A prominent Maldivian blogger, who was critical of Islamist extremism and government corruption, was stabbed to death on Sunday in Maldives capital.
A prominent Maldivian blogger, who was critical of Islamist extremism and government corruption, was stabbed to death on Sunday in Maldives capital. The main opposition party demanded an international probe into the killing. Social media activist Yameen Rasheed was stabbed 14 times in the chest and once each in the neck and face, local media reported. The 29-year-old blogger worked as a computer programmer and software developer at the Maldives Stock Exchange and identified himself as "disobedient writer" in social media. He ran a website called The Daily Panic.
Aamir Khan is known for staying away from award functions. The 53-year-old actor had also created a stir not long ago with his remark about growing intolerance in the country to an extent that his own wife was wondering whether they should migrate to another country. Right-wing Hindus had responded to his comments by calling for a boycott of his films, declared him “anti-national” and asked him to go to Pakistan.
That was in 2015. Now theIndian Express has a story about the same Aamir Khan accepting an award from RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat. He received the Vishesh Puraskar from Bhagwat at the 75th Dinanath Mangeshkar Awards function for his performance in Dangal, one of the biggest hits of 2016.
Dangal was based on the story of Mahavir Singh Phogat and his struggle to train his two daughters, Geeta Phogat and Babita Phogat, to win accolades in wrestling, a sport that is usually dominated by men.
“Today wherever I am, the credit goes to all the writers who have written my films. I am here because of the directors and writer for the wonderful work they’ve done. I thank all of them,” he said while receiving the award.
In the end, the polls were right. Emmanuel Macron will go into the second round of the French presidential election against Marine Le Pen.
For a while it seemed as though a dead heat were on the cards but, in the end, Macron took first place, with nearly 24%, ahead of Le Pen at just under 22%.
Republican candidate François Fillon and far-left contender Jean-Luc Mélenchon followed close behind, with Socialist Benoît Hamon trailing badly.
Despite coming second, for Le Pen and her supporters, the score is a disappointment. For so long, she was touted for first place and predicted a score as high as 27%. Even on the eve of the vote, some pundits were predicting the possibility of a score of 30%. Her score is well behind the 28% the Front National scored in the regional elections in December 2015. Above all, it reflects Le Pen’s failure to make the key aspects of her programme count in the campaign. She was strangely muted in the TV debates and now it shows.
Putting on a brave face. EPA/Ian Langsdon/The Conversation
The disappointment was clear on Le Pen’s face when she made her first TV appearance at a little after 9pm on the night of the vote. At her campaign HQ, by 10pm they’d turned off the TV screens and half her supporters had gone home while others were enjoying the disco.
All the polls that have run a Le Pen/Macron scenario for the second round have suggested a 60/40 split in favour of Macron. Le Pen will hope for better, of course, but while she has to believe she can win on May 7, it’s a very long shot.
The final result will have an impact on Le Pen and the future direction of the Front National. She is not in danger of being replaced if she loses; there is no alternative leader for the time being. But the strategy and the programme, largely devised by her acolyte Florian Philippot, will be put under the spotlight.
Her voters are loyal, and Le Pen will hope to secure a proportion of Fillon’s voters as well as those Mélenchon followers who cannot countenance supporting Macron. But with so many other candidates urging their followers to now back Macron, she has a lot of ground to cover in a very short space of time.
Fillon gracious in defeat
Despite Mélenchon’s late rally, it seems that Fillon is the third man in this race. At 8.45pm, he appeared at his campaign headquarters to deliver a remarkably dignified speech in which he accepted his defeat and called, without hesitation, for his supporters to vote for Macron in the second round.
Not all of them will. Le Pen will hope that the right wing Catholic vote will swing to her rather than Macron, for example. Nevertheless, with Fillon’s defeat, most of the Republican heavyweights came out in favour of Macron. It may even be that, in due course, once the allegations against him are out of the way and show him to be innocent, Fillon might even foresee a situation where he and other figures from the right might have a role to play between now and 2022.
Macron celebrates his victory. Photo credit: The Conversation
While Fillon demonstrated both restraint and dignity, throughout the evening Mélenchon and his camp showed the opposite. They refused to accept the projections based on exit polls, even as they appeared to confirm the gap between Macron and Le Pen, and again Fillon and Mélenchon. This is the downside of Mélenchonite. After the fever reaches its high point, it inevitably leads to disappointment, not to say depression. In 2012, having thought he might come third, Mélenchon slipped to fourth, and by a distance. In the last fortnight of this campaign, Mélenchon and his supporters convinced themselves that they would be in the second round. Fly high, fall far.
