Gujarat Watch: Why Kejriwal’s Lakshmi-Ganesh Gamble in Modi Pocket Borough Will Most Likely Backfire

In Gujarat, where PM Narendra Modi is seen as a 'Hindu hriday samrat' and 'vikas purush' rolled into one, it's unlikely that such overnight Hindutva attempts by an outsider Arvind Kejriwal will work.

Ahmedabad: A rhetoric that imagined a welfare state of sorts, superbly fusing electoral politics with the Nehruvian idea of an egalitarian political economy — this is the backdrop to Arvind Kejriwal’s promise of free quality education, health services and electricity to the last man that has reverberated in poll-bound Gujarat for the last three months. The ruling BJP in Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s pocket borough pushed the panic button, and the Congress, already caught in its own rut, only sagged further even as a fledgling political party rejected all suggestions that there isn’t such money for the government to grant these freebies.

“Money isn’t the issue, it’s the intention that is amiss,” Kejriwal would say during his weekly visits to Gujarat, as he reminded the media and his audience alike that the state had run a huge public debt of Rs 3,50,000 crore, and asked for whom was this debt taken.

He also challenged the claim that these were freebies and asked if the huge loan waivers and largesse of land and taxes to the corporates were not freebies, whereas what he promised was for the poor who deserve the government’s care.   

Speculations went as far as to wonder if the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) would topple the BJP or, at a sober level, wipe out the opposition Congress as it did in the Surat Municipal Corporation in 2021.

Arvind Kejriwal, who leads a 10-year-old party and runs two state governments, set the election agenda for Gujarat — the BJP’s first and strongest laboratory preserved by the invincible Modi.

Cut to October 26, 2022, and from the high pedestal of the new messiah of the aam aadmi, Kejriwal suddenly came hurtling down. He wrote a letter to the PM, requesting for pictures of Goddess Lakshmi and Lord Ganesh to be printed on the currency notes along with that of Mahatma Gandhi on the other side.

Masterstroke Or Political Blunder?

Some celebrated columnists called Kejriwal's unique demand a masterstroke that he dared to walk into the Hindutva lab of the BJP in the face of an election and that left the saffron leaders flabbergasted. Some lamented that the party which had aroused a new hope on the country’s political firmament had fallen prey to the same jingoism for the sake of votes.

Those who see this as a smart electoral strategy to make a huge dent in Gujarat also see Kejriwal positioning himself nationally as a devout Hindu leader who is not antagonistic towards the Muslims when all other political parties wonder how to deal with the BJP’s Hindutva juggernaut. 

In the immediate context of the Gujarat polls, arm-chair analysis stops there and bare facts take over. The truth is that Kejriwal has actually fallen into a booby trap that was quickly laid by the BJP after the former’s Delhi minister Rajendra Pal Gautam’s video at a Buddhist ceremony went viral where he and many others pledged that they would not worship Hindu gods.

While he immediately sacked Gautam from his ministry ahead of his visit to Gujarat where several banners and hoardings welcomed Kejriwal with his pictures wearing a Muslim skull cap. He was shown as anti-Hindu and it generated a lot of flak on social media. As though desperately looking for the first opportunity to pin him down, the BJP grabbed the issues irrespective of the fact that the minister was sacked.   

Now, Kejriwal is desperately trying to fend off this attack and the latest Lakshmi-Ganesh gimmick clearly appears to be an outcome of this. All this essentially began after the Gautam episode. At one public meeting in Gujarat, he said: “I was born on Krishna Janmashtami. I am a special emissary of God with a mission to annihilate all Kansas.”

Immediately after raising the Lakshmi-Ganesh bogey, Kejriwal was in Gujarat addressing an Adivasi rally where he said printing of the pictures of Goddess Lakshmi and Lord Ganesh was not a magic wand but a good omen when the economy was down and the Indian rupee was at its worst against the dollar.

He also said on another occasion that if an AAP government comes to power in Gujarat, he would send all senior citizens on an all-expenses-paid trip to the “bhavya (grand) Ram Mandir” in Ayodhya. “You will be picked up from home and dropped also on return – I will receive you all,” he said.

Well, Kejriwal’s forays into what is called soft-Hindutva began right in Delhi when, for instance, he chanted Hanuman Chalisa of the 2020 state elections there.

Why It Is A Booby Trap

When Narendra Modi became the Chief Minister of Gujarat in 2001, he would often taunt the media and the opposition that they would follow him wherever he went — indicating that it is he who would set the agenda. Since then, any party trying to walk into the Hindutva terrain would bite the dust.

For instance, in the Gujarat 2007 elections, the Congress on the suggestions of some disgruntled BJP leaders had decided not to challenge Modi’s Hindutva and rather focus on core issues. However, Congress chief Sonia Gandhi called him “maut ka saudagar”, and Modi snatched the thunder to use it to the BJP’s advantage.

In another instance last year, Congress leader Rahul Gandhi held forth on the difference between true Hinduism and communal Hindutva to a massive audience in Rajasthan who had come to attend the party’s “Maha Mahangai” rally.

This is the reason all attempts of temple hopping by Congress or any other party have never borne results.      

Cut to the 2022 AAP strategy for Gujarat polls. AAP leaders have been privately telling journalists that the party has been clear not to foray into the Hindu-Muslim rhetoric during the election campaign and instead speak of education, health, free electricity and similar people’s issues. In the same vein, when Delhi Deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisodia was asked recently during a rally in Gujarat about the AAP’s silence on the Bilkis Bano case or earlier during the Delhi riots, he categorically stated that their issues were people’s issues of education and health.

But Kejriwal has been forced now to create a new bogey of Hindutva with this latest Lakshmi-Ganesh rhetoric. In Gujarat, where Modi is not only being seen but has been internalised by the strong urban and semi-urban votebanks as the “Hindu hriday samrat” and a “vikas purush” rolled into one, such overnight Hindutva attempts by Kejriwal would only backfire and bring all his efforts of the past three months to a naught.    

In a state, where Har Har Mahadev is synonymous to Har Ghar Modi, Kejriwal is surely barking up the wrong tree.

(The writer is a veteran journalist and Founder Editor, Development News Network [DNN], Gujarat).

[Disclaimer: The opinions, beliefs, and views expressed by the various authors and forum participants on this website are personal and do not reflect the opinions, beliefs, and views of ABP News Network Pvt Ltd.]