Opinion | The Rise And Fall Of Arvind Kejriwal And His Foreign Connections

ALSO READ: Opinion | The Price Of Arrogance: AAP’s Delhi Debacle

When Arvind Kejriwal along with a noted Gandhian activist, Anna Hazare launched ‘India Against Corruption’ in 2011, lakhs of people joined them as volunteers and even donated crores of money from their personal funds. But a movement that was originally envisaged to force politicians to pass the ‘Jan Lokpal’ bill, soon took a different turn when Kejriwal and his other associates decided to take plunge in active politics instead. This led to a fallout with Anna Hazare but an unrelenting Kejriwal still went ahead and founded the Aam Aadmi Party in 2012. In 2013, he made history by defeating the longest-serving Chief Minister of Delhi to date, Congress leader Sheila Dixit. Kejriwal’s reign in power as Delhi CM lasted for more than a decade when in 2024, this crusader against corruption was ironically indicted in a Rs 2,000 crore liquor scam himself and was arrested and sent to jail by the court.

To a layman, the dazzling success of Arvind Kejriwal as a politician would seem like a real-life replay of Anil Kapoor-starrer Bollywood movie Nayak. But anyone who has observed the turn of events in Bangladesh last year would see his rise with an equal amount of suspicion. In Bangladesh, an innocuous ‘students protest’ suddenly became a platform for regime change. Just like Arvind Kejriwal, a man who came to national prominence from nowhere became the Chief Minister of Delhi in a matter of few months. Behind the impeccable media management by the Aam Aadmi Party lies the story of how this Magsaysay award-winner got support from the American deep state, much before a Nobel-prize winner Muhammed Yunus was installed by them into power in Bangladesh.

Kejriwal’s story of dabbling with public policy goes a long way as an NGO activist, years before he was seen sharing the stage with Anna Hazare during the IAC movement. Despite serving as a government officer in the Indian Revenue Services, Kejriwal along with his close associate Manish Sisodiya had floated an NGO, ‘Parivartan’ in the year 2000. Not just this, he had set up another NGO, ‘Kabir’ in the year 2005. Government servants are usually deterred from setting up NGOs especially if there is a conflict of interest involved but this did not impact Kejriwal’s choice at all. What’s more shocking is that both his NGOs were major recipients of funds from the Ford Foundation, a fact that was hidden from the public domain with their respective websites shut in 2012 to evade scrutiny.

While the Ford Foundation claims to be a philanthropist organisation that wants the world to be a fair and peaceful place, numerous investigations have revealed its role as a stooge of the American deep state especially the Central Intelligence Agency or the CIA. In fact, along with the Carnegie and the Rockefeller Foundation, Ford is also known to be one of the three major tentacles through which the American state not only spreads its influence across the world but also actively interferes in the political systems of different countries to ensure continued hegemony of the United States. Thus it cannot be a mere coincidence that an Indian government servant whose NGOs were being funded by the Ford Foundation also received the Ramon Magsaysay award in 2006, once again funded by them.

ALSO READ: Opinion | Why Kejriwal’s Citadel Collapsed Like A House Of Cards

While the money trail and documents that link Kejriwal to a nexus of foreign organisations, having a stated policy of interfering in the Indian political system, are much available in the public domain. But this is an aspect of his politics that has been successfully hidden by careful PR exercise and media management. If we look at his stand on some major domestic issues in the past, then this becomes even more apparent. For instance, Kejriwal was one of the leading voices during the anti-CAA campaign with some of his party leaders even fomenting riots in Delhi in 2020. Similarly, when India was in the process of liberalising its farm sector, Kejriwal again was actively sabotaging the move by firmly backing the middlemen lobby. His party even came to power in Punjab riding this very wave. It also cannot be a minor coincidence that when Kejriwal was sent to jail in the liquor scam under a due process of law, a section of the American deep state jumped to his defence and started targeting the government of the day for stifling opposition voices on the eve of the 2024 Lok Sabha elections.

On all three occasions, Kejriwal played the very role that he was expected to play by helping foreign actors undermine the country’s sovereignty and bring its institutions under the cloud of global suspicion. Even today, the farm sector remains India’s Achilles’ heel, thanks to a nexus of foreign actors who actively supported farmers’ protests and criticised any government move to tackle it. Similarly, the independence of India’s judicial system was also targeted because of the legal action that was initiated against Kejriwal in the liquor scam.

It is common for ‘deep states’, especially the American deep state, to carefully nurture domestic actors to serve their own interests in foreign countries. This is as much true in the case of the Pakistani deep state as well which runs a well-oiled machinery in India to advocate for peace despite terrorism sponsored by that country being a national security headache. But the way, Kejriwal, a man nurtured by the American deep state rose to considerable heights in Indian Politics is a rare phenomenon. Cold War history is replete with instances of Indian politicians receiving kickbacks from the American and Soviet deep states but Aam Aadmi Party is a completely different experiment. It is in fact, a mega success as it not only captured power in the national capital but also rode to victory in a key border state.

Last week, this trial run finally ended when the AAP lost power to the Bharatiya Janata Party in the Delhi assembly elections. If the chance of its revival now seems gleam, so does the possibility of its long-term survival as well. Even as their protege, Kejriwal is now staring at a prolonged jail time, the American deep state is also facing troubled days ahead. One of the first things that the Donald Trump administration has done is to dismantle USAID. It is the end of deep state interference as we know it where the curtain is winding down on the American empire. But the man Arvind Kejriwal and his legend must forever be remembered for how a con job kept certain interests of this country hostage for more than a decade.

The author is a New Delhi-based commentator on geopolitics and foreign policy. She holds a PhD from the Department of International Relations, South Asian University. She tweets @TrulyMonica. The views expressed in the above piece are personal and solely those of the author. They do not necessarily reflect News18’s views.