But Mélenchon succeeded in one of his missions: to reduce Socialist candidate Benoît Hamon to fifth place and a crushing 6.5%. Hamon was out of the blocks first, by 8.15pm, to call for his supporters to vote Macron. By nine, his HQ was empty, with only a handful of journalists hanging around.
Now, with the second round approaching on May 7, Le Pen will be hoping that Macron blunders. But until this point, he has avoided the obstacles thrown across his path, while Le Pen has failed to make her key points count. Perhaps, just perhaps, now that Fillon and Mélenchon are out of the way, Le Pen will find a second wind, and more easily be able to define her programme. She may take back the initiative that has eluded her so far in this campaign. To win she would have to win over a huge slice of the electorate that so far continues to regard a Le Pen presidency as an anathema.
This story was first published on The Conversation. Read the original.
Cow vigilantes attacked six people, including a 9-year-old girl in the Reasi district of Jammu and Kashmir on Friday and fled away with their flock. The vigilantes beat up the nomad community blue and black and the minor girl has suffered multiple fractures when the community was en route to Talwara area… (Times Now).
In yet another chilling instance of self-styled gau rakshaks targeting cattle traders — and mob mentality thriving undeterred — three men transporting buffaloes were attacked by “cow vigilantes” in south Delhi’s Kalkaji late Saturday (Hindustan Times).
“Cow protectionism was the spirit behind India’s freedom movement”. The innocuous looking statement by Ms Nirmala Sitharaman on the floor of the House when she defended the shutting of illegal slaughter houses in UP had not raised any debate then.
Now the real import of this statement is coming to the fore when the alleged killers of Pehlu Khan – a farmer from Haryana – are being compared with martyrs of freedom struggle. The video of the whole incident – where a lady, who heads a ‘cow protection group’ – who recently came into news when she allegedly forced Jaipur administration to close down a hotel owned by a Muslim under some flimsy pretext, has gone viral where she is comparing one of the accused in the case — who is part of a self-proclaimed band of cow vigilantes – as “Bhagat Singh and Chandra Shekhar Azad of today".
For close watchers of the incidents of cow vigilantism, which are increasingly coming under scanner everywhere, there was nothing surprising about this glorification. People had watched with horror when body of one of the accused in the Dadri lynching case was covered with tricolour. It is now history how the lynching took place when the crowd had been mobilised by giving open calls using loudspeaker placed on the local temple and the frenzied mob had killed Akhlaq in front of his house supposedly for storing beef.
When a senior minister of the central cabinet can even deny the happening of such an incident on the floor of the house and where the first FIR filed in this case is not against the violence unleashed upon the victims but the victims themselves on fraudulent charges, it is obvious that anything can happen in all such cases. Perhaps people in this part of South Asia have now to come to terms with this ‘new India’ which was promised to us post UP elections.
As plans are now afoot to organise a three-day national dharna outside the Rajasthan State Assembly from 24-26 April 2017 under the joint initiative of many political, social and human rights organisations, to protest killing of Pehlu Khan and demand justice for him, the sanitisation of the image of the murderers should worry us all.
Reports have appeared in a section of newspapers which tell that the murder accused are being projected as social activists. What is more disturbing is the manner in which freedom fighters are being openly humiliated by comparing them with fanatic murderers and historic struggle of Indian people for liberation is being trivialised. In fact, this has been an established practice of the saffrons now.
As every law abiding individual is watching with trepidation how “cow terror” is spreading throughout the country – from Dadri to Latehar, from Una to Alwar and from Jammu to now the national capital – with custodians of law and order turning mute spectators and “.. [h]uman slaughter in the name of the bovine” becoming “tragically the new normal in India. There are reports that the apex court of the country is also seized of the matter. In fact it intervened in the issue few days back and has sought responses not only from the Centre and but also six states within three weeks. The six states are Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh, Gujarat, Jharkhand, Maharashtra and Karnataka. Except for Congress-ruled Karnataka, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is in power in the remaining states. A three judge bench of the apex court is hearing public interest litigation petition filed by activists and an alleged victim of similar vigilantism.
According to reports focus of the petition is on “Animal protection laws such as the Maharashtra Animal Protection Act, 1956, which prohibit any legal action against persons for actions done in good faith under the law.” In fact, some states also grant the power of search-and-seize to officials under such laws. The petition also referred to a 2011 ruling of the apex court in which it had directed the government to disband vigilante groups.
