What Kanhaiya meant and what I don't want him to become
Politics sometimes showers its gifts unevenly. This week saw an array of major speeches, each of which was a landmark in its own way. First there was Smriti Irani's comeback speech defending her role in the Vemula-JNU crisis. Second was Rahul Gandhi's speech lambasting the regime over the Budget.
As Rahul claimed that he thought, it was P Chidambaram and not Arun Jaitley speaking. One sensed an Opposition leader enjoying himself. Third was Modi's speech in response to Rahul but probably the most celebrated of these was by JNU student leader Kanhaiya, after his release from detention.
Moments
I must confess both media and I loved the moments he provided. Yet one sensed a hyper excitement as a journalist phoned up to enquire whether it could be ranked among the great post-Independence speeches.
Here one would advise restraint because protest is often a storm in a tea cup and JNU does not realise that a man in Chennai or Pune may not show the same excitement about its preoccupations.
There is no doubt that Kanhaiya is a brilliant speaker. He is a politician who enjoys debate and the language of politics. His speech has the right rhythms, a sense self-deprecatory laughter and also the rhetoric to ignite emotions. He was at one with the crowd around him and his TV presence was immaculate. One could sense the ease and relief in the air as the sense of a university under siege had lessened Kanhaiya's compatriots are still to be released and one hopes the regime does not delay it.
Kanhaiya belongs to a new generation of JNU politicians. He is not an ideologue like Prakash Karat. Also he is less dour, deft at humour. In his speech was a quote where claimed that he had been accused of being anti-national, and that he wanted freedom in India, not from India.
He reiterated his faith in the nation and the Constitution and this set the right note. It was pleasantly aggressive but never screechily quarrelsome. It was an opening effort at conscious building.
Added to that was a self-deprecatory note, a touch of fun when he claimed that in a university of researchers, he offered himself as primary data. He explained that he would speak on the basis of his own experience. He also added that he believed in the slogan "Satyameva Jayate". He quickly moved to jab Modi again claiming that the cyber cell would be tracking him and was bound to check the condoms. It was clear that Kanhaiya understood the security paranoia around him. It was the court and court alone that saved him.
Stereotypes
In an inviting way he dismantled stereotypes around JNU insisting it was a part of India not a special cocoon of spoilt protest. He claimed he was a Dalit, a peasant's son and added that one must break the binary of JNU versus kisan, or JNU versus Army, because he came from the same social strand as the other two.
When the regime sent the forces to the frontier and our boundaries, it was families like his that bemoaned the loss of young men. Kanhaiya added almost like a continuous refrain that JNU would sustain the battle against oppression, whether it was the struggle against UGC or against the government's move to suppress JNU.
He spoke fondly about the cops who guarded him during his custody showing he had no animosity with them and that they were genuinely curious about his ideas.
Speech
There was also an impishness and an impetuosity in his speech that was endearing and he made Modi appear like an unhappy dart board by the time he finished. He claimed that Modi was referring to Stalin and Krushchev and asked why he did not refer to Hitler or Mussolini, characters closer home to RSS history.
Quickly and deftly the speech unravels the suspicion about JNU and turns it into another place for an ordinary Indian. In contrast he asks wickedly why is it that the posters of the ABVP, the BJP, the ex-Army men's association have the same words and pictures. It is clear, he claims, that all of them are administered from Nagpur.
Kanhaiya's speech was welcome in many ways but as a social scientist one must add a cautionary note to it. One should look more critically at JNU's record as a political entity giving its record in the Emergency.
Secondly, student movements have a habit of fading out. One has to remember the Nav Nirman or the movements after 1977. Thirdly one must be wary of media who over-read the event, equating it to a victory equivalent to the battle against the Emergency. The battle has just begun and to think that Kanhaiya has supreme control of the student body would be premature.
One is adding this cautionary note because while the battle against sedition is welcome but the war is a long way from being won. One does not want the possibility of politics to be destroyed by the hyperboles of publicity or a misplaced confidence in the strength of civil society.
(Courtesy of Mail Today.)