“I am an Anarchist! Wherefore I will not rule, and also ruled I will not be!”
– John Mackay
Ever since Arundhati Roy famously declared herself to be a Mobile Republic, I have wished to know what it’d be like to be one. Luckily, this week’s events in the Capital have provided a wholesome glimpse. Not only do I now know how a Mobile Republic behaves, I also know what lies in wait for a republic full of Mobile Republics.
My initial fascination with this phrase was partly to do with the fact that there is a scientific parlance to it. Bacteria are Mobile Republics, famously so. They think only of themselves and their survival, this while they reproduce and eat with unequalled ferocity. But these are bugs. For a human to declare herself as a Mobile Republic, and then a decade on, for another human to give a live demonstration of it, runs contrary to how different species adapt to their own particular environment. When a colony of bacteria are dropped in a test tube full of nutritious liquid, these single-celled Mobile Republics double in number every 20 minutes, without a care in the world that they are thrashing about in limited space and resources. In no time, a few thousand Mobile Republics become millions of tiny, identical Mobile Republics until, but naturally, there begins a fight for food. The nutrients start to run out, the minerals are soon exhausted. Water, that’s all there’s left. Strangely, the billion Mobile Republics sense this unfortunate turn of events. It’s called Quorum Sensing. They secrete what are called autoinducers – signalling molecules – that help alter gene expression. In other words, the bacteria slow down, hibernate, wait for death. But these are single-celled Mobile Republics. Human beings, on the other hand, are multi-cellular, and no one type of human cell can behave like a Mobile Republic or there’d be calamity. Cancer is another name for it. The kidney cells must know when to stop reproducing, so must the neurons or the skin cells. Humans cannot be Mobile Republics for, in a strange way, that would amount to being as selfish as a bug.
To reproduce madly, to be lawless, to consume the resources there are – and only to stop at the last moment because someone shouted “Achtung! Auto-inducer ahead!” is a quality not yet imbibed by human cells. A human cell must learn to live in a society of cells, obey the order given to it by other cells. It must stop at times, while on other occasions it must tell others to stop. That is the way evolution has structured the human body. And that is the way humans have structured successful societies.
The Aam Aadmi Party has shown itself to be a colony of Mobile Republics. Right now they appear to have a leader in Arvind Kejriwal, but each member of that party knows the futility of having a leader in the first place. It runs counter to the tenets of Anarchism. After all, when the leader himself says, “I’m an anarchist!” what are his followers supposed to do but to follow and become like him? A dividing bacterial colony doesn’t have a leader, human beings do.
Let’s be honest: Anarchy always was and will remain an attractive proposition. It doesn’t matter that humans cannot be Mobile Republics in a world where they use mobiles and make money on account of their private enterprise and drive cars and wine and dine and lead lives that run contrary to their hypocritical exhortations. It does not matter at all. They can still call themselves Mobile Republics and when they do, society swoons, it sings songs, people shout and scream, revolutions happen, books are written, anthems are composed, myths are created, romance is born.
When Rahul Gandhi talked of a man on a white horse galloping in to save India, little did he know that such a description fits not Narendra Modi but rather Arvind Kejriwal. A sword- and jaws-drawn man on a white horse is exactly who an anarchist is. He is fearless, no doubt – all anarchists are – but wholly unaware of his involuntary propensity to carry on charging, relentless and without a care or thought that he has left his army far behind, sliced through the battlefield in fact, and arrived at a wide open space with not a soul in sight. That is what Anarchists do – charge until the horse dies.
A few months back, I wrote an article, Countering Kejriwal, where I had warned: “It is not very often that revolutionaries make for great leaders. This is understandable. A life’s mission, when fulfilled, can lead to hubris and reticence”. What has surprised me is how quickly this has turned out to be true, not only for Kejriwal but also for his band of fellow anarchists. They are a law unto themselves, each one a Mobile Republic in his own right.
A Mobile Republic, Arvind Kejriwal, stages a dharna and threatens to disrupt Republic Day celebrations by filling the streets with thousands of revolutionaries. As the dharna progresses from the sublime to the ridiculous, AAP spokespersons go on an overdrive to suggest the fight is for something bigger than just the suspension of a couple of policemen. They are seemingly tutored to lament the non-implementation of the Supreme Court ruling on Police Reforms, hiding conveniently the fact that the SC ruling never once talks of transferring Delhi Police from the Centre to State. Why the need to suggest a greater motive? Probably because Kejriwal has clearly been quoted as saying he not only wants the suspension of the policemen but also complete control of the Police. A dharna demanding a rap on the knuckles for two hawaldars sounds laughable, not so one clamouring for transfer of Police to Delhi. Never mind that this is possible only through a constitutional amendment and not a sit-in.