Whether the honourable judges would give a direction on the issue and ban such groups and come forward to defend rule of law remains to be seen.
A two-day seminar ‘Towards Equality, Justice and Fraternity in Contemporary India: Creating a better Tomorrow Through Law’ being organised by Institute of Objective Studies, New Delhi at the Aliah University, Kolkata started today with a elaborative address by Justice Rajinder Sachar, former Chief Justice of Delhi High Court.
He talked about the growing economic disparity among Muslims and spoke for providing affirmative action to them. The government is deliberately targeting the community which is against the spirit of the constitution. Muslims need constitutional protection and all those who are speaking against secularism actually are working against Indian constitution.
Prof TK Ooman delivered a very thought provoking address and challenged the popular notion of nation state. He openly advocated that the state must not intervene in the cultural practices of diverse communities that live in India. He suggested mere constitutional provisions will never bring fraternity among citizens unless they learn to respect cultural diversity of the people. The government has no right to intrude into the personal affairs and cultural practices of communities.
Justice Ruma Pal, former judge of the Supreme Court spoke of the personal laws and suggested that changes must come from within from the community and efforts to make as uniform will not succeed. She suggested that Constitutional provisions will always defend women’s right when they are violated hence it will always override any personal laws when they are violated.
Justice KJ Sengupta, former Chief Justice of Hyderabad and now Lokayukta of Sikkim High Court asked people to work at the grassroots and think over the common issues. He also advised people to register their marriages under the Special Marriage Act, after Nikah as it will then protect women much more than anything else. Institute of Objective Studies Chairman Dr Manzoor Alam also spoke on the occasion.
In the Business Session presided over by Afjal Wani saw Prof SR Mondal speaking on knowledge Era, Ris society and Better Tomorrow: Global Challenges and local responses. Noted writer and activist Ram Puniyani spoke of the danger of the communal polarisation unleashed by the Sangh Parivar through creating biases and prejudices. We need to join hand to defeat the communal fascist forces. He said we must speak to counter the narrative being rumoured by the Sangh Parivar and it is time for all the political parties to join hands. Also it is important for the civil society organisations to work diligently together. He also said that technically our constitution is the best in the world but it need to fairly implemented at the ground level.
Speaking on the occasion noted human rights defender Ms Teesta Setalvad asked for a broader unity based on conviction to defend democracy and secularism in India and express solidarity with all the like minded segments who are fighting for the rights of the people. She also spoke of Dalits and Aadivasi struggle and applauded Jignesh Mewani of Gujarat for working towards the unity of all the marginalised communities. Ms Setalvad also cautioned the community of responding to every small issue and getting emotionally agitated on things including the Uniform Civil Code. She said what is left there as Muslim women have always have option to go to the court in case any issue comes out.
There were presentations from young scholars on triple talaq issues, role of Muslim Personal Law Board. A book, ‘Exclusions of Muslims in India Legitimacy: Legitimacy of the Constitutional State” written by Arsi Khan was also released on the occasion by the Justice Rajinder Sachar and all other dignitaries.
Prof Abu Talib Khan, the Vice Chancellor of Allah University Kolkata, welcomed the guests and hope the seminar would provide vision to face the future challenges.
Speaking on the occasion noted human rights defender Teesta Setalvad asked for a broader unity based on conviction to defend democracy and secularism in India and express solidarity with all the like minded segments who are fighting for the rights of the people. She also spoke of Dalits and adivasi struggle and applauded Jignesh Mewani of Gujarat for working towards the unity of all the marginalised communities.
John Dayal spoke of violence against Christians in Kandhamal and continuous oppression of Dalits in various parts of the country. He emphasised that we can not allow our Constitution to be assaulted and will have to prepare to fight long term battle. We need to track down each cases carefully and look into the way the cases have been filed and followed up by the authorities like what he himself was engaged with people of Kandhamal who faced the worst violence against them in independent India’s history.
Activist Vidya Bhushan Rawat said that South Asia has majoritarian tendencies where minorities are despised and it is time we talk of minority rights in South Asia. A minority in India is a majority in Pakistan, Bangladesh or vice versa. And in all the states in South Asia, condition of minorities is serious and hence we need serious thinking over it. The anti- cow slaughter movement in India is turning like Blasphemy law of Pakistan mainly targeting the marginalised and minorities and we must speak against it. While we must defend constitutional values and rights, we must have enough space for introspection to our failures too.
