Introduction: Arvind Kejriwal’s dubious funding sources

There is no denying the fact that Arvind Kejriwal, a newly commissioned  secular anarchist romping  across  India’s political theatre has confounded many analysts and political pundits.  His emergence as a motor-mouth political know-all  requires an in-depth analysis. 

By  now most  Indians  know that Kejriwal and his  political gorilla, Aam Aadmi Party, have been funded and sired by  the Central  Intelligence  Agency of  the  USA through its powerful financial arm, the Ford Foundation. Even so, the truth about the funding of AAP by some foreign-based  anti-India forces has not fully reached the crores of marginalized hoi  polloi,  trapped in hunger and penury, across rural India.  There has been media spotlight on an NGO Kabir, run by Kejriwal and his closest confidante Manish Sisodia and other camp followers.

It is alleged that Kejri’s Kabir had received a financial largesse totaling $ 3,97,000 as grants  from the  Ford  Foundation. Another prominent member of AAP Yogendra Yadav,a former Fellow of the Centre for Developing Societies, New Delhi, has allegedly received substantial funds from Ford Foundation through the ICSSR.  Similarly some other members of AAP have  allegedly received funds from some dubious sources.

Admittedly Kejriwal is a sharp-shooter strategist who knows his onions well.  But the successful debut of AAP on the political horizon during Delhi Assembly elections did expose another secret relationship of Team Kejri with our hostile neighbour which needs to be made public and debated. In addition to the Ford Foundation, Kejriwal has  perhaps some more powerful  foreign connections, too–maybe in West Asia and  possibly even in Pakistan!

Kejriwal pampers fundamentalist Muslim clerics

The  unusual success of the Aam Aadmi  Party in the Delhi elections had caused tectonic tremors across the country. especially in the ranks of the BJP brass who were caught napping.  No wonder the party paid a high price for not being able to read the tea leaves of AAP  narrative and its crafty founder, Kejriwal, who stonewalled the formation of a BJP government in the national capital.

The  rise and rise of Kejriwal began with his well planned and timely  association with the anti-corruption movement of Anna Hazare  launched in April 2011, for  enacting the Lok Pal Bill. Interestingly neither Anna nor most of his associates, except  perhaps  to some extent  Kiran Bedi, could decipher Kejriwal’s  ultra-clever game plan.

The clue to the shape of things to come was reflected in Kejri’s  meetings with the Imam of Jama Masjid and other Muslim leaders at whose instance in the third week of August, 2011, Bharat Mata’s  portrait was suddenly  removed from  Anna’s stage and replaced with the likeness of Gandhiji.  The shrewd implications of  this “meaningful” change was neither analysed nor understood  either by our unpaid or ‘paid’ media or by the BJP. In this context, the Shahi Imam of Jama Masjid disclosed that  Hazare’s team members had also asked him to share the stage with them at Ramlila Maidan but he was not inclined to go there.  He claimed to have told Kejri  that  “if you want to include Muslims in your movement, you will also have to understand their pain and problems, and you would do well to also highlight issues of concern to Muslims,”  He further added that  the greater evil in the country was communalism which should be addressed first. Additionally, Imam Bukhari told Kejri and his teammates  that communal powers were also participating  in their campaign due to which it was difficult for Muslims to join them.

Equally surprising was the ignorance of our  political analysts on the import of  Kejri’s sudden but meaningful two hours long meeting with the fundamentalist fatwa-issuing cleric, Maulana Tauqeer Raza Khan of Bareilly, who had issued a ‘fatwa’  in 2007 promising a reward  for forcing Taslima Nasreen to burn her books and leave India.  Earlier in the March 2006,   the  same cleric had issued a ‘fatwa’ for beheading  the American President George Bush when he visited India. Though  clever Kejri tried to dismiss his meeting with the notorious  Maulana as a courtesy call, the  latter was more frank. He admitted that Kejriwal had  come  to his house for a 2 hours long meeting with him. In fact, he showered praise on Arvind Kejriwal in the following words:

“Kejriwal came to meet me at my residence. I liked his simplicity. He  is against the Congress and BJP. This is  a common factor between  us and I assured him of my support”¹

According to a reliable source,  Maulana Tauqeer had reportedly agreed to address some meetings in Delhi for AAP. The plan was, however, changed  at the instance of Kejriwal who decided to use his  favourite SMS route to reach and win the Muslim voters.

