January 22, 2025

The ‘sins’ of his JNU days are coming to haunt Kanhaiya Kumar on the dusty tracks of rural Begusarai. What was freedom of speech to the intellectual class appears to be treason to the hoi polloi. Kumar is being subjected to intense questioning regarding his “azaadi” campaign and the slogan “Bharat ki barbadi tak jang chalegi”. His explanation is not being accepted. Some of his meetings have been disrupted and not always by miscreants from the opposition. Here in Begusarai, one has been witness to ordinary folk getting quite agitated when he is not able to reply what azaadi does he want and from whom and why did he allow people to raise anti-India slogans. They ask him how he can allow students to call for the nation’s “barbadi” and are not convinced that it was outsiders who raised the slogans.

Kanhaiya Kumar is experiencing the fact that the countryside of India completely different from the classrooms and the grounds of the JNU, despite there being a lot of support for Leftist ideology in Begusarai. He is also experiencing first hand that despite being poor and saddled with so many problems, people get angry very easily when someone vilifies their nation. Obviously, some of the flak Kanhaiya is getting is due to the fact that after his nomination, the BJP started a whisper campaign in the villages to make people aware of his ‘antecedents’. The BJP is also behind disruptions of some of his rallies, but others have been disrupted by the common people also.

Hence, Kanhaiya is fighting his own past more than the BJP. It seems he has chosen a wrong constituency. He perhaps thought that he would be able to connect more with people in his home district. But he ignored the fact that simple people who do not understand much about student politics and freedom of speech were not likely to endorse the kind of politics he has come to represent. Despite the language problem, he could have connected better with the educated class in Kerala. Or he could have even tried his luck in Jadavpur constituency in West Bengal, where he would have got better support despite the Lefts’ waning fortune in the state. Here in Begusarai, it seems unlikely that the voters will send him to the Parliament.