Manzoor Alam, Chairman at Institute of Objective Studies, said that two more seminar in this series would be organised this year with final one in Delhi to commemorate the 30th year celebrations of the founding of Institute of Objective Studies.
We are living in a society that is increasingly becoming intolerant towards our food choices, our clothing, our lifestyles, our very raison d’etre of existence. If you are a minority, and especially a Muslim, then the fear is overwhelming. The choice is either between conformity or fear of bodily harm. This is a problem, and the first step towards solving any problem is the sincere need to acknowledge that there is a problem.
The intolerance is not just restricted to remote rural villages in the hinterland. The venom has crept right into my and your cozy urban bubbles, where we like to insulate ourselves. I am not even talking about the shameful attacks that took place in South Delhi, where three men were assaulted by the “so-called Gau-Rakshaks”.
I am talking about well educated, influential people providing rationalisation to vigilante attacks, which in any other civilised country would have been thoroughly condemned across all political spectrum.
Take for instance, Harbir Singh. A first look at his Facebook profile, and you would see someone, who has had the best of upbringing, the best of education, a promising career. He happens to be a social media influencer, writes occasional columns for Times of India and his spouse is a Senior Assistant Editor with the same newspaper.
But Dwell deeper into his thinking, and you would come to terms with a very different uncomfortable reality of his thoughts. Here is a Facebook post (which has now been deleted), that he made in the light of the recent increased cow-vigilantism. This post had close to 200 likes and was shared by around 50 people, including the well known public figure Tarek Fateh.
Let us take a short walk through Harbir’s mind. He ends his first paragraph with a rationalisation of the increasing violence in the name of cows, and calls it inevitable, which he also claims has ‘broad public approval’.
The next paragraph is filled with arguments which are simply not grounded in reality. A simple look at the judicial exonerations of people like Swami Aseemanand, judicial proceedings of convicted mass murderers like Maya Kodnani (who has been out on bail since 2014) and what increasingly looks like from the way the judiciary has taken this case, she is going to have her convictions overturned.
There are numerous such cases, where terrorists are being protected by the state, due to their affiliations with organisations perceived close to the government in power. When was the last time you heard Islamists being treated with such kid gloves ? The state comes down heavily on Islamist terrorists, and very rightly so.
But anyway, let us move on to his third and fourth paragraphs. This is where the problem is, which so many of us have taken deep objection to. He begins with another assumption that our state is weak, and is unable to provide justice to victims.
What he ends with, is an all out call for mob violence against the “flock of Islamist Maulanas”. In his world, the syncretic India that provides space to different religious and political philosophies, simply does not exist.
So, if there are people in our society (whom he perceives as Islamists), he thinks the natural consequence should be an all out mob violence against every single Muslim living in India. He calls it an inevitable outcome, and asks us to conform to his wisdom, but we will not ! We will challenge it, at each and every step !
I started a campaign trying to take down his hateful message ! A Muslim friend of mine did the same as well. The next thing we know, Harbir Singh got outright abusive with my friend. He posted the following on his Facebook page. These posts have also been taken down (presumably by him)
What worries me, is not just the actions of a sole individual but the increasing tendency to provide intellectual justifications for crimes which should be condemned outright. Period ! If we don’t all get together to spread the message of love and unity, then we won’t be able to fight the fascism that has crept slowly into our society. Remember, fascism, when it arrives at our doorsteps, won’t come dressed in a Hitler’s SS brown shirt, but rather dressed in smart ties and suits of well educated English speaking men ! Hence – Organise, Agitate, Resist!
This article was first published on Janta Ka Reporter
He is the only one who can reinvent the Aam Aadmi Party, be a counter to a resurgent BJP.
Regardless of the Aam Aadmi Party’s performance in the municipal elections held in Delhi on Sunday, its leader Arvind Kejriwal should resign as chief minister and hand over the reins of governance to his deputy, Manish Sisodia. This would free Kejriwal to return to the people to reinvent the popular movement from which the party was spawned.
This suggestion is being made not because the predicted loss for the Aam Aadmi Party in the civic elections, forecast by exit polls, undermines his moral authority to govern Delhi, as was recently made out by Swaraj India leader Yogendra Yadav.
