Kejriwal’s Arrest Takes India From the Rule of Law into the Rule of a Tyrant

With the arrest of Arvind Kejriwal, the massively widespread serving chief minister of Delhi, Narendra Modi has crossed the lakshman rekha – that uncrossable, invisible line – between the Rule of Regulation and the rule of a tyrant. 

He has been edging in direction of this, step-by-step, ever since he got here to energy in 2014. 

Now, together with his third election battle imminent, he has lastly crossed the road. Modi had proven scant regard for this line even when he was the chief minister of Gujarat, the place he shored up his reputation by consistently stoking communal pressure within the state. 

Modi has used democracy to seize energy – solely as a way to destroy it. Hitler had finished the identical factor in Germany in 1933, Mohammed Morsi in Egypt in 2012, and Recep Tayyip Erdoğan in Turkey in 2016. 

Modi moved cautiously throughout his first time period in workplace, consolidating his none-too-strong help base inside the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh by taking over lengthy cherished programmes of the latter such because the campaign towards the bogey of affection jihad, the ruse of ghar wapsi and the legislation to abolish triple talaq. 

In his second time period, he pushed the Citizenship Modification Act, the abolition of Kashmir’s particular standing underneath Article 370 in 2019 and a uniform civil code for all Indians, no matter their spiritual affiliation. 

These achievements ought to have sufficed, however paranoia is an incurable situation. 

In 2019 Modi gained 303 seats towards 282 in 2014, making the BJP the primary non-Congress dominant occasion within the Indian political system. However this didn’t assuage his gnawing insecurity. Within the succeeding 4 years he turned the Nationwide Investigation Company, the Central Bureau of Investigation, and above all of the Enforcement Directorate into weapons to be used towards the leaders of all the principle opposition events, giving them the selection of being despatched to jail with out trial and with little hope of bail, usually with out framing a single precise cost towards them that they may carry to a courtroom of legislation, or becoming a member of the BJP. 

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By this stratagem, Modi broke one opposition occasion after the opposite, until there have been solely regional events left comparatively unscathed. The only exceptions had been the Congress, the Trinamool Congress in Bengal, and the Aam Aadmi Celebration. Now Modi has turned his weapons upon these final holdouts for democracy.

Although that was not their intention, by answering the summons of the ED and permitting themselves to be questioned for over several hours, Rahul Gandhi and Sonia Gandhi have implicitly accepted Modi’s supremacy. Now Modi has turned his weapons on the final but-one holdout, Arvind Kejriwal.

Kejriwal has fought Modi tooth and nail since his first day in workplace after his occasion’s sensational victory in 2015, through which it garnered 53% of the votes and gained 67 out of 70 Vidhan Sabha seats. To additional sharpen the distinction between itself and the BJP, AAP has projected a picture of getting finished loads for the folks with little cash. To Modi this was unacceptable. Since then Kejriwal has been his bête noire, to be destroyed by any means doable. 

Modi’s godi media are placing the blame on Kejriwal for his arrest. If the Gandhis had been keen to endure hours of interrogation, why did Kejriwal refuse to heed seven summons from the Enforcement Directorate? Kejriwal’s purpose ought to have been apparent: he was elected by the folks of Delhi to manipulate them and take care of their welfare. Inside the sphere of his duties he had finished so. In issues that didn’t contain policing legislation and order, he didn’t should reply to any larger authority than the individuals who elected him.

Kejriwal’s braveness in confronting Modi’s tyranny has offered a torch with which to mild the hearth of battle in the remainder of democratic India. And it appears as if non-BJP events are responding. The Biju Janata Dal in Odisha has determined towards an alliance with the BJP. The INDIA coalition has sprung to life once more in defence of Kejriwal. What’s extra vital is that the Congress and different members of the Alliance have realised finally that the essential problem earlier than them just isn’t the allocation of seats in every state however the framing of a nationwide coverage that can give the reassurance of jobs, and larger job safety to the 80 million individuals who’ve dropped out of the labour power in sheer despair after the onset of world recession in 2010-11 once they rejoin the labour power. Modi has discovered no resolution. That’s the reason he has fallen again on stirring communal prejudice and animosity to shore up his help base for the subsequent election. 

The victory that he expects in June will allow him to attain this lifelong ambition – to get there he has been destroying each constitutional safeguard that Indian governments and lawmakers have painstakingly created because the first day of Independence. Solely a united opposition that makes use of each medium to succeed in the folks and inform them of the hazard they’re in, will suffice. Even then one can solely hope that it’ll not be too little, too late. 

Prem Shankar Jha is a veteran journalist.