In politics, some words invite debate; others shut it down. “Traitor” belongs to the second category. It does not merely accuse; it decides, at least rhetorically, who belongs and who does not. In India, its sharper counterpart, gaddar, does this work with even greater intimacy. It sounds less like a legal charge and more like a rupture.
In recent days, it has surfaced repeatedly in the wake of Raghav Chadha’s move, along with six other Rajya Sabha MPs, from the Aam Aadmi Party to the Bharatiya Janata Party. The shift, effectively a coordinated realignment by a large bloc of AAP’s upper-house MPs, has triggered a sharp backlash. Leaders and supporters of his former party reached quickly for gaddar. In parts of Punjab, the word appeared in protest slogans, as if the act itself required a moral caption.
Chadha has responded in a different register. In a video posted on Instagram, he described the past few days as a flood of messages. Many offered congratulations, while others asked for an explanation. He framed his decision not as ambition, but as disillusionment. Having spent years helping build the party, he argued that it no longer resembled what it once was. The environment, he suggested, had become constraining, even “toxic,” where speaking freely in Parliament felt discouraged.
It is a familiar defense in politics: I did not leave; the party changed.
But memory complicates that claim. Chadha is now aligned with a party he once criticized in stark terms, at one point describing it as “anpadh gundon ki party”—a party of uneducated goons—and accusing it of patronizing such elements. The past does not invalidate the present. Political positions evolve, and alliances shift. Still, the contrast lingers. It gives the accusation of betrayal something to hold on to, not proof exactly, but texture. Which is often enough.
It also recalls a clip of Parineeti Chopra, his wife, once joking that she would never marry a politician. The irony is mild; the stakes now are not.
In its older, legal sense, “traitor” named a specific crime: the betrayal of a sovereign, the aiding of an enemy, a breach of allegiance defined in law. It belonged to courts and statutes, not to argument.
That clarity has thinned. As politics has become more diffuse, less about monarchs and more about the publics, the word has slipped beyond its legal boundaries. It now attaches itself to motives, to disagreements, to gestures that might once have been described simply as opposition.
Gaddar makes this shift even more apparent. It does not wait for evidence. It does not require a courtroom. It carries the suggestion of a broken bond, of having turned away not just from a position, but from a collective “we.” To be called a gaddar is, in some sense, to be told you no longer belong.
That is why it surfaces so quickly in moments like this. A political realignment, permissible within the rules of parliamentary democracy, becomes something heavier once named. The label does not describe the act; it reinterprets it.
This is hardly a new pattern. When Kanhaiya Kumar was accused of anti-national activity in 2016, the details were messy and disputed. The label, by contrast, was immediate and clean. It stuck long after the evidence became less certain.
Or take Arundhati Roy, whose critiques of the state have drawn similar language over the years. The charge of betrayal in her case functions less as an argument than as a refusal of one. It closes the door before the conversation begins.
This is what the word does now. It shifts the ground beneath a disagreement. Instead of asking whether a position is right or wrong, it asks whether the person holding it is still one of “us.” That is a much harder question to answer.
The instability of the term is not confined to India. It appears, in different forms, across democracies.
Edward Snowden is seen by some as a defender of civil liberties and by others as a violator of national trust. Chelsea Manning occupies a similarly divided space. Julian Assange has been cast at different times as a journalist, activist, and something closer to an adversary.
Then there are cases like Aldrich Ames, where the older meaning of the word still fits neatly. He sold secrets to a foreign power, and the label follows without much debate.
What separates these cases is not just the act, but the agreement around it. Some produce consensus. Most produce arguments. The word “traitor” no longer resolves that argument; it marks its fault lines.
For someone like Chadha, the consequences are less about law than about accumulation. In contemporary politics, reputations are built gradually, but they can also be eroded in the same way, through repetition, association, and the steady layering of narrative.
To call him a gaddar is to attempt to fix the meaning of his decision in advance. It insists that the move be read not as strategy or disillusionment, but as betrayal. His own account pushes in the opposite direction, recasting the same act as a matter of principle.
Between these two versions lies the real story, not a settled judgment, but a contest over how the act will be remembered.
And yet, for all its looseness, the word refuses to fade. Part of the reason is that it reaches beyond politics. Betrayal is one of those ideas that feels immediately legible, even outside formal contexts. It speaks to trust, loyalty, and the uneasy boundaries of belonging.
To call someone a traitor is not just to say they are wrong. It is to say they have crossed a line that matters.
The difficulty is that the line itself keeps moving.
Which may be the point. The word’s power lies in its flexibility. It can stretch to fit the moment, sharpened or softened as needed, precise when it wants to be, and vague when it is useful.
In the end, “traitor” does not tell us what has happened so much as how it is being framed. In the political afterlife of decisions like Chadha’s, that framing can matter as much as the decision itself.
Featured image: via Raghav Chadha’s Instagram account 🙂
Ambika Singh,PhD 