In doing a 'chota Modi', Kejriwal is doing a disservice to idea of AAP

Ab Tak Chhappan was the title of a Ram Gopal Varma film with Nana Patekar in the lead portraying the character of an encounter specialist. On Thursday, @AAPInNews, which puts out "news related to @AamAadmiParty across India" tweeted a graphic with a similar sounding headline – "Ab Tak 14".

It provided photos and short intros of 14 AAP MLAs of Delhi who have been arrested on various charges. The graphic, obviously an in-house job, states: "Except for Naresh Yadav and Amanatullah Khan, the others have been released on bail." 

On Wednesday, July 28, in a highly publicised video message, Delhi CM Arvind Kejriwal tried to boost the morale of his party leaders and workers. The chief minister claimed that a daman chakra, or circle of persecution was enveloping AAP at the behest of Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

Also read: 3 takeaways from Kejriwal's 'Modi may kill me' video message

To ensure that his message grabbed eyeballs and didn’t sound like an attempt to cry wolf, the Kejriwal slipped in that they [Modi-Shah duo] would resort to more repression and can do anything, can kill anyone, and that "they can even kill me".

No one levels such serious charges so frivolously. Unless of course, the intention is to dramatise.

In the run up to the 2015 Assembly polls in Delhi, I often referred to Kejriwal as "Chota Modi".

Other commentators too coined their own phrases to depict striking similarities in the personality of the two leaders. An authoritarian style of running their respective parties, stifling dissent and having a closed mind were just some of the most obvious parallels between the two.

To that we can add another: an ailment called persecution complex.

In the years that Modi was chief minister of Gujarat, he exhibited this disorder by constantly levelling charges that civil society and mainstream English media was out to get him. In his parliamentary campaign, he increased the frequency of levelling the charge as a conscious ploy to maximise support in his core constituency.

Also read: Talk To AK is Kejriwal's answer to Modi's Mann Ki Baat

The attempt was to project himself as the do-gooder being prevented by adversaries busy in appeasing various vote banks. It benefited Modi because he projected himself as the only alternative to the harbingers of policy paralysis.

In his video message, Kejriwal makes a claim that reveals his ploy.

He says that Modi – rightly so – wishes to quash all opposition. But thereafter, the chief minister asserts that the fear of Modi is so severe that other parties have been silenced. You don’t hear the Congress or other party leaders saying anything in protest, he claimed.

As an old adage says: You only see what you want to see, You only hear what you want to hear...

Probably Kejriwal has forgotten the electoral routs of the BJP in recent months.

Also read: BJP cannot afford to take Kejriwal lightly

Whether it is through the claim that Modi will go to the extent of killing him, his defence of the arrested MLAs, or arguing that charges against 21 AAP MLAs caught in the office of profit controversy are trumped up, Kejriwal is essentially attempting to project his party as the sole alternative to BJP.

To do so, AAP's tactics of twisting arguments is similar to the strategy deployed by Modi in his social media campaigns. The technique is to twist the facts.

For instance, let's check the "Ab Tak 14" tweet: The assertion that only two of the fourteen are still under arrest is factually correct. But does this mean that the other dozen MLAs, out on bail, have been acquitted of charges against them?

Do AAP leaders not know that there are crimes and crimes, but that most are bailable while few more heinous ones are not? Does it mean that it is fine for leaders to be charged of crimes for which bail can be secured?

People who live in glass houses should not throw stones at others!

When AAP emerged out of the anti-corruption movement in 2011, it was not expected to be "just another" party which would use similar justifications and similar loopholes in laws.

When AAP leaders were justifying the appointment of 21 parliamentary secretaries, they cited precedents. Was this what the founders of AAP wanted it to be – a mirror image of other "discredited" parties.

In a short period, AAP has become a party it wanted to replace.

And Kejriwal? It’s better for readers and workers to form their judgment. Then they can decide if they are ready for kurbani (sacrifice)!

A fortnight before the nation will remember freedom fighters for their sacrifices, Kejriwal has probably degraded the idea.