Indeed, Assembly and municipal polls have different dynamics. For instance, the Congress under Sheila Dikshit lost twice to the Bharatiya Janata Party in the local body elections and yet continued to garner a majority in the Delhi Assembly. What applied to her, and still does to others, should to Kejriwal as well.
The reasons why Kejriwal should resign are of a completely different order. India’s electoral politics shows alarming signs that it no longer serves the purpose of educating people, of enabling them to comprehend issues in all their subtleties and debating them. This was manifest in Delhi, where its electorate seemingly confused the categories of duty and responsibility of its state government with those of the three municipal corporations, which are currently ruled by the BJP. Messaging is now paramount, because of which it was made out that Delhi’s problems – from the clearing of garbage to mosquito control – were the failings of the Aam Aadmi Party government.
However, Delhi’s cleanliness is the responsibility of the municipalities, notorious for their corruption. Ask any roadside vendor in the city and he will regale you with the amount of bribe he pays every month to municipal officials and beat constables who also pinch cigarettes, cold drinks and snacks and food for free.
Who in Delhi will not vouch for the money he or she has saved over the last two years because of the sharp reduction in power rates that the government has brought about? Then, there are the growing number of areas in the city that have been liberated from the clutches of the water mafia. Think of the Aam Aadmi Party’s focus on improving government schools and on building mohalla clinics that have won accolades from global health experts.
You would think the Aam Aadmi Party’s record of the last two years would inspire Delhiites to believe the party is best placed to run the city’s municipalities. The exit polls, however, seem to show that governance doesn’t matter to people. Infinitely more important is the messaging, through which, with a little help from the media, a pan-India leadership cult has been created, and an impression made that the BJP is impossible to trounce, thereby underscoring the sheer futility of voting for anyone else.
It is true that exit polls have gone wrong in the past. They may still in Delhi.
Kejriwal’s time to reinvent AAP
Nevertheless, even an Aam Aadmi Party victory should not deter Kejriwal from resigning. India desperately needs a movement to counter the inimical consequences of the politics the BJP is pursuing. Providing exemplary governance in Delhi cannot be a comprehensive counter to it. For one, Delhi is a quasi state, dependent on the mercies of the Central government, whose representative, the lieutenant governor, in his imperious conduct might be making the British administrators of yore snigger in their graves. The Aam Aadmi Party government will continue to encounter impediments in the pursuit of its goals.
For the other, Delhi does not have a distinctive regional or linguistic identity, nor is it beset with political competition among castes, the three factors largely responsible for the emergence of a clutch of state-based parties. From this perspective, Delhi’s cosmopolitan identity was precisely why the city became the home base of the Aam Aadmi Party, which did not seek votes on the basis of caste or religious or linguistic affiliations. Instead, it sought to redefine the idea of citizenry through the pursuit of a brand of politics that promised clean governance and effective delivery of services to all, but, obviously, with a special emphasis on the last man in the queue.
It was supposed to turn into a national movement, a Delhi model, so to speak, that others in India would feel encouraged to emulate. This is why Delhi surprised all in the 2013 Assembly elections, when the Aam Aadmi Party won the confidence of a large segment of Delhiites to come to power and then, a year on, went on to expand that into an overwhelming majority in the next elections.
In other words, the Aam Aadmi Party as an idea will have relevance in Delhi as long as it holds out the promise of going national. But it has the opportunity of reinventing its personality only until 2020, which is when Delhi will have its next Assembly elections. This, therefore, is just the moment for Kejriwal to launch a movement, combining some old ideas with some new ones. What ought to then be the strands of a reinvented Aam Aadmi Party movement?
It was Arvind Kejriwal's activism and organisational skills that contributed to making the 2011 anti-corruption movement led by social activist Anna Hazare the success it was. Credit: Money Sharma / AFP
Silent Opposition
Regardless of the BJP’s victories in Assembly elections in Uttar Pradesh and other states in March, there is disquiet in the country over the communal polarisation it has relentlessly pursued through its Hindutva philosophy, of which the most virulent manifestation is vigilantism over cow protection. No less dangerous is the fusing of Hindutva with nationalism, a combination so powerful that it has suppressed acute anxieties arising from agrarian distress, jobless growth and rampant corruption that the much-touted antidote of demonetisation – the withdrawal of high-value notes in November with the aim of flushing out black money – palpably failed to cure.
