From Marxist upbringing to ‘soft Hindutva’: The rise of new Delhi CM Atishi

A rare woman chief minister in India, Atishi has her task cut out in rebuilding a party devastated by the arrests of top leaders.

New Delhi, India – It was the middle of April 2022, and spring was still giving way to summer. But India’s capital was on edge.

Jahangirpuri, a neighbourhood in the northern peripheries of Delhi, was tense after an altercation between groups of Hindu and Muslim men over a Hindu religious procession during which slogans against Muslims were chanted.

Days later, bulldozers rolled into the neighbourhood and tore down several structures close to a local mosque as part of an anti-encroachment drive by the city’s civic body, controlled at the time by the Hindu majoritarian Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) of Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

While a court order forced the civic authority to stop the demolitions, three top leaders of Delhi’s ruling Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) held a news conference in which they blamed Bangladeshi nationals and Rohingya – both predominantly Muslim communities – for the riots.

BJP leaders had also pinned the blame on the same communities. Both the parties, otherwise opposed to each other, were seemingly in synchrony over whom they blamed for the violence: vulnerable Muslim communities.

For AAP, it was legislator and spokesperson Atishi, who took the lead at the news conference. In her cotton saree, short hair and thick rimless glasses, Atishi had emerged as a major face of the party in Delhi by then.

Many critics weren’t surprised by the AAP’s attempts – only the latest by that point – to pander to Hindu votes in a bid to compete with the BJP’s Hindu majoritarian thrust.

But it was a defining moment in the public image of Atishi, a relative political upstart, who, through most of