Last week was quite an eventful one. I had received a criminal defamation notice for damaging Arvind Kejriwal’s reputation as a ‘World Renowned Leader’. I giggled after remembering what I thought of him as a leader. The notice was apparently for a tweet I had put on 20th Aug 2016. It had said

‘Kejriwal had 11.5M followers till few days back, now 8.7M! TOI says twitter suspended 2.4L accnts 4 promoting terror!’

Twitterati seemed to have found this association meaningful. The tweet got 800 retweets, 470 likes & of-course dozens of abuses from self proclaimed Kejriwal supporters.

I had learnt during my management days that insecure leaders dislike alternate voices and are likely to crush such people using force to muzzle their voice. A simple search on linkedin threw some more information.

What does an insecure leader look like?

They surround themselves with people they can control. They misinterpret other people’s motives to fit their story. They look at those who work for them as employees, not their team. They consider anyone “disloyal” who disagrees with them. They mishandle conflict

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Few leadership experts further share : –

The root cause of insecurity is a lack of character development. Insecure leaders never develop people. They replace them. ~ John C. Maxwell

A quick look at Kejriwal’s actions of last few years shows a theoretically perfect match. I need not repeat his daily rants of ‘he not being able to do his work because of someone else’ or ‘the unceremonious ousters of those in party who were more capable or smarter than him’. His new core team consists of those sycophants who would just echo everything he says.

The insecure leader got threatened by the tweet & with a purpose to intimidate, a legal notice of criminal defamation was sent to me which i received on 7th Sep

Pt 6 of the notice said

Your tweet is a direct attack on Mr Arvind Kejriwal who alongside of being the National Convener of Aam Aadmi Party, is also the Chief Minister of Delhi. Mr Arvind Kejriwal is a world renowned political leader and public rights activist who holds very high repute & public standing not only in India but across the world. By attacking Mr Arvind Kejriwal using fabricated and malicious content you are not only damaging his untarnished image but also hurting sentiments of millions of voters and supporters.

Pt 9 had this warning

I on behalf of and for my client will initiate legal proceedings including but not limited to pursuing a criminal defamation case against you. Further, you will be held liable for any monetary and legal damages which my client seeks on behalf of his organization and it’s office bearers. Please stand informed, that your liability and exposure under such legal action would be considerable.

If one doesn’t consider the insecurity angle for this ‘world renowned leader’, it is still hard to believe that he is the same leader who contested the defamation law in supreme court as being against freedom of expression would get rattled from a tweet by an ordinary person.

My reply may have further rattled the gang, if the use of choicest of words by them is any indicator. The reply went viral. It was retweeted more than 2600 times and got covered by few online portals including IndiaTtoday, Catch News, OpIndia, Shankhnaad etc. Kejriwal’s IT team unleashed their most abusive of trolls on me. Next three days there were regular attempts to hack my twitter account.

Kejriwal’s calling Shekhar Gupta a ‘Dalal’, LG Jung to be BJP agent, PM Modi a Psychopath & Coward, using phrases like ArnabModiKaKuttaHai would not utterly surprise someone who has spent some time with him and knows him significantly well.

Being Insecure isn’t Kejriwal’s only problem. He is utterly unimaginative & perhaps suffers from low self confidence out of this. I confidently put this up, as learnt during a random meeting with Mr. Kejriwal few years back. The surrounding was calm, and he was in his true self. It was in Aug 2012 during a railway travel in Bhopal Shatabdi from Delhi to Jhansi. Although it was after the Anna protest but no one seemed to have noticed or recognized him in the train. He was sitting with his entire row lying vacant. I recognized him but since no one else was paying attention so I went & verified with TTE. His name was mentioned as ‘A.Kejriwal’. I quickly went & requested him for the seat next to him, after all he was an emerging leader and the youth had started looking up to him.

It was 7am and for the next three hours I got an opportunity to know him as a person. Within ten minutes into discussion he flashed his blackberry mobile to show me the kind of response the movement was getting from youth across the country. The intensity of his enthusiasm was visible. In the same breathe he also put forth his concern. He said these youth have to be kept engaged otherwise they will again hook to some other movement/ person. Much of the time afterwards was spent bouncing off ideas which would keep youth engaged. He was in his true self, in rage but with no concrete idea or thought to work out issues that the country is dealing with.

At Jhansi railway station there were 15-20 people waiting for him with banners & drums. He went in haste but left me in thoughts. I was deeply shocked at his thought process. His only focus during the entire discussion was to keep youth engaged so that they stay in tune or in control. Nowhere was he interested in utilizing their energies for some constructive work or nation building or anything positive. That was nowhere in the agenda. The entire agenda was very selfish and self centred. I prayed he never gets a position where youth have to look up to him for direction otherwise he will just dis-orient them for his personal gains. I was disheartened by this meeting. It was a second coincidence that our return was together and separated by few seats only. Since many people had come to see him off, after the train started many passengers wanted to meet & get clicked with him. I was otherwise also not interested in continuing any further discussion. The initial meeting was enough for me to form an opinion about him.

Almost four years after that travel journey I see the horror unfolding especially on social media. He is singularly responsible for pulling down the level of discourse. His consistent and shameless use of cuss words to incite youngsters for his political gains has permanently dented the power of this medium for any constructive use in participative democracy.

However, with the unfolding of events in last month one can atleast take some sigh of relief that Kejriwal is finally getting exposed. Finally a section of media as well as public are asking for his accountability. Finally his tongue is getting trimmed.