In 2020, after Arvind Kejriwal and his Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) secured a second big victory in the Delhi elections, I wrote a column for Nikkei Asia Review, arguing that there wasn’t much to choose between Modi and Kejriwal — both were authoritarians with a majoritarian bias.

While Modi’s Hindutva agenda was explicit, Kejriwal’s was instrumental — subtler yet equally dangerous. One of the clearest signs of this was Kejriwal’s enthusiastic support for the abrogation of Article 370 in August 2019, which stripped the Muslim-majority state of Jammu & Kashmir of its limited autonomy.

Rather than opposing the move on democratic and Constitutional grounds, Kejriwal chose to align himself with the nationalist spin, signalling his willingness to accommodate majoritarian politics. Five years later, the tables have turned, with AAP suffering a massive defeat and the BJP seizing control of Delhi for the first time in 27 years.

While some may see this as a blow to Opposition politics, AAP’s downfall could, in fact, strengthen Indian democracy and secularism in the long run. Arvind Kejriwal entered politics with grand promises of waging an all-out war on corruption and transforming governance. His political journey began on the back of an RSS-supported anti-corruption movement in the early 2010s.

When AAP first formed the Delhi government in 2013 and subsequently won two consecutive landslide victories in 2015 and 2020, many saw it as a gamechanger — the emergence of a viable third alternative in Indian politics. It drew a lot of people initially, who bought into the party’s transparency spiel and its pledge to uphold accountability in governance, but over time, those lofty ideals eroded beyond repair. Kejriwal’s government came to be tainted by corruption scandals, opportunistic alliances and attempts to pander to Hindu majoritarian sentiment.

His party’s crushing defeat in 2025 is, therefore, not just a political setback for AAP but a moment of reckoning for Indian democracy.