Somnath Bharti has every reason to be a worried man. His midnight shenanigans in Khirki extension, when he led a mob into the home of four Ugandan women, accusing them of being part of a 'drugs and sex' racket and then barging into a police station demanding their arrest without a warrant, have caused outrage across the spectrum, uniting disparate elements who usually agree to disagree on everything.
The end result is this: The BJP, Congress, women's groups and even sections of AAP all agree - Somnath Bharti must go.
Yet, the leadership of the Aam Aadmi Party has, in its wisdom, decided to back the state law minister, ruling out his resignation and going so far as to say that he needed to be "lauded for his efforts to address people's grievances."
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"First, he did not do anything which was unbecoming of a minister. The preliminary probe by the party has not found him misbehaving or assaulting Ugandan women. He was also not found using any racial slur," AAP's chief spokesperson Yogendra Yadav said after an AAP political committee meeting to discuss the minister's conduct. He said however, that action would be taken against the minister if he was found guilty in a judicial inquiry ordered by the Lt governor, Najeeb Jung.
While AAP may have decided that the best course forward is to back its man in the face of overwhelming opposition, how this will play out for the fortunes of the party in the long run is highly debatable, especially given that the Lok Sabha elections are just months away, and the Bharti incident in particular has forced many people to rethink their support for AAP.
In a column yesterday, Firstpost editor Dhiraj Nayyar warned against the temptation of AAP doing things the 'Somnath Bharti' way instead of say, the Yogendra Yadav way or even the Captain Gopinath way. He says:
The fact is that one section of AAP personified by Somnath Bharti genuinely believes only in a politics of vigilantism, blackmail and brinksmanship. In the end, such a politics will only create the same kind of cynicism as the system AAP rages against – the kind which revolts against "the minister is always right" attitude. He also notes that "Unfortunately, Kejriwal's base instincts of an activist-in-a-hurry seem to make him inclined to the Somnath Bharti wing of the party.
Significantly, the incident has also evoked displeasure from within AAP. In a Times of India editorial published this morning, Captain Gopinath reiterates his demand that Bharti needs to be suspended. He writes, "Was the cause just? How can you demand suspension of junior police personnel without also suspending law minister Somnath Bharti at the same time? If police can influence witnesses so can Bharti who has greater power."
The fact is, that in its desire to back Bharti and present a united front, AAP could be acting in a short sighted manner that could well be detrimental to its national ambitions. As we pointed out earlier, there are a number of reasons why Bharti is only going to hold the party back.
Firstly, the law minister has to actually follow the law. After the events of the recent past, Bharti has lost all credibility when it comes to upholding the law. Secondly, mob politicians are political deadweights. And significantly, it is time for AAP to soothe the middle class feathers which were ruffled by Somnath's actions.
The importance of this is clearly pointed out by Ashutosh Varshney in a column for the Indian Express. He says that the magic 'formula' of AAP was that it managed to combine the support of the urban elite and the urban masses. "Normally, mass politics and elite politics dance to very different tunes. The AAP has brought them together," he said.
But with his latest Delhi dharna, Kejriwal seemed to have alienated this crucial segment of support.
Many of Kejriwal's middle class supporters who shook off their lethargy to actually stand in line and vote for him were conspicuous by their absence at the dharna. This is a constituency that has come out in droves previously for the Lokpal agitation and the Delhi gangrape protests. A history that makes their absence all the more conspicuous. And although AAP may pretend to write off this section of the population as a bunch of 'elitist' people who don't want the corrupt system to change because they benefit by it (as charged by AAP media spokesman Ashutosh), Kejriwal cannot afford to alienate them completely.
According to Varshney:
"The most important signal the Rail Bhavan dharna sent is this: it can wean the urban elite and middle class away from the AAP, while keeping the urban poor base intact. The urban poor may savour a dramatic political attack on the police, which harasses them routinely. But losing the urban elite, or middle class, will be suicidal. This class is a source of finance for the AAP, also a source of future leadership, and a reason for media fervour."
The rail bhavan dharna has set off the alarm bells, and the middle class is already skittish. Perhaps kicking Bharti out and apologising for his actions might have helped calm a few furiously beating hearts. In not doing so AAP has lost an opportunity. And worse, it has shown that when it comes to brazenly defending the clearly wrong actions of one of its own, it's really no different from everyone else.
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