The sharp edge of Hindutva has cut many. For instance, Samajwadi Party leader and former Uttar Pradesh chief minister Akhilesh Yadav, quite sarcastically, mentioned that development no longer counts, and that he should instead daily tweet a photo of himself paying obeisance at a temple. To a person close to him, he confided, “Do we Yadavs have to now learn how to respect the cow? When I rebuilt a temple in the chief minister’s residence, did I publicise it?”
To this person, he also spoke of how he didn’t need a lesson in showing respect for the Army and subscribing to the BJP’s tenets of nationalism. After all, as Yadav pointed out, he studied in a Sainik school, some of his friends are commanding officers in the Army, and his wife belongs to an Army family. But all such credentials and the development projects he undertook did not count as the Uttar Pradesh Assembly election was turned into a Hindu-Muslim show and voting for the BJP became proof of nationalistic feelings.
But Akhilesh Yadav’s sharp articulations, made by most non-BJP politicians privately, are not heard in the public arena. This is because politics has become synonymous with electoral contests. Non-BJP politicians turn to people in the weeks before voting, thus haunted by the fear that statements countering the BJP’s religious nationalism propaganda could have the effect of further polarising the electorate. At best, therefore, they seek to turn the electorate’s focus on their agenda.
But this fails because the emotions of hate and spurious grievances inundate other competing agendas. Therefore, the BJP is in a win-win situation. It polarises society because it stands to gain. And because others shy away from countering the BJP’s Hindutva spin, its technique of mobilisation isn’t challenged. Comprehending that politics is the best medium of educating the people, the Sangh has a year-long programme of disseminating its political ideas.
This can only be challenged through a counter-movement, of which the principal ingredients have to be a battle for Hinduism and nationalism. These can be expressed through a chain of questions: Who is a devout Hindu? Is it he who kills in the name of the cow? What do we do with cattle that have stopped yielding milk and have become an economic burden on farmers? Do we require the political ideology of Hinduism? Do we need an exclusivist, destructive nationalism? Through which model of governance can an inclusivist idea of nationalism be nurtured?
Two recent incidents show just how fearful Opposition politicians have become.
In Saharanpur, BJP MP Raghav Lakhanpal’s alleged insistence on leading an Ambedkar Jayanti yatra through a communally fraught locality led to communal clashes on Thursday. Despite her clamour for Dalit-Muslim unity, Bahujan Samaj Party leader Mayawati hasn’t visited the site of the clashes yet. And in Delhi on Saturday night, three Muslim men were beaten up, reportedly in the presence of the police, for ferrying buffaloes. A first information report has been filed against the victims while the assailants had not been caught at the time of writing this piece. In a city bustling with politicians with national stature, none have had the courage to mount public pressure on the police to explain their conduct.
It isn’t that non-BJP politicians are not dismayed at the turn Indian polity has taken. But they have been silent because they fear their intervention would be perceived as Muslim appeasement and would incite the passion of Hindus. But such apprehensions persist among politicians because they haven’t educated their followers on what is at stake in the BJP’s appropriation of Hinduism and advocacy of Hindu nationalism.
Man for the job
Given that Kejriwal is steeped in activism and given his ability to organise and agitate – which was why the anti-corruption movement of 2011 for a Jan Lokpal Bill to hold government officials accountable became such a success – he is just the person to trigger a debate over Hinduism and nationalism. Not just in TV studios or in newspapers columns, but among the people.
Kejriwal ought to be the man to lead it because the bug of power hasn’t presumably bitten him. Self-avowedly, he has often harped on the fact that he and his party are in electoral politics not for power but to transform polity and build a better India.
All this doesn’t mean that the Aam Aadmi Party cannot continue to govern Delhi. That responsibility can devolve on Sisodia. He, in his quiet way, can continue to administer the city-state while Kejriwal plays the role of the conscientious challenger and political educator of the masses.
Indeed, the Aam Aadmi Party is often torn between providing governance in Delhi and playing the Opposition role nationally. Many, rather wrongly, accuse it of frittering away its energies in the quest to achieve its political ambition. By resigning as Delhi chief minister, Kejriwal would eject this duality. What would Kejriwal think of the suggestion that he should resign?
On April 7, noted sports writer Pradeep Magazine retweeted author Krishan Partap Singh’s tweet with the following comment, “Maybe time to give up power and educate people once again @ArvindKejriwal. Vote does not represent people’s voice.”
Among the 489 people who retweeted Magazine’s message was Arvind Kejriwal himself.
Ajaz Ashraf is a journalist in Delhi. His novel, The Hour Before Dawn, has as its backdrop the demolition of the Babri Masjid.
