Why people hate Arvind Kejriwal

Before I start writing this article, I just want to clear that this is not a political analysis. I'm no political analyst and therefore can't do anything of that sort. I am here to write about what I know the best. I'm a student of psychology and I practice psychology day in and day out for my living. I am trained to analyze and understand the underlying psychological explanation for things. Fortunately or unfortunately, I tend to apply this to things beyond my professional work. 

I am here trying to understand why some people hate Arvind Kejriwal so much? There is a kind of anger you see in people especially in social forums where their expression of anger is not just limited to a political debate but goes beyond. The kind of language and the verbal abuse you can see in the social media is very personal. It often made me wonder why. There are so many corrupt political leaders (I mean we don’t even have to bother counting) and the reaction towards them or their deeds is very minimal. Even if people express their reactions, they do it on a superficial level which sounds more like a disappointment but more often than not it is not anger that is expressed. And then I see Kejriwal. I mean he is a graduate of the Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur and worked for the Indian Revenue Service (IRS) as a Joint Commissioner in the Income Tax Departatment. He is known for his efforts to implement the Right to Information Act (RTI) at the grassroots level and his role in drafting a proposed Jan Lokpal Bill. In 2006, Kejriwal was awarded the Ramon Magsaysay Award for Emergent Leadership recognizing his involvement in a grassroots movement (Parivartan) using right-to-information legislation in a campaign against corruption. The same year, after resigning from the IRS, he donated his Magsaysay award money as a corpus fund to found the Public Cause Research Foundation, a non-governmental organization (NGO). He sounds like a good candidate for providing clean politics that we have been sulking for years and now that he is in political action, people are hating him like there is no tomorrow. Why?

Then one day when I was seeing one of his speeches, I realized what was creating this situation. Kejriwal always says very specifically in his speeches or his discussions that “Dosto, hum sab ko milke is desh ko badalna  hai” (Friends! We together have to change the political scenario in this country). He always says “WE” and never uses “I” when he is talking about running the country (This has been my observation that he has used “WE” in almost every occasion). But what is wrong with using the word “WE”? Ahh! Don’t you see, This is exactly what makes people uncomfortable. The moment he says “WE”, it means shared responsibility. Suddenly the idea of a corrupt free government is not a politician’s responsibility anymore; you have to do your bit too. This means no getting a tatkal ticket through a broker, standing in line to get your vehicle registered and no escaping the law by paying rs.100 bribe to the traffic police for not carrying your papers. And suddenly all these small ways of managing things no longer exist or if  you still indulge in them to make your life easier, it will be frowned upon. How any other political leader differs on Kejriwal on this is that, they never use the word “WE”. There is always an assurance given to the public that if their government comes, they will deliver everything to you. All you have to do is sit back and relax and enjoy the development. For us who have always had politicians working for us and our involvement in politics is only restricted to a vote once in five years, this idea of lettings the politicians do their work is soothing. And of course when they don’t do a good job, we always have the classic reaction blaming them for their actions. But definitely it is better than sharing that responsibility.

Here starts the person’s discomfort with Kejriwal’s entire ideology. Evolutionary psychologists argue that we are evolved in such a way that we give ourselves more moral credit than we actually deserve. This means that we feel we are more morally outstanding than we generally are. Robert Wright who have done credential work in the field of Evolutionary psychology have argued that there is also a tendency in human beings to think we are morally superior to the next individual and are skeptical when we have to accept other’s morality. A brilliant example of this was given by Rajat Sharma in Aap ki adalat while talking to Kejriwal about his party candidate. If you see the interview, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SPkMu1cMBSE from 27.10 to 27.50 minutes, the journalist’s speculation to the other person’s morality indicates the same behavior that compliments the above argument.

This doesn’t stop here. Somewhere in this entire process of questioning other’s morality and no willing to take certain responsibility, the person also feels morally judged. And this is something we always avoid. So therefore when you feel somebody is either questioning or asking you to prove your morality and this case to your country, you not only become unconformable but also feel angry. When I seeing a lot of comments on different posts related to Kejriwal, majority of the comments looked like this “Good, it happened to him. What does he think? He is more morally superior to others?”, “He always blames others? He thinks he is the only honest one?” All these comments reflect a single idea that asks Kejriwal how dare he question their morality? But what we miss out in this process is that who is actually questioning your morality? Neither Kejriwal nor his political associates or any political leader of any political party as a matter of fact has ever asked us how honest we are. So who is asking these questions then? The answer is; it is the individual him/herself.

So the process usually is like this. There is a discomfort first because of the new ideology. We are not sure why this discomfort is arising but we know it started. But we can’t live with it, so we try to fix it. One way of fixing it is by making ourselves believe that there is no discomfort at all. So you kind of let it go without putting too much energy into it. The other way and the one that I’m writing about is by fighting with it and venting it out through anger. Since we love our own self, we never question or blame ourselves. Instead we find an external source to displace that anger on. And here my friends, we have the most suitable target, Mr. Kejriwal. But we also have innate survival instincts and therefore to avoid any danger from our actions, we assess the target first. All we see is a common man who believes in non-violence, who doesn’t have direct co-relation with powerful or the rich, who doesn’t have a political backing and we get comfortable because we know we will not be harmed if we show our anger verbally or physically. Probably this is what all those guys thought who physically attacked Kejriwal. And maybe this is why Delhi’s Ex Police Commissioner has recited a hideous sms in a public forum like India Today Conclave 2014 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PtRUwZgmERU, Minutes 56:20 to 57:55) without worrying much about the consequences. You couldn’t even think doing something like that with any other politician. And of course one of the safest ways to displace the same anger without any bit of danger involved is through social media. So you can vent out your anger as much as you want and use language that can be abusive as you want. This why even though you are the 1657^th member to comment on a post and even though nobody will read your comment; you feel a kind of relief when you post it. Of course access to internet and the emergence of social media as a strong communicative tool in the recent times added to this. It is the same survival instinct due to which many of the politicians who are corrupt or have done hideous crimes are never verbally or physically attacked.

Basically we are social beings and when we see our peers supporting our idea, we feel rewarded. Working on rewards or punishments is a core concept in psychology to improve or end a behavior. So when a person finds a peer group in a social forum that not only justifies his/her anger but also compliments it, he/she feels rewarded for that behavior and they continue to do it. Similarly, when they don’t get rewarded for their actions, there is a decrease in the behavior. This is the same principle that is seen applied in various social forums.

But maybe since the result is out and things are less threatening, it is time to look into that anger and see where it is originating from to understand why is the anger even caused. Little bit of introspection might be uncomfortable but will definitely not cause any harm.

On the whole Mr. Kejriwal reminds me of a quote from my favorite book, “The Fountain Head” where the dean of the college asks the protagonist in the book, “"My dear fellow, who will let you?" And Roark answers, "That's not the point. The point is, who will stop me?”