During Delhi assembly elections, CM Arvind Kejriwal made well publicised visits to his favourite place of worship — the Hanuman mandir. He went before polling day and again after the stunning AAP win. He’s recited Hanuman chalisa, chanted Vande Mataram and declared himself a ‘hardcore nationalist.’ Has Kejriwal let down secularism and given up the fight against hate? No, in fact in Delhi 2020, the cultural Hindu has defeated the political Hindu.

The Kejriwal model to fight Hindutva is an interesting one. In times when Modi-led BJP’s high-pitched Hindutva nationalism is seen as a sure shot election winner, Kejriwal crafted a counter strategy: fight Hindutva and nationalism not from outside, but from within, without making an undue fetish of either. Kejriwal doesn’t hide his Hindu-ness but he doesn’t play politics with it either.

Secularism is BJP’s softest target. Secular parties are inevitably cast as dyed-in-the-wool “minority (read Muslim) appeasers”. With Shaheen Bagh as rallying point, saffron politicians whipped up “goli maro” and “go to Pakistan” chants. BJP candidate Kapil Mishra declared that the battle between BJP vs AAP was a battle of India vs Pakistan. Yogi Adityanath accused Kejriwal of supplying biryani to Shaheen Bagh. By showing restraint on the Shaheen Bagh debate, refusing to make a show of his Muslim support, backing the Modi government on Article 370, Kejriwal avoided the trap laid for him and denied BJP any monopoly either of Hinduism or nationalism.
Secularism does not mean negation of personal faith. It means that the state must not discriminate between religions. The innovation of AAP is that by treating Hinduism as purely cultural, it refuses to compete on the BJP’s terms and get tangled up in BJP’s pet controversies over Ram Mandir-Savarkar-Vande Mataram et al. AAP steers clear of all these, yet all 5 Muslim AAP MLAs in the fray won by big margins.

Who is Hanuman, Kejriwal’s chosen deity? Hanuman is the subaltern god of the people, Rama’s most loyal devotee. Hanuman’s not a prince, instead he’s Rama’s selfless companion who earns his divinity through lifelong devotion, an embodiment of how ordinary folk can rise to become extraordinary. Car stickers of an angry Hanuman do injustice to the love Hanuman embodies.

By asserting his credentials as a Hanuman-bhakt, by holding up his Hanuman vs BJP’s Ram, Kejriwal showed that the cultural Hindu is best placed to defeat the political Hindu. ‘Ram bhakts’ can easily attack a ‘jihadist-biryani-eating-Muslim sympathiser’ but can they attack a Hanuman bhakt? When competing with a dominant influential force like Hindutva, it’s smart to be strategic rather than ideological.

Comparisons arise with Rahul Gandhi’s ‘soft Hindutva’. The difference is that by showily going to a series of temples only before elections, photo ops of rituals, declaring high caste gotra, Rahul’s soft Hindutva only legitimises hard Hindutva because it plays on the same BJP turf of pujas and priests. Kejriwal doesn’t change clothes, nor perform rituals, nor pose with priests. Religious rituals aren’t important, religious values are. Kejriwal’s the IIT educated modernist, running a religion-less, service-delivery focused campaign, whose cultural identity happens to be Hindu. His is a well projected humble and sincere aam aadmi persona — the persona, in fact, of the true devotee. This quiet, unassuming style contrasts well with Modi’s imperious, domineering personality. Rahul Gandhi’s mistake is trying to outdo Modi both in chest-thumping bombast and in religious rituals.

However, AAP and Kejriwal need to be cautious. Too much strategic Hinduism could engulf AAP’s substantive agenda and while Hindu symbolism provides short term gains, it is also a tacit acceptance of the RSS goal of creating the so-called “Hindu vote”. AAP’s cultural Hinduism worked only because it was a small part of an overall multimedia-savvy, modern, secular campaign.

According to the Axis My India poll, 48% of those who voted for BJP in the Lok Sabha voted AAP in Vidhan Sabha. AAP would not have been able to attract Modi voters had it fallen into the ‘secular-communal’ trap and let itself become pigeonholed as yet another ‘Muslim’ party.

Mandal movement chiefs Lalu Yadav and Mulayam Singh Yadav fought Hindutva by deploying caste against a monolithic Hindu identity.  In an urban milieu like Delhi where caste is irrelevant, Hindutva is best fought by joining the debate from within and asking, who is the better Hindu? Is the humble muffler-clad Hanuman bhakt who swears by real development not a better Hindu than the saffron and tilak -flaunting brigade threatening “current lagna chahiye” to Muslims? At a time when Hindu assertion plays a greater role than ever before in politics, Kejriwal seems to have evolved an effective model to neutralise Hindutva as a political weapon.

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Views expressed above are the author's own.

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