(Ashok Malik is a columnist and writer living in Delhi)To be fair, Shazia Ilmi's urging that "Muslims need to be communal", to vote for their "own" and therefore to vote for
Arvind Kejriwal and the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) is not the most egregious and reprehensible piece of election-related religious rhetoric India has heard, or heard in 2014. In a normal party, it could even have been explained away as awkward and clumsy framing of words in what appears to have been a closed-door meeting. (
Was being sarcastic, says AAP's Shazia Ilmi)
Why then has it evoked such reaction and why has AAP been forced to quickly dissociate itself from Ilmi's strange formulation? To answer that question one has to assess both AAP's somewhat hyperbolic self-image as well as the changing nature of its political messaging, especially since the Delhi election of winter 2013.
AAP has prided itself with being the exponent of a new type of politics, cleaner than conventional parties and allegedly representative of a higher morality. As such, each time it fails a crucial test - and there have been so many in recent weeks, especially in the course of its short-lived government in Delhi - its purported claims are thrust back at it and its words come back to haunt it.
In the Delhi election, Ilmi lost narrowly from the RK Puram seat. Though this is a middle-class constituency, shorn of the sort of caste or identity dynamics that prevails in a typical state polity, AAP made much of how it had put up a Muslim candidate in a Hindu-dominated electoral district. That is why Ilmi's appeal to Muslims to turn confessional and vote for their "own" essentially mocks her previously stated principles and those of her party. (
Also read: Shazia Ilmi is AAP candidate from Ghaziabad)
The Ilmi episode should not be seen in isolation. It has to read along with Yogendra Yadav's earlier pronouncement that he understood Muslims sentiments - and presumably deserved Muslims votes - because among other things his parents had nicknamed him "Salim". When practitioners of supposedly "serious" and "issue-based" politics are reduced to such tokenism, they only end up embarrassing themselves.
Nevertheless there is a political logic to AAP's sometimes crude attempts at ingratiating itself to the minority community. Broadly speaking, the anti-corruption and Lok Pal movement was a cause for the urban middle classes. AAP's strategists, such as Yadav, concluded it had limited appeal among groups such as Muslims and Dalits and left-leaning activists. These segments were unlikely to move to the BJP at the earliest chance - as the urban middle classes would and have. For these voters, he sought a more ideological and robust anti-Narendra Modi line.
This points to the decision to attack the BJP headquarters in Delhi, and establish AAP - not the Congress - as the party taking on Modi on the streets. This also points to the decision to make
Arvind Kejriwal contest against Modi in Varanasi and present the AAP leader - to the national media at least - as the man offering a frontal challenge to the BJP's prime ministerial candidate. Ilmi's "Muslims need to be communal" suggestion and Yadav's "Salim" anecdote are trivial and tawdry manifestations of this political argument.
So is AAP guilty of the same political symbolism and cheapening of religious identities that it accuses other parties of? Yes, it is. Even so, the party the support base of which it is targeting is the Congress. Ilmi has only provided renewed evidence of the fact that AAP is fighting hard for the anti-Modi vote. It would seem to have given up on the mainstream vote, which opinion and exit polls suggest is going elsewhere.
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