Humility in Victory, Grace in Defeat

                                                 Humility in Victory, Grace in Defeat

Well, the title sounds aphoristic almost like a jeremiad against present day political incorrectness employed by all political parties.  AAP’s magic sway has been severely dented in the recent Delhi Municipal elections. The usual post defeat in-house deliberations to introspect have begun- an exercise that moribund Congress has been doing since 2014 to oxygenate its dying cells. The new aphorism in keeping with political incorrectness is arrogance in victory, introspection in defeat. Tune in the News channels - a frame by frame challenge to entertainment channels- and experience the sound of “no(n) sense” as the argumentative Indians unleash  their lung power. No wonder the evening reality shows on the news channels have eclipsed the reel shows where the competition is among spokespersons of different political parties (fortunately for our democracy to be alive, the number has still not been reduced to the solitary splendor of a single party spokesperson) as to whose non- stop verbal onslaught shall outclass Shanker Mahadevan’s  popular song “Breathless” –(a good 6 minutes long singing without any stop on verse, stanza or even a single breath). Those who wait quietly for the anchor to turn his benign grace on them are the vanquished panelists whose voices are drowned the moment their mike is switched on. The Drama of Democracy is the longest running serial on TV and it promises to remain the ‘markandeya’ of all channels.

It is now the turn of AAP to be flogged with adjectives that Congress has had for the last two and a half years. The headlines scream: AAP is finished, broom falls silent, AAP dead and buried, AAP abhi  pahle nahin, magar peeche(AAP now not in the front but in the rear), AAP nosedives…The anchor and his team ooze out excitement even as they grandstand their felicity of adjectives of denigration of AAP. The Twitterati have a field day at the expense of AAP. It was Samuel Beckett, much before the Twitter came into existence  had perfected the art of conciseness that would shame our modern Twitterati. His famous opening lines in the play, Endgame “Finished, it's finished, nearly finished, it must be nearly finished.” and the concluding lines, “Old endgame lost of old, play and lose and have done with losing”, cannot be bettered by the abusive twitters AAP daily receives from the enthusiasts of the victorious party. Though for ten years when the BJP was in charge of Delhi municipality, it had nothing positive to show by way of contribution; on the contrary the period was marked by absence of all civic amenities, yearly visitation of dengue, malaria, chikungunya etc, besides perennial presence of corruption at every level. Ironically though AAP did well on four fronts- water, power, education and health during the last couple of years it has been in governance, it was booted out for extraneous causes such as its ambition to widen its base in Punjab and Goa, indulgence in confrontational politics(where the confrontation accusation has been laid only on AAP), and for  raising suspicions about the educational qualifications of the hon’ble PM and seeking to expose DDCA corruption( and in the bargain defaming an honest lawyer turned politician). All the sins of omission and commission were reserved for AAP while those of the incumbent party in charge of Delhi corporations were either buried under legal quagmire or forgotten.  

Winner takes it all. So the BJP savoured the great victory showcasing it as a well deserved reward for its ten year rule! Hitler’s propaganda minister Dr. Goebelles once said "tell a lie a 100 times and it becomes the truth" ..... well, history has proven this to be true  ...  and so repeating 100 times the lie that BJP was voted back to power for its performance, the victorious party continues with its pre- poll tirade against AAP. One of the neo converts from AAP to BJP, Shaziya Imli has taken the abuse a notch up with her statement: “Arvind Kejriwal is a drama queen. There is a vacancy right now in The Kapil Sharma Show. He should apply. He will have a good career.” 

Saeed Naqvi writes:  “Kejriwal’s strength and weakness derive from the same fact. He is truly anti establishment. It was extremely audacious of him to stand on that kind of a platform. The result is there for all to see. He stunned the nation winning 67 of 70 seats in the 2015 Delhi elections. He stood out all the more because his extraordinary success came within months of Modi’s victory. He alarmed the establishment, Modi, BJP, Congress, Lt. Governor, Police Commissioner and, above all, the corporate media. Kejriwal, unchecked, was a dangerous idea. He had to be waylaid at every turn. He must be politically exterminated.”

While the victor gloated, Kejriwal, the vanquished showed no grace in defeat. His outbursts against

EVMs as an excuse for his defeat were not only far from truth, they were in poor taste as it implied the Election Commission was either partisan or was incompetent to allow cheating by EVMs. Kejriwal, like our hon’ble PM had risen high on the platform of expose^’s of corruption among leaders of Congress(UPA)  and the two rode to  victory amid the debris of a ruined Congress. In 2015, months after Modi became PM, Kejriwal defeated BJP in the Delhi elections. His brahmastra was anti corruption missile. It worked. PM also used the same brahmastra against the then ruling Congress and won.

But come 2017, PM has consolidated his position while Kejriwal has collapsed. Why and how? PM remained for the most part silent on issues where BJP and its fringe groups grievously faulted. PM showed that he was above all of them. His silence was opportune and well calibrated. Kejriwal opened his mouth too wide and earned the sobriquet- a perpetual whiner. PM knew when silence was golden and when speech was platinum. Kejriwal became a Kejriwail. The public applauded the steely silence of a strong man; it punished the garrulous and at times abusive complainant. Between the two, the public rejected the one who stooped lower.

2017 elections are over.  To start with there was an eerie silence, followed by internal revolt within  AAP. AAP is very much like the Congress except that the latter, though bruised and battered, continues to silently lick its wounds. What compulsions are there for it to remain silent, remain a mystery. The media badly needs a Sherlock Holmes or a Byomkesh Bakshi to unravel  the mystery.  But somehow Congress has shown some degree of grace in defeat even if that grace has not won any public acclaim. It has been in a continuous  introspection mode for the last thirty odd months. It is an old, mature party, now crippled and paralysed, struggling to stand and be counted. All its older narrative like GST,AADHAR, MNREGA etc has been adroitly taken over by BJP as its own and like the story of the ant and the grasshopper, Congress has no plank left. Introspection, introspection, introspection… no new or alternate narrative has been written till today by the Congress. AAP is on a stronger wicket. It has alternate vision to be once again accepted. But if it remains graceless and whining, even the vestige of sympathy for it will be lost forever.

Let  AAP as well as BJP learn  from US. After being trumped, Obama as well as Clinton have not uttered a single word in morose or in bitterness. Even the arrogant narcissistic Trumpism has been met with Obama’s stoic silence. It is said: “There is a thin line between arrogance and confidence. It is called humility. Confidence smiles; arrogance smirks”.

What we need today is humility and grace- in defeat and victory.