The Aam Aadmi Party and its leader Kejriwal are anything but a serious reflection of the aspirations of the downtrodden masses. The recent mistreatment of black African women in Delhi by the law minister of the party actually establishes the racist and casteist nature of AAP politics.

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Arvind Kejriwal never seemed completely normal to me--either as a politician or as a person. And neither the way that the party has been functioning before or since it acquired political power. No party or leader is as desperate to stay in the news as the Aam Aadmi Party and its leader Kejriwal. With each passing day the weirdness gets magnified like it happens in science-fiction movies and the recent humiliatingly racist, not to mention inhuman, mistreatment of African women in south Delhi by the police lead by the AAP "law" minister confirms our worst fears about the party and its inane leader with a glint of madness in the eye. Kejriwal's political agenda is an extension of Kejriwal himself bordering the stupid and the sinister.

These are Bollywood-scripted parties who think corruption can be eradicated in a day like the anal-retentive heroes on the Indian film screen who keep abusing the world in the worst possible manner while claiming to be defenders of the order. When the law minister went around with the police to stop street crime he merely was targeting the black African women. Casteism is a complement of racism. Casteist men are by default racists and misogynists as well. The humiliation of the black women is an extension of the upper-caste male sense of power. The black women are merely substitutes to the poor Dalit women who tend to be exploitable commodities in this country.

In what way is a racist and casteist party like the AAP a liberator of the masses? All that they have been doing until now is populism. They have no clue what government and state institutions mean and the collective agreement that endows these things with legitimacy. They have borrowed their political strategies mainly from movies (Indian) and the Communist Party of India (Marxist) (CPM) which ran a complacent regime of goons with pretensions to high culture for the longest possible period in the state of West Bengal. The AAP understanding of mass politics has nothing to do with the masses. It's about being in the media -- that's what their politics is all about.

The last thing in their agenda is to use state power as means for distribution of resources and thereby create a nonviolent society that gives the downtrodden a sense of dignity and belongingness. That needs extraordinary time, enormous commitment and a genuine love of the masses. An anti-national party which is caught in illusions of grandeur couldn't care less about educating the poor or giving them the opportunity for a decent existence. I have no doubt that the party and its irresponsible leadership will evaporate the moment the media decides to take their eyes away from them.

By the way these people are supposed to be Gandhians among other things. But Gandhi and Gandhism are euphemisms in India for corruption, greed for power, and untold crimes against the poor. Therefore I wouldn't hold it against the Aam Aadmi Party folks for referring to themselves as Gandhians. Everyone is more or less a "Gandhian" in the politics and society of this country.

My predictions about the Aam Aadmi Party are anything but positive. Without a sense of nation and merely singing anti-corruption songs will not take them too far in the eyes of the people. Morbidly hungry for media attention, they refuse to be interested in real issues concerning how people at the bottom of the heap live. They will be exposed faster than they would like to be and relegated to a relic with no sacred value in the defunct museum of Indian politics. Very soon the stand-up comedians will treat them as a butt of jokes. I am sure the practice sessions have already begun. 

Authors Bio:

Prakash Kona is a writer, teacher and researcher who lives in Hyderabad, India. He is currently Professor at the Department of English Literature, The English and Foreign Languages University (EFLU), Hyderabad.