All hail internal democracy of AAP. Heil Arvind Kejriwal

Let me begin with the story of three Oxford dons who were caught naked. (You can replace Oxford with your favourite university, if you like.) One day the three professors were bathing in a river, in their birthday suits. To their shock, a group of women students happened to arrive at the spot as they were stepping out of the river. Two of them were quick to place their hands on their family jewels. One of them covered his face instead. After the giggling group of girls left, the two who managed to protect their modesty asked the third: “Why did you cover your face, old man! The girls saw you naked.”

He said: “Don’t know about you two, but they know me by face, sirs.”

The recent churning in the Aam Aadmi Party has excited critics no end, especially those who do not like Arvind Kejriwal and have scant respect for internal democracy. Among the various popular forms of democracy like presidential and Westminster, I like internal democracy the best. Mostly, because it is internal. The external democracies you can see and ridicule. The internal democracy is not seen, hence cannot be ridiculed. So it retains some sanctity. However, it is important, and often more so than the external form.

We know each other by our faces, because that’s what is different. It’s not that our bodies are exact copies of each other, but not everybody is a Salman Khan or a Deepika Padukone. It’s the heads that we recognise and respect. That’s why the NDA government is called the Modi government. That’s why women are forced to cover their face, lest people relate their face to their bodies. That’s why people spend so much time grooming, an act which largely involves the face. We do not have a chest-wash yet, but we’ve got men buying face-wash in tonnes. That’s why men keep beards and shave. The prettiness or ugliness of things is about what we behold, not what things hold.

But I want to go deeper. You have seen Salman Khan’s body, and that of Deepika Padukone as well. They leave little for the imagination, right? Wrong. There’s a lot left, like the ribs that cage Padukone’s devastatingly butterfly heart, which in turn pumps the blood that keeps her face radiant. Maybe it’s not Maybelline. Like Salman Khan’s intestines, which refuse to absorb fat and distribute protein to the muscles, instead.

Stop it. It’s disgusting. It’s actually not at all nice to imagine all that goes on under the skin. Also, it’s the same for everybody. Your intestines are as pretty as that of Laetitia Casta. Your lungs are as tar-packed as Shahrukh Khan’s if you smoke. He just makes more money, and can probably afford new lungs. But the point is, deep down, we are all equal. You, I and Abhishek Bachchan. Our internals are the same, like the internal democracies in Indian political parties.

Rahul Gandhi has attempted to resign a couple of times, and even Sonia Gandhi has offered to resign, but their resignations have been summarily rejected by the Congress Working Committee. Democracy prevails. You can see the great Indian internal democracy in its full glory every time a party wins an election. Much before the legislative party meets, the leader is announced by the party high command. Yet, the MLAs meet, the observers observe and a new leader is elected. Surprise! Behold the beauty of democracy that it’s the same leader, who was declared the leader by the high command earlier in the day.

The Aam Aadmi Party is a new party, and its leaders are still learning the ropes. But let us, for a moment, marvel at the finesse with which they are giving the veterans a run for their hypocrisy. Arvind Kejriwal decided that Prashant Bhushan and Yogendra Yadav will be thrown out of the political affairs committee. We were told so by news leaking from the top. But they were not, until the political affairs committee sat down and went through the democratic process of kicking them out. Both Bhushan and Yadav knew that the result was pre-declared by Arvind Kejriwal, but they also took part in the charade to uphold internal democracy as the sacred, inviolable part of their new party with a difference.

To be fair to him, Arvind Kejriwal built a fantastic movement, and then a beautiful party. It’s different from the BJP and the Congress, as they are different from each other. He gave it its face. The face is different, the body is different, but the innards are the same. That’s the nature of it. Something which probably even Kejriwal’s naturopathy won’t be able to alter. Please don’t expect Arvind Kejriwal’s pancreatic ulcer to be more honest than the duodenum of Amit Shah. That’s too much to ask for. For now, hail internal democracy. Of AAP. Happy Holi.