It has been a year since the February 9 incident for which Kanhaiya Kumar, then president of the Jawaharlal Nehru Students’ Union, was arrested and charged with sedition by the Delhi police for allegedly raising anti-India slogans at a rally in JNU. He has written about this experience in a book “From Bihar to Tihar” and is now busy completing his PhD.
Sitting in the winter sun on a bench outside his Brahmaputra Hostel in JNU, Kanhaiya says: “They created an international issue that JNU is anti-national. But there has been no arrest, and no chargesheet as there are no charges. They have made fun of the law.”
Excerpts from an interview he gave The Hindu:
Looking back at the past year, do you feel there has been a sustained attack on Universities?
I feel there is a big conspiracy behind this. If you analyse incidents, it all began with the attempt to saffronise education that led to the FTII movement in Pune.
You cannot impose a particular ideology on any institution. There are norms, procedures that you have to follow but the government is regularly violating regulations and imposing their own ideology and rules by appointing their own people as the heads of institutions.
There was an attack on subaltern reading and methodology with the ban on the Ambedkar Periyar Study Circle at IIT Madras. This to me was an attempt to suppress dissenting voices and prevent any alternative discourse in society.
The government has also made efforts to privatise education through a 17% budget cut. There is a sharp disconnect between what the government is saying, implementing and portraying. A fellowship enhancement committee set up by the government actually recommended the stopping of fellowships.
More specifically, how to you analyse the attack on JNU?
I feel JNU became an important target because JNU is a liberal university. JNU evolved with the aspirations of our Constitution, the Preamble. It became a university where you can rationally think, critically observe and you can have a voice. Also, JNU always stood against authority even during the Emergency. I feel that if you see historically, when authority becomes strong, it always tries to scuttle the democratic space and the university is the most comfortable and organised democratic space.
There has been a change in the production system. Now there are no huge factory outlets where there is a concentration of huge labour, so where is the concentration of people? The concentration of people exists in universities. If university students and teachers come on the street, it will become an issue for the authorities as they will be able to bring with them thousands of people. So they don’t want to leave any potential for people to come together and raise a voice.
Do you feel student unions are the new fighting forces?
Student unions are the new voice of dissent and they are the fighting forces. The authority has recognised this and therefore first targeted the Hyderabad Central University where the discourse was national versus anti-national. The institutional murder of Rohit Vemula became a national issue. Then they decided to attack JNU and with one arrow managed to divert attention from the Rohit Vemula suicide and at the same time ruin the name and reputation of JNU. They thought that by one stroke, they would be able to silence all the liberal voices by branding them as anti-national. If you say anything against the government, you are anti-national. And to a great extent, they have been successful.
At a time when dissenting voices are silenced, how do you build this student unity?
If there is a crisis anywhere, people will speak out. Look at what is happening around the world. The failure of liberal establishments everywhere is responsible for the emergence of the Right. Neo-liberal policies were adopted and these failed to achieve desirable results. It created jobs in a few sectors, created a middle class and brought prosperity to certain sections, but the prosperity was EMI based and in the process it destroyed the rural economy, triggering massive migration from rural to urban areas. In urban areas now, there are huge problems; people are roaming around with engineering degrees and MBA degrees but no jobs. There has been a technological advancement that is good for society but if ownership of technology will be in some hands they will continue to exploit labour and not create new jobs. The trickle-down effect did not happen and farmers are committing suicide and the new working forces do not have jobs, which is creating this crisis.
People at some point of time will start fighting to fill their stomachs and fight unemployment. The existing political system is unable to tap this problem. They are using old methods of dealing with the issues. The BJP is taking about a Hindu Rashtra, the Congress is talking about secularism and regional parties are indulging in caste-based politics. But these methods are crumbling.
Young people are fighting for their rights and the right to dignity, equality and jobs. In villages, people are not able to get married as they keep studying and are unable to find jobs.
It is the youth of the country that needs to give an alternative to the existing political system. First, there needs to be unity among all student forces that will be forged on the minimum understanding of a problem. The minimum need of the society is: save the Constitution. And when you talk about the Constitution you talk about so many things like the question of social justice, gender justice, secularism, equality, voice of dissent, freedom of expression, and the right to employment. The second is education. After education, a student must have a job. The third point is the question of farmers. Agriculture is the basic unit and those who are farmers must be given the minimum price for their produce by which they can lead a dignified life. Fourth is the question of self-respect and dignity. Even people with white collared jobs are being exploited and overworked.
Do you see this happening?
I feel that the youth, if they think out of the box and come together on a united platform and start a social movement on their issues that become issues in the political movement, that only will save our generation and our nation.
What is Kanhaiya Kumar’s role in creating this platform?
This is the time of multi-tasking. I always position myself as a university teacher. It will be my profession. I do not have any electoral ambitions. Not out of choice, but we are bound to involve ourselves in politics and struggle. So I will always be in the forefront to speak up about what we face and what we understand are the problems. Obviously, just talking won't solve the problems. We will need to take action, so I am constantly in touch with youth leaders and if there will be a possibility for a political movement I will involve myself in that. But this movement will not be within the existing political structure. The existing authority will obviously not be with us as they do not like any voices of dissent. The perception of the present government is one nation, one party, one leader. My perception is that there is huge diversity in this country and there can only be multiculturalism and different voices.
