Campaign trail: The battle for Benaras

Varanasi: The announced journey to Varanasi, followed by a high-decibel welcome, then a bath in the Ganges, puja in Bhaironath and Biswanath Mandir, an eventful roadshow across five kilometres in the narrow Varanasi roads full of people and potholes, and 30,000 audience rally in the historic Benia Bagh field full of the right slogans and rhetoric: Arvind Kejriwal and Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) planned it all well.

And there were the mandatory black flags from station to ghat to mandir to chowk to the venue, a couple of mugs full of black ink thrown on leaders riding in the open jeep, largely by the same group of young pro-Modi protesters. They were all stained —  Kejriwal, Sisodia, Sanjay Singh, Anand Kumar, Capt Surendra, Somnath Bharti, and Ilias Azmi among others. Security arrangements were heavy throughout the way, and as Inspector Mahesh Gole noted, "We are taking no chances, and anti combat forces, tear gas arrangements and RPF platoon are all ready to avoid any untoward incident." There was indeed a mild lathi charge after the ink-episode which was later denounced by every speaker on stage as not being the Ganga-Yamuna-Kashi culture of tolerance.

As the roadshow started from Maidagin chowk amid slogans of: "Rickshawala Aam Aadmi, Dukandar Aam Aadmi, Bunkar Aam Aadmi" and "Bhrashtachar ka ek hi kaal: Kejriwal Kejriwal", amid drum-dhol-tasa beating, and an animated white caps wearing a couple of thousands of AAP volunteers, shop-keepers, home-makers and local shoppers all came out to see the unusually excited rally.

While most onlooking shopkeepers commented, "Though AAP is an honest party, people expect a lot from a PM candidate in Narendra Modi in spite of complete failure of absentee BJP MP M M Joshi and honest but inefficient BJP MLA Dadaji to make any difference to the issues of sanitation, roads-repairing, sewerage and amenities." A section raised questions on why Modi is fighting from Vadodara also and which constituency will he desert on winning at both places.

While Congress leader Krishna Das and team, local BSP Zila Parishad member and his team, apart from some NGO leaders came up and joined AAP and expressed their support to Kejriwal, it was interesting to see Iliaz Azmi invoking the political demise of "Ravana in Narendra Modi by the Rama in Arvind in the Lanka in Varanasi", and the local Imam of Mosque of Benaras pledging support to Kejriwal "against corruption of Congress and communalism of BJP and SP." 

Kabira-Raidas dono pukaarey, dangaion ko dur bhagarey: was an oft repeated slogan. Speakers stressed heavily on the aspect of communal amity and its need in a constituency of 15 lakh voters with 4 lakh Muslims, 3 lakh Kurmis and almost 2 lakh Dalits.

Kejriwal mentioned sewers, weavers and river as his focal points in campaign and work ahead, irrespective of election results, and tried hard to take the discourse away from castes and communities to issues and amenities. He explained the "well packaged, aggressively marketed lies of Gujarat development model" and specially the poor plight of the Gujarat farmers who are losing land at pittance to large crony capitalists and facing poor water and power situation. He thanked the Election Commission on putting a ban on gas price increase till elections and claimed it as a major success of the AAP initiative. He emphatically raised the issue of BJP-Congress support to FDI in retail calling it "the death knell of the smaller business and retailers", knowing well the concerns of the local small business class.

Taking cudgels against media once again, Kejriwal noted that though he had been raising the issues of poor sanitation, health, and public education system of Gujarat, low agricultural growth rate, false claims on large investments, slow death of small and medium industries and large scale farmer suicides in Gujarat: no media yet had taken up these issues through an investigative journalism in India, while some foreign media are publishing factually illustrated stories, as the one on the Adanis in Forbes magazine recently.

Announcing his candidature amidst a near-all show of hands supporting it at the venue, Kejriwal hoped that the people would make this their own battle for honest politics and pro-people governance.

Amidst onlookers outside the venue were an interesting motley group of people from various backgrounds. B N Singh, working with RCM, noted that he has been an Apna Dal activist and after the party entered into an agreement with BJP, he has joined AAP online along with some 4000 more Apna Dal sympathisers. The nearly 3 lakh Kurmi voters had been behind Apna Dal in Vidhan Sabha polls, who may largely shift to AAP today. Pawan Kumar Singh of Benaras Hindu University appreciated the AAP as a movement, but finds it still immature as a party. Social activist and small business man Wahidullah Khan noted that the Muktar Ansari factor is not important this time around, and the voting can be going beyond caste and community this time if there is a clear electoral battle between Narendra Modi and Arvind Kejriwal.

With SP fielding a local Chaurasia leader and BSP a local trader Jaiswal leader, with Congress yet undecided, and Ansari (who was defeated only by 17,000 votes last time by BJP's MM Joshi when he was a BSP candidate) is now in Kaumi Ekta Party and in jail on a murder charge, the million dollar question is whether the battle of Benaras will become a straight Modi-Kejriwal fight. A divided opposition to Modi in this seat with diverse communities and castes will give a walk-over to the BJP strong-man. A united voting of non-BJP voters will be Advantage Arvind, though it is now apparently a David and Goliath fight indeed.