A second Mobile Republic, Somnath Bharti, is indicted by the courts for tampering with evidence. Unrepentant, he browbeats the police into raiding homes without a warrant. He makes statements which come across as rabid and racist and then accompanies his henchmen to a hospital and stands over the humiliation of Ugandan women who were allegedly asked to urinate publicly. Then he denies all this. No one asks him why he or any of his party members haven’t shut down one of Asia’s largest red light districts right in the heart of New Delhi. No AAP karyakarta has rushed him to GB Road and cheered him on for staging a confrontation there. This is the same minister who tried to “summon” judges, the same man who tweeted that women are devoid of all logic.
A third Mobile Republic, Dr Yogendra Yadav, speaks kindly of Khap panchayats and caste-based reservations. This is the same panchayat that, among other things, wants homosexuality banned – the “other things” being medieval commandments and honour killings.
A fourth Mobile Republic, Shazia Ilmi, once told me they have a committee for every possible subject and that these committees have been meeting ever since AAP came into being. This, however, doesn’t stop her from feigning ignorance on economic issues whenever she appears on TV debates, on the pretext that the committees are still deliberating on these issues. Even Government Of India committees don’t take this long to reach a conclusion one way or the other. The truth is that AAP is fiercely populist, irredeemably socialist and borderline communist. Any other way and the blood that nourishes the spirit of Anarchy will dry up. If they didn’t hide this detail, there’d be little difference between them and the Communist Party of India (Marxist). Hence the deception. The only people who haven’t been fooled by this are the Communists themselves.
There is as yet not one announcement they have made – in policy or intent – that can be construed as pro-market or pro-industry. Not one.
A fifth Mobile Republic, Prashant Bhushan, the panacea of honesty and never one to shy away from accusing all and sundry of indulging in deep-rooted corruption, is conveniently silent on Ram Jethmalani’s explosive letter concerning the Finance minister and a news channel. There is also no urgency from him to go after his favourite Robert Vadra anymore. He waxes eloquent on initiating a helpline that encourages a whole population to turn into spies and snoops. He promulgates a referendum on Kashmir. I presume he would also agree to a referendum for constructing the Ram temple, and will accept gladly the outcome of 50.01% Indians saying “yes”.
A sixth Mobile Republic, Manish Sisodia, unabashedly calls Sheila Dixit a dalal, time and time and time again. He accuses her of wide-scale corruption, and promises to implement the two-year old Shunglu Committee Recommendations within days of coming to power. Upon coming to power, all is conveniently forgotten in the garb of “I’m studying the report”. He promises a barbaric quota system for Delhi University and goes about boasting of building 500 schools while acknowledging at the same time the desperate need for thousands of more university seats. He sees nothing wrong in doubling the number of autos on Delhi’s already crammed roads from 50,000 to 100,000.
A seventh Mobile Republic, Kumar Vishwas, gets into an ugly face-off with Mallika Sarabhai, a recent AAP entrant, over his egregious anti-gay, anti-women, anti-Muslim, anti-nurses remarks. He declares in a TV debate, referring to Dr Ashok Khemka, that the mark of an honest and incorruptible officer is the number of times he has been transferred, refusing to enlighten how many times his leader was transferred out of Delhi when he was an officer in the administrative services.
An eighth Mobile Republic, Ashutosh, publicly berates Capt. Gopinath – himself an AAP member – and scolds him for his pro-FDI stand. Never mind that Ashutosh himself was fiercely pro-FDI until very recently: “100% FDI in multiple brand retail sector in China but it is prospering but illiterate leaders in India find it difficult to see reality. FDI in retail will change India for better. I hear the same argument as I heard pre 1990 that computer will create unemployment. Those who opposed computers are now opposing FDI? Want to turn back history. Indian intellectual are scared of America! They say FDI in retail will finish India. Colonial mind set has to change. Those who oppose Wal Mart should request govt to ask Tata to wind up its foreign business. It is creating unemployment in those countries.”
Ill-thought-out populist schemes, neo-Communist ideology, pandering to unionism, mob rule, vigilante justice, U-turns, abusive language, hollow promises of acting against the corrupt…the reality is that the cavalry has charged right through the battlefield with no aim or purpose of fighting the battle. They are through to the other side, not willing to trot back and face the battles they promised they shall fight for the aam admi.
When BR Ambedkar spoke of the Grammar of Anarchy, he could not have imagined that a day would come in India’s history when an elected Chief Minister would proudly declare himself as an anarchist. But then again, Ambedkar had dreamt of a Democratic Republic and not a Mobile Republic, his abiding concern was for humans multiplying, not bacteria dividing.
It is now for all those who supported AAP, worked tirelessly for its success, and dreamt a glorious future for it, to come forward and criticise their creation, for only through criticism can things be put on a right track. Sadly, most AAP supporters seem to either maintain a stoic silence over these ungainly developments, or worse, support these anarchic ways whole-heartedly. Left unchecked, it will not be long before the party becomes a joke, its abbreviation best described through an emoticon.
The author can be reached at anand.icgeb@gmail.com or on twitter @ARangarajan1972