By the title of this article itself, it’s clear that I am no fan of Arvind Kejriwal or the Aam Aadmi Party. Those who have followed my opinion, especially on Twitter, for sure know that. With AAP sweeping the 2022 assembly election in Punjab, the only option seemingly left for me is to feel agitated and predict doomsday. However, berating mandates and painting doomsday is a quintessential ‘liberal’ reaction, so I’m going to avoid that.

But that doesn’t change the fact that a lot of people are apprehensive about the future of Punjab under AAP. AAP had flirted with separatist elements back in 2017 itself, but Congress ended up winning the assembly election that year. Even though NDA (the BJP alliance) had lost power, a big section of BJP supporters welcomed the fact that the border state would be led by Congress leader Amarinder Singh, a man who was earlier in the army and thus who won’t be as irresponsible as any AAP leader. But what happens now that AAP has scored a massive victory in the 2022 Punjab assembly election?

What makes matter worse is that in the run up to this year’s election, the separatist and Khalistani sentiments were far more visible and stronger as compared to the previous assembly election. The handlers sitting in London and Canada found the perfect opportunity to fan such sentiments during the ‘farmers protests’ against the three farm laws, which were ultimately withdrawn by the union government.

Khalistani flags, slogans and rhetoric was regularly heard during such protests, which also shielded criminal elements involved in rape and murder of a man for ‘blasphemy’. And of course, the protestors desecrated the Red Fort on Republic Day in 2021, throwing an open challenge to the constitutional authority of the nation. Such elements were criticized only in a token manner by most pollical parties. In fact, parties like Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) extended monetary and legal support to vandals of Republic Day. AAP too provided logistic and other supports to the protesters who had squatted on Delhi borders.

We are currently in a position where virtually no mainstream political party in Punjab can openly call Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale a terrorist. Same Bhindranwale who pushed Punjab into its darkest chapters of the history where thousands of Hindus were massacred and as many Sikhs too lost their lives in mindless pursuit of some kind of ‘justice’ and regional aspirations. As recently as last month, slogans in favour of Khalistan were heard during the funeral of Deep Sidhu, a Punjabi actor who had rose to national fame during the ‘farmers protests’.

One has to be an ostrich to dismiss these things as ‘isolated’ incidents. While it’s entirely true that not everyone in Punjab is pining for creation of Khalistan, it’s also true that the handlers, including some sitting in neighbouring Pakistan, must be seeing it as their best opportunity in recent times to push this separatist narrative and demand. With all this as backstory, Punjab now goes into the hands of AAP. Or let’s say, it goes into the hands of Arvind Kejriwal. What will this man do?

If Kumar Vishwas, the former colleague of Kejriwal, is to be believed, Kejriwal nurses ambitions of becoming the Chief Minister of Punjab himself, because that is far bigger a post than being the CM of a half-state like Delhi. Vishwas actually went on to claim that Kejriwal had said that he can even go to the length of becoming the ‘Prime Minister’ of an ‘independent Punjab’, which has to be Khalistan. Weirdly, AAP threatened to sue every media house carrying this claim of Vishwas, but they didn’t sue Vishwas himself. Kejriwal indirectly responded by calling himself a ‘sweet terrorist’. Weird again.

Such casual approach towards such a grave charge makes one wonder if Arvind Kejriwal could really mess up things so much that Punjab might go back to those dark chapters of history. The obvious answer could be that indeed ‘Sadji’ is going to screw it up because he has made many irresponsible statements earlier too.

However, I would like to believe that maybe things won’t be catastrophic. Surprise surprise, yes, I’m having hope in Arvind Kejriwal to actually not make things worse.

Ever since the 2019 Lok Sabha verdict, Arvind Kejriwal has shown that he can be a pragmatic leader too and not an unpredictable maverick who makes incendiary statements, which he had been doing earlier – questioning surgical strikes, questioning EVMs, claiming that Modi will not allow any elections if he wins again, hobnobbing with Urban Naxals, and so on and so forth.

After the 2019 ‘shock’, there has been a perceptible change in the way Kejriwal is doing politics. He no longer appears to be a mad man in a hurry. He didn’t make provocative statements around the Ram Temple verdict or removal of Article 370 for example, or for that matter even on CAA (though what his MLA Amanatullah Khan did is not unknown to people). He has totally avoided statements or acts that can be seen overtly anti-Hindu. On the other hand, he has been organizing public puja and kirtans, due to which his ’secular’ fan base often attacks him as someone toying ‘soft Hindutva’.

Kejriwal has also stopped going mental against Prime Minister Narendra Modi on every possible occasion, having called Modi a ‘coward and psychopath’ earlier. Basically he has tempered down and appears to be ready to play a long innings where he would like to build his strength brick by brick and by taking strategic steps, rather than trying to win through some kind of blitzkrieg that he thought could pull off earlier.

And that’s where the ‘hope’ lies – Kejriwal might no longer be the guy wanting to become Prime Minister of a new country, but he’d rather want to be the Prime Minister of the existing country. Not a mad man in a hurry, but a shrewd man willing to wait.

Based on exit polls that predicted AAP victory in Punjab, party leaders had already started issuing statements that this was the beginning of AAP replacing the Congress on a national level. You can’t have ‘national’ ambitions while being cynical and flirting with ‘anti-national’ elements, and hopefully that will stop Arvind Kejriwal from taking disastrous steps in Punjab.

It is going to be challenging. Kejriwal definitely is not going to drop ‘humein kaam nahi karne de rahe ji’ strategy. For whatever poll promise his party fails to implement in Punjab, for sure he is going to blame the centre. Now that’s the biggest concern – while Kejriwal will see it as shrewd political move to put BJP govt in centre in a fix, Khalistani elements are going to present it as a ‘Hindu’ India doing injustice to ‘Sikh’ Punjab.

I hope for his own good and for country’s sake, Kejriwal realises this risk and doesn’t let Khalistani elements further use this big political development in Punjab to their own advantage. During the farmer protests, Kejriwal had left a meeting when he was ‘grilled’ by some ‘farmers’ as to why he didn’t oppose removal of Article 370 in Kashmir. Kejriwal clearly said that it had got nothing to do with farming. Those ‘farmers’ were basically parroting the far-left line where if one is against farm laws, one also has to be against CAA and in favour of ‘Kashmiri struggle – you know, the grand alliance of the ‘oppressed’ – but Kejriwal refused to accept that binary. That’s why I feel there is hope. The man might not blow it up entirely.

He surely is going to put his own interests ahead of everything, but hopefully he sees his own interest as improving his profile to be seen as a matured responsible national leader, a ‘PM material’. Hopefully that will stop him from being manipulated by the Khalistani elements.

Also, as I said earlier, we hardly have any mainstream political party in Punjab right now that will openly speak against likes of Bhindranwale. Rahul Gandhi’s Congress is shamelessly trying balkanization of India with his ‘you can not rule over Tamils’ kind of nonsense. SAD starts pandering to extremist sentiments when their political fortunes dip (like their support to Republic Day vandals). BJP never had a chance to begin with. So AAP might not be the worst of the lot currently. Yes, I can’t believe myself I’m typing it.