Sidharth Bhatia 
Soon after taking over as the new chief minister of Delhi, the Aam Aadmi Party’s Atishi announced that she was merely a caretaker till her party’s convenor Arvind Kejriwal wins the upcoming assembly election and reclaims his rightful post. She showed an empty chair next to hers which she said was waiting for Kejriwal, who she was confident would return victorious after four months.
Then she added that this was like Bharat in the Ramayana, who kept his elder brother Ram’s khadau, or sandals, in front of the throne. This is a story Indians hear in childhood – the sandals were supposed to represent Ram who was the ‘rightful’ king but was on a 14 year exile.
When the formation of AAP was announced in 2012, it caught the imagination of the masses, the intelligentsia and liberals. Here was one party not encumbered by past baggage and was neither a dynastic organisation nor a communal one.
Atishi was not among its prominent faces then, and emerged in front after many of AAP’s high-profile founders, including Prashant Bhushan and Yogendra Yadav were eased out by Kejriwal. At that time, she went by the name Atishi Marlena – liberals were enchanted to know that her unusual second name was a combination of Marx and Lenin and had been given by her leftist parents.
Somewhere along the way, Atishi stopped using Marlena and adopted her family’s surname Singh, which clearly identified her caste. The Aam Aadmi Party, now fully in the control of Kejriwal, also began to lean actively towards a more ‘Hindu’ profile.
He introduced classes on ‘patriotism’ in Delhi schools and declared himself a ‘Hanuman Bhakt’. In 2020, the Delhi government installed a temporary model of the Ayodhya Ram Temple where he and his ministers held a puja.
The Hindu-signalling theme of AAP, a party that emerged on an anti-corruption platform, has continued. A couple of days after her swearing in, Atishi went to the Hanuman temple in Delhi’s Connaught Place for a puja and photos of her piety were widely circulated. An interesting little video clip, in which journalist Ravish Kumar questions why she is doing this just before elections, is worth a watch.
But is this drama only about the forthcoming elections? The AAP has a lot of goodwill and can easily go to the voters harping on how Kejriwal, his deputy Manish Sisodia and others have been victimised by the BJP. It can talk about the work the party has done in schools.
In the last general elections, despite being part of the INDIA bloc and all the support given by the Congress, AAP did not win a single seat in Delhi, but Assembly elections are another matter. There is no particular need to try and aim at the Hindu vote.
Kejriwal’s motivations may be different. There is always a possibility that he is genuinely a very religious man, though that doesn’t explain why his entire party leadership is following in his footsteps or that his religiosity is now virtually his party’s ideology.
What is more likely is that Kejriwal has figured out what he thinks is a winning formula – Hindu-signalling minus the violence and aggression.
AAP could be the party that believes in modern education, welfare policies, technology and good governance but without forgetting India’s Hindu roots. This will, the party hopes, draw those voters who are unhappy with the BJP away from the saffron party and also those who think the Congress is a party of ‘Muslim appeasement’.
Kejriwal may have calculated that the BJP, once Narendra Modi is no longer on the scene, will not have the same draw and he can step into the breach and grow. Meanwhile, he doesn’t forget to constantly attack Modi.
Its an ambitious plan but it is quite clear that Kejriwal and his close associates are sold on it. The immediate first step is to win the next Assembly elections in Delhi due by the end of February 2025. AAP is a part of the INDIA bloc but is there a guarantee that the Congress will not contest separately?
A three-way fight cannot but hamper AAP. Kejriwal has to pull out all stops and clearly, the party intends to up the Hindutva-lite game over the next few months.