Kejriwal"s Ad is About the Cult of Personality. So What?

I am really thankful to all who are spending their valuable time to criticise the AAP ad that’s playing out on television. When the advertisement was designed, it was intended to target a particular audience;  we were not sure if it would reach them, but our friends in the opposition and others who used to work with us have made our task easier – they helped create a new curiosity around the advertisement with their vehement criticism. I am really thankful to Prashant Bhushan, the BJP and the Congress for making this a mega-hit.

I know they are all intelligent people and have been working in their fields  for a very long time but what I did not know is that they all have such a poor understanding of Indian culture and tradition. They say this advertisement is regressive in nature as it depicts women in a certain way;  they also criticise it because in their opinion this advertisement violates the Supreme Court order that bans politicians from being glorified in ads; they are also opposed to the advertisement because they say it promotes the personality cult of Kejriwal and not our party.

This ad does not violate the Supreme Court order because that verdict  clearly says that no picture of the LEADER can be used in any advertisement paid for by the government and the only exceptions are the PM, the President and the Chief Justice of India. No doubt this advertisement belongs to the Delhi Government, and talks about Arvind Kejriwal, the Chief Minister,  but it uses no picture of Arvind. So where is the violation? If people are allergic to the name of Arvind Kejriwal, or they want to keep themselves relevant by criticising Arvind, then AAP can’t help. If they want to feel haunted, then I can only extend my sympathies.

There are individuals who genuinely believe that the personality cult should not be promoted as it erodes the process of democracy . I don’t want to quarrel with them but just gently want to make them realise that they are talking about largely a western concept which is quite alien to Indian thought. It’s basically a borrowed idea which derives its sustenance majorly from  Left-oriented thinking. This idea is dead since the demise of the Berlin Wall, but a  few of us still want to live in that utopian world. Even the Left has not fully adhered to this concept of not individuals, but historical forces propelling the world.

In fact, pardon my saying so, but the worst kind of personality cult promotion was invented by Leftist societies with the design to establish that the leader can do no wrong. Marx was an idea and he was made God by turning it into an ‘ism’. A rational theory was converted into a non-negotiable virtually religious belief and it was called as MARXISM. In the same way Lenin, Stalin and Mao became a cult and within the communist parties, nobody was allowed to criticise them. And it became so bad that anyone who differed with them was not allowed to live.

India as an idea itself is personality-driven. ‘Avatar’ is well ingrained in our culture and tradition. In fact, it is part of our great civilisation. If other religions have only  one God, Hindus have as many Gods as we can think. Every conceivable thing has been worshipped in Hindu tradition. ‘Dashavatar’, that is Lord Vishnu ,has descended on earth in ten incarnations to save the world.

Since the 12th century onwards, the Bhakti Marg is embedded in our larger collective conscience which is quite opposite to the Gyan Marg, and preaches that for the larger good, surrender yourself to God as only he knows what is good for the individual in particular and humanity in general.

So it’s not surprising that after every brief interval, India witnesses few individuals who attain a superior status in society. M K Gandhi was a mere mortal like us but he was revered so much by other mere mortals that he became a Mahatma, who was called Bapu and also “Father of the Nation”. He was so respected that though he was not a member of the Congress party,  no decision was possible without his permission. Now it’s inconceivable to think if India could have attained  freedom without him ! I am afraid if he had been alive now, he would have been condemned by the above-mentioned individuals and parties. By their logic we should not have been using Gandhi’s portraits in our government offices and in our homes.

Can we imagine modern India without larger-than-life size images of Jawahar Lal Nehru and Vallabh Bhai Patel? They were giants in their own right and there was a personality cult around them even in their life time. Nehru was the glue which kept India united and afloat in the most turbulent phase in our history. They are lucky that they don’t have to live in our times, otherwise they would have been derided no end.

When students of Bihar went to request JP to assume the leadership of the anti- Indira Gandhi movement, he told them that he would be the dictator of the movement and his word would be final. In today’s world, JP would have been cut into thousands of pieces for saying so.

Even the  RSS and BJP which promote collective leadership have  resorted to the Avatar of Ram, though erroneously, to gain political success in early and mid 90s. And the biggest example is the 2014 parliamentary elections which was portrayed and biled as the victory of one man named Narendra Modi. The  BJP could not have reached 282 seats  without Modi. And in 2015 Delhi elections, the same can be said of Arvind Kejriwal.

My only submission is that India is a spiritual civilisation. People love their  heroes when they see a moral force behind them. Avatar is not a material Idea but an ethical boundary. And as long as they are seen as treading the path of Truth, they are worshiped and the minute they digress from the moral high road, they are thrown into the dust bin of history. VP Singh is the greatest example of this.

So in the end may I request to all these ladies and gentlemen to read a bit of Indian history and culture and then react. And if the reaction is purely political, then I have nothing to offer.

PS – There is nothing wrong in the depiction of the woman in the advertisement. She is shown to be a politically-enlightened person who consciously chooses her leader ! What’s wrong in that?

Sorry, friends.

(Ashutosh joined the Aam Aadmi Party in January 2014. The former journalist took on former Union minister Kapil Sibal and Health Minister Harsh Vardhan in the national election from Chandni Chowk in Delhi.)

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