Tajinder Bagga and Jignesh Mewani: Making sense of bizarre arrests

Kejriwal's image of a middle-class son and brother, will begin to crumble if he is seen as inimical to the perceived interests of the majority. So, Bagga had to be challenged in such a dramatic mode

The tug of war between the police forces of Punjab, Haryana and Delhi over Tajinder Bagga would suggest that Arvind Kejriwal’s Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) has shot itself in the foot. Far from it. Even if the arrest was a botched-up effort, it sent a strong signal that whoever tried to malign Kejriwal, would have to pay a price.

It may be useful to compare the arrest of Gujarat MLA Jignesh Mewani by the Assam police and the aborted detention by the Punjab police of the Bharatiya Janata Party’s shrill spokesperson, Tajinder Bagga. Just as Mewani was seen as a threat to “Brand Modi”, Bagga threatened “Brand Kejriwal”.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s politics, notwithstanding claims of good governance, is focussed on brand building. This was evident ever since he became the Bharatiya Janata Party’s prime ministerial candidate in 2013 –  when converting a regional leader into a national one required his marketing managers to overwrite his dismal record during the 2002 Gujarat communal riots displacing it with the rhetoric of the “Gujarat model of development”. At the ripe age of 64, as he was then, he was transformed into a leader with a youth connect.

Over time, the image grew into the caring ‘father figure’ who could advise the nation on everything: from exam stress and soil health to benefits of yoga. Brand building, however, evolved to keep pace with changing circumstances. The government’s mishandling of the pandemic was compensated by projecting Prime Minister Modi as a public benefactor with his photo splashed on vaccination certificates and sacks of free grain.

Nothing in this genre of politics can allow the leader’s brand image to be eroded. Jignesh Mewani struck at the core of that by tweeting “PM Modi worships Godse” and,  “… the PM on his Gujarat visit must make an appeal for harmony in light of the recent events of communal violence in the state.” He had to be ‘punished’. This idea of protecting the PM’s image seems to have even become so widely accepted that even a youngster like Umar Khalid was denied bail because he referred to the prime minister’s promises as ‘jumla’ (rhetoric).

Kejriwal’s politics of good governance is similarly subsumed under his persona – he is both the leader and the party. Kejriwal also hopes to propel himself from being regional to a national leader. Only, unlike Prime Minister Modi, he is and looks youthful. He appeals to voters as a caring son or brother and his government advertisements are replete with references to his “Ma-Bauji” (Mother and Father). Kejriwal’s brand-building also aims to forge a sentimental connect with the urban poor and this is why he chooses to speak only in colloquial Hindi even on English language TV channels.

In Delhi, Kejriwal managed to replace the Congress by successfully targeting the party’s constituencies of the poor, marginal and minority through doles and freebies. But as his ambition took national wings, he realised that Congress was on the decline and that he would have to present himself as an alternative to the BJP. He started copying the BJP’s winning tactics -- distancing himself from the minorities to placate the majority.

Kejriwal’s visited the Ram Temple in Ayodhya, his government built a replica of the temple at a sports’ stadium to celebrate “Dilli ki Diwali”, the party offered free religious pilgrimage for senior citizens (with the additional offer of Ajmer Sharif as a token gesture for Muslims), he adopted a hands off approach to the Northeast Delhi riots, and more recently, it maintained a dead silence for two days over the use of bulldozers to destroy Muslim businesses and homes in Jehangirpuri but moved pre-emptively to prevent a temple demolition in Srinivaspuri. These were all strategies directed at rebuilding his political brand. During the Punjab election, Kejriwal even claimed that Hindus in the state felt unsafe, to woo the minority urban Hindu voters.

Bagga’s attack on him as someone inimical to “the Hindus of the country” undermined Kejriwal’s evolving pro-Hindu brand. That too when he needed to strengthen his overtures to the majority community in the upcoming elections in Himachal Pradesh (known by locals as Devbhoomi or Abode of the Gods) and even more importantly in communally polarised Gujarat.

Kejriwal’s strategic underplaying of secular credentials through symbolic acts of commission and omission always risked being called out by BJP’s shrill majoritarianism. Bagga, who has more than a one million followers on social media and acts as the avant-garde of BJP trolls, declared that India’s “100 crore Hindus would never forgive him” for describing that “the story of Kashmiri Pandits’ genocide” was based on  “lies”. It might be a stretch to interpret Bagga’s declaration that Kejriwal should apologise or “we will not let him live” and “continue to protest” as a credible “death threat”. But that this was deliberately played up suggests the extent to which the AAP is willing to go to protect Brand Kejriwal as majority-friendly.

Brand image is of critical importance to both Prime Minister Modi and Kejriwal because both need to rise above party ideology to attract voters beyond its confines. Prime Minister Modi therefore has to talk of  inclusive development (“sabka saath, sab ka vikas”)  and his acolytes need to project him as a welfarist statesman. He cannot be branded in the public eye as a partisan of a community. So Mewani’s arrest had to be engineered and Umar Khalid kept behind bars. Indeed, the highest number of sedition cases between 2014 and 2019 – nearly 149 -- were against those who made “critical” or “derogatory” remarks against Prime Minister Modi.

Similarly, for Kejriwal, to forge a national brand means rising above the municipal ideology of delivering efficient civic services. His carefully cultivated image of a middle-class son and brother, will begin to crumble if he is seen as inimical to the perceived interests of the majority. That is why Bagga had to be challenged in such a dramatic and news-worthy mode.