Now, Maulana Tauqeer is  the head of a fundamentalist outfit called the Ittehad-e-Millat Council which is closely associated with several fundamentalist organizations in India and abroad.  No wonder, at the height of  the campaign for the Delhi assembly, a group of prominent Muslim clerics and leaders held a conference in Delhi  in November 2013.  Thereafter Kejriwal’s time-tested  SMS plan was put into operation for winning Muslim voters. Under  the guidance of  a newly formed outfit,  United Muslim Forum, approximately 15 lakh text messages were sent to Muslim voters, urging them to vote for AAP and not to vote for Congress. Twenty-five teams tasked with campaigning  for AAP and against the Congress  were sent to various constituencies of  the Delhi Assembly.  These teams had a significant  Muslim presence.  The forum, which had the blessings of Maulana Tauqeer and many other Muslim leaders,  also distributed campaign material  on ‘Congress misdeeds’ and gave advertisements in Delhi’s Urdu newspapers which are the staple reading material of the Muslim community. ‘Vote for AAP, not Congress’, the ads proclaimed loudly. Any reference to the BJP was avoided because the campaigners knew that no Muslim will vote for the politically pariahed saffron party.

Kejriwal’s seamy side exposed

The most seamy side of the Kejriwal’s  narrative was, however,  laid bare in  an article posted by a Baloch journalist, Aamna Shahwani in The Afghanistan Times, Kabul, on 4 March, 2014.²  Briefly, the well-researched article highlighted the following facts to which the eternal Quiz Master Kejriwal must respond:

1. After Kejri’s AAP won 28 seats out of the 70, the Pakistani media was full of praise for AAP.  Although the BJP  had won a few more seats than the AAP, the well known Pakistani newspaper Dawn, totally ignored it but emphasized the AAP victory by frontpaging the news. The Pakistani media also  started praising Kejriwal for his spectacular success. No one knows why  Kejri became a darling of of Pakistani chatterati.

2. There were celebrations in different cities of Pakistan, especially in the Pakistan-administered Kashmir. Can Kejri explain what led the jihadi tribe to laud and celebrate AAP’s political debut in Delhi Assembly elections?

3. There was a big spurt in the online donations from Pakistanis to AAP. According to Aamna, more support was likely come to AAP from Pakistan because the ISI wants to have a puppet regime in New Delhi. Surely, why there was a sudden spurt in online donations for AAP from Pakistan  needs to be explained to the Indian masses?

4. In February 2014, the ga-ga-singing Pakistani journalists and media groups interviewed Kejri. Even the Prime Minister of Pakistan Nawaz Sharif, proclaimed that the victory of Kejri will help in resolving the Kashmir dispute. What made Kejriwal a darling of the Pakistani politicians? 

5. The prime reason for Pakistan’s love for Kejri and AAP is their anti-India stand on the Kashmir dispute. The Baloch columnist Aamna pointed out that at least three members of AAP  had delivered anti-India and pro-secessionist statements on Kashmir, including the option of referendum or plebiscite voiced  by Prashant Bhushan. Why do the AAP activists have a pro-secessionist approach on Kashmir?

6. It needs to be observed that AAP has many members who had pleaded for sparing the life of Ajmal Kasab who was convicted for waging war against India on 26/11 in Mumbai. Kejri must explain why AAP leaders had a soft corner for Ajmal Kasab.

7. Aamna Shahwani has also alleged that  no  attempt was made by Kejriwal during his  regime to recover the long pending electricity bills running into several lakh rupees from the Shahi Imam of Jama Masjid. Was the soft corner of  the AAP leadership towards the  Shahi Imam of Jama Masjid for not making any attempt to recover the long pending electricity bills occasioned by his proximity to the radical Islamists’ vote bank?

8. After the post-poll alliance with the Congress Party, Kejriwal forgot his earlier charge sheet against  the former Chief Minister, Sheila Dikshit. Further, AAP also removed earlier posts charging Sheila Dikshit with mammoth bribery from their website. Why?

9. While addressing a gathering of Muslims at the Islamic Centre in New Delhi, Arvind Kejriwal publicly pronounced that communalism was a bigger threat than even corruption. He suddenly changed his focus like the shifting  sands of Arabia and started parroting the same communal rhetoric which had been voiced by the Imam of Jama Masjid in August 2011. What caused  this sudden somersault from his focus on his favourite issue of corruption to the so-called communalism?

