Life doesn’t always go as planned, stresses Congress’s North East Delhi candidate Kanhaiya Kumar while dwelling on how he ended up in jail when pursuing his PhD from Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) for a crime that he says he never committed.
“I had gone there to study but didn’t know that the BJP-led Centre would put me in jail,” says Mr. Kumar, adding that the circumstances forced him to fight against the BJP’s “dictatorship” to save the country’s democracy.
The former Jawaharlal Nehru University Students’ Union (JNUSU) president has been a polarising figure ever since he came into limelight in 2016 with his speech on campus demanding ‘azadi’.
The speech called for freedom from a range of problems, including starvation, communalism and division on the basis of class and caste.
It came after Mr. Kumar was booked for sedition as he was accused of hosting an event that resulted in a controversy.
However, Mr. Kumar says lots of things have changed since then, except his urge to stop the BJP from dividing the country on communal lines.
“Otherwise, who does PhD to enter politics,” he says, adding that it never occurred to him to take up politics as a profession when he was the JNUSU president.
Mr. Kumar says throughout his life, his parents always supported him.
“Fighting against the BJP government was a decision I made by myself. My parents never forced for anything. When I wanted to study science, they let me do it. When I wanted to do my PhD, they didn’t stop me,” he adds.
Son of an anganwadi worker, Mr. Kumar says it wasn’t easy for someone like him to rise to the position he is holding now in the Congress, which made him the All-India Congress Committee (AICC) in-charge for the National Students’ Union of India.
‘False narratives’
Mr. Kumar says even his candidature from the North East Delhi constituency came as a surprise to him as he was expecting to get a ticket from Bihar’s Begusarai, the seat he had unsuccessfully contested on the Communist Party of India (CPI) ticket in the last general election.
While he expresses his gratitude to the Congress leadership for reposing faith in him, Mr. Kumar junked the suggestion that he was picked for the seat just because it has sizeable Purvanchali voters with origins in eastern Uttar Pradesh and Bihar.
“Shouldn’t have I then run from Bihar had this been the consideration?” he says, adding “I am an educated leader picked to take on false narratives.”
Mr. Kumar also credits party leader Rahul Gandhi’s Bharat Jodo Yatra with cementing his faith in the Congress.
Local issues on mind
While talking about bigger issues, the leader says he is not oblivious of the problems faced by people in the constituency.
“In North East Delhi, if elected, my focus will be on improving water supply and reducing crime against women apart from getting the constituency rid of its garbage problem,” he says.
