much like the Gandhi-cap that now announces the aam aadmi.
AAP’s achievement thus is not the wedge in bipartisan poles that have appeared with regularity, inasmuch as bipartisanism in India remains elusive. Rather, the aam aadmi’s greatest achievement is its name, which, as of now, remains a name without content.
The writer teaches modern Indian history at the University of Cambridge