10. It was further pointed out that a new entrant to AAP, Rajmohan Gandhi–a grandson of Mahatma Gandhi–had launched a campaign in the USA  for releasing the notorious ISI spy, Ghulam Nabi Fai.  Equally, why did  some members of the AAP openly campaign in favour of  mercy for Afzal Guru who was sentenced to death for  the  December, 2001, attack on the Indian Parliament ?

The ISI’s honeybee

Although it is difficult to identify the hand(s) responsible for nurturing and financing  the self-confessed anarchist Kejriwal and his AAP, it will be pertinent to recall that Adrian Levy and Cathy Scott had highlighted in their extensively researched tome, The Seige, that Major Iqbal of  the ISI had boasted about  planting in India of a super spy agent codenamed “Honeybee.” The Pakistani Major had  further revealed that there was a retinue of chuhes (i.e., rats) working for the ISI across India.

Prima  facie, till now the  Intelligence Bureau does not appear to have made any worthwhile attempt to trace and arrest the so-called Honeybee and his or her rats.  An alert was, however, sounded by the Bureau in January 2014, warning that the ISI and LeT were trying to infiltrate into Indian political parties.⁴  In the circumstances,  the startling revelations made by Aamna Shahwani in The Afghanistan Times  on March 4, 2014, certainly point to the urgent requirement of identifying the hidden hand of  Pakistan’s Honeybee.

Indeed, the facts-rich article of Aamna Shahwani published in The Afghanistan Times on March 4, 2014, has cited more than one proof of the AAP being funded and supported by the ISI of Pakistan.

Finally the ‘communal cat’ jumped out of Kejriwal’s ‘secular topi’’ when recently the Washington-based Association of Indian Muslims of America issued an “appeal to Indian Muslim citizens and voters to raise funds for and support Aam Aadmi Party” in the upcoming  parliamentary elections of 2014.  Showering encomiums on the Aam Aadmi Party the press release of American Indian Muslims Association displayed Kejriwal’s photograph and his  famous ‘broom’ to enthuse the Muslim voters.  The press release claimed that AAP will help the deprived Muslim community escape the police brutality, denial of justice, etc.

Add to this the vigorous efforts for online fund collection made by Kejriwal’s trusted lieutenant, Shazia Ilmi, during her visit to the Middle East in February, 2014. While Kejriwal and his cabinet sat on a dharna at Rail Bhawan, Shazia Ilmi went touring abroad to collect funds to enable her party to fight the 2014 general elections.

Kejriwal needs to answer his Pak connection

The time has come  for  the anarchist Kejriwal and his team mates to  respond truthfully to the questions raised  by Aamna Shahwani. They must come clean now to dispel  the doubts troubling the minds of millions of  patriotic Indians, especially when  there are hush-hush rumours in the Lutyens  garden city about Kejriwal’s  proximity to the Political Adviser of  the UPA Chairperson and some prominent members of the National Advisory Council !

The ISI and many other spy agencies have been using the methodology of bogus online funding to destabilise nations hostile to them.  According to knowledgeable  foreign sources, several members of the American Indian Muslims Association  were in close touch with the ISI of Pakistan through Dr.Ghulam Fai of Kashmiri American Council, who was  arrested by the United States police  in July 2011 on charges of  illegal activities and espionage.  Interestingly the shadowy Pak agent Dr. Fai was also responsible  for getting bogus online funds rolled over by the ISI  through online donations for promoting the cause of Kashmiri secessionists. The Federal Bureau of Investigation discovered that he was  in  regular touch with Abdul Majeed Tramboo and Nazir Ahmad Shawl who ran the Kashmir Centres in Brussels and London respectively. Bogus online funding is a well known trick used for espionage.

Surprisingly, during the last one year, Indian intelligence agencies have made no worthwhile  attempt to unravel the mysterious rise of AAP nor questioned the sources of the outfit’s  remarkable success in fund-raising across West Asia and  Pakistan. They have also miserably failed to identify and capture the  ISI’s ‘Honeybee’ and Major Iqbal’s  chuhe operating in India. The politicization of the Intelligence Bureau and other security agencies cannot be ruled out.

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References :

1. www. ndtv.com/article/assembly polls/cleric-who-issued fatwa-against taslima-nasreen -441919
2. Aamna Shahwani, Afghanistan Times, Kabul, March 4, 2004.
3. Adrian Levy & Cathy Scott-clark, The Seige. Pp.44, 56, 115, 293.
4. ‘Intel Warning: ISI- LeT to infiltrate parties, The Asian Age, New Delhi, 27 January, 2014.

[The author is a retired senior IPS officer]