Arvind Kejriwal as ‘Shravan Kumar’, ‘Ram Rajya’: Why AAP deployed religious imagery in Delhi Budget

Ram, Ram Rajya, and Ramayana. Delhi Finance Minister Atishi mentioned the three at least 40 times in 90 minutes while presenting the Budget on Monday.

Delhi Finance Minister Atishi with Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal before presenting the state Budget. (Photo: PTI)

5 min readNew DelhiMar 6, 2024 11:34 AM IST First published on: Mar 6, 2024 at 11:34 AM IST

Ram, Ram Rajya, and Ramayana. Delhi Finance Minister Atishi mentioned the three at least 40 times in 90 minutes while presenting the Delhi government’s Rs 76,000-crore Budget on Monday, underlining the Aam Aadmi Party’s (AAP) own Hindutva pitch ahead of the Lok Sabha elections to counter the BJP’s narrative.

Throughout her speech on the Budget, Atishi said the Budget was “inspired” by Ram Rajya and the Ramayana, and that the AAP had been “working day and night for the past nine years to establish Ram Rajya” in Delhi. “Whenever Ayodhya is described, it is said that there is no other city as beautiful and prosperous as Ayodhya across the world. Today, under the leadership of Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal, we are also working hard in Delhi to bring prosperity as it was in Lord Ram’s Ayodhya,” Atishi said. She added that the government believes poverty can be eradicated by providing good quality education to every child.

Claiming that hospitals and other infrastructure in Delhi were in poor condition when the AAP came to power, Atishi equated former Health Minister Satyendar Jain, who was accused of corruption and is out on interim bail, to Lord Hanuman for his work. “Like Lord Hanuman brought the Sanjeevani Booti in the hour of crisis, my elder brother (Jain) revolutionised the healthcare system of Delhi.”

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Asked about the AAP’s “Ram Rajya” pitch, which was also a theme of the party’s 2019 Lok Sabha campaign, Kejriwal said, “We believe in Ram Rajya … We have mentioned the concept in several Budget presentations … even during Manish’s (former finance minister Manish Sisodia) time.”

A running theme

Across its social media pages, the AAP is running “Kejriwal ka Ram rajya” hashtags and posting highlights of the 2024-’25 Budget with bow-and-arrow iconography symbolic of Lord Ram.

Last month, Kejriwal along with Punjab CM Bhagwant Mann and their families visited the Ram Temple in Ayodhya. Kejriwal, like other Opposition parties, decided against attending the temple consecration ceremony in January and the party instead launched a series of “Sundar Kand” and “Hanuman Chalisa” recital programmes ahead of the Ayodhya event.

The AAP has frequently campaigned on its own Hindutva plank. Before the 2022 Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD) polls, the party built a replica of the Ram Temple at the Thyagraj stadium. During the 2020 Assembly poll campaign, the party referred to Kejriwal as “Delhi’s Shravan Kumar”, likening him to the Ramayana character who cared for his ageing parents. Ahead of the 2019 Lok Sabha polls, the Delhi government had launched the Teerth Yatra scheme, offering free pilgrimage travel for senior citizens. So far, 87,000 senior citizens have availed of the scheme to travel to pilgrimage points such as Ayodhya, Mathura, Vrindavan, and Rameswaram.

A senior AAP leader said the party was hoping to capitalise on the “Ram wave” across India to draw in Hindu voters. “A Ram wave is going across the country with Prime Minister Narendra Modi inaugurating the Ram temple in Ayodhya … When it comes to elections, Hinduism and patriotism have always been the BJP’s forte and its vote bank largely relies on it … Following the footsteps, the AAP is trying to play to the Hindu sentiment to gain votes ahead of the Lok Sabha polls … But the party is still very far from hitting the sentiments of hardcore Hindu voters,” said the AAP functionary.

According to another AAP leader, outreach to Hindu voters is required if the party has to end the BJP’s run in Delhi — it swept all seven seats both in 2014 and 2019 — and open its account from the national Capital.

Meanwhile, the Delhi BJP called the Ram Rajya-themed Budget a “cheap publicity stunt”. Calling it a “political tactic”, Delhi BJP president Virendra Sachdeva said, “We all know that the 2024-’25 Budget is the last electoral budget of the Kejriwal government and he has tried to play to the gallery by calling it a ‘Ram Rajya’ Budget though it has nothing new for the people and is, in fact, silent on development projects.”

Delhi BJP spokesperson Praveen Shankar Kapoor said, “It clearly shows they have panicked due to the visible political support for PM Narendra Modi, especially after the construction of the Ram temple, and hence have resorted to using words like Ram rajya Budget to attract attention.”

Another BJP leader said the AAP’s “appeasement” of Hindu voters would not be enough to compete with Ram Temple. “The party is trying to appease the Hindu voters but it will lose even some of the votes it gets in Lok Sabha polls … because you cannot compare a Ram Rajya-themed Budget to the Ram Temple, where lakhs of people thronged to take a peek of the Ram Lalla … If it plays on the Rs 1,000 for each woman scheme, it will get votes as the scheme will be availed by at least 15-16 lakh women voters, but the Hindu card is hard for the AAP.”