Exclusions in SIR alienating Bihar voters from government, ECI.
BJP's idea of caste politics differs from INDIA bloc's social justice push.
Congress will contest on all Bihar Assembly seats later this year.
Kanhaiya Kumar, the young leader who rose from student politics at Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) in Delhi to the national political stage, is currently a prominent Congress party campaigner in Bihar. Outlook’s Md Asghar Khan spoke to him during the recent Voter Adhikar Yatra, led by the opposition INDIA bloc, against the Special Intensive Review (SIR) of electoral rolls being conducted in Bihar.
Kanhaiya sees the deletion of voters from the draft electoral roll prepared during the SIR as no mere administrative lapse but an attempt to strip people of citizenship. According to him, if Bihar's electoral scene appears unique, it is largely on account of how its people have understood the connection between politics and its impact on their lives.
Kanhaiya also discusses his own political journey and how he views fellow student activists, such as the jailed Umar Khalid, and the significance of political movements led by caste to Bihar's politics.
Edited excerpts:
How responsive do you think people were to the recently-concluded Voter Adhikar Yatra in Bihar?
Very responsive! Else, the government wouldn’t have gone on the offensive, nor the Election Commission felt compelled to hold a press conference, although it gave no real answers. People in Bihar are very politically aware. They know that if their right to vote is taken away, then no other rights remain—to speak, seek employment, to live, seek educational facilities, or [demand] social justice. They know that the right to vote is the foundation of all their rights. In a free country, the ultimate proof of citizenship is that, through your vote, you elect your public servants. That’s why people in Bihar are vigilant and, perhaps, the Election Commission itself has realised that Bihar is not the right place to carry out a Special Intensive Revision (SIR).
Many believe that the Congress party is grooming you as its future 'face' in Bihar. What do you say about it?
I completely disagree with personality-based politics. Politics should be about issues, not faces. Personality-driven politics leads to authoritarianism. That’s why in the [political] yatras [in Bihar], you see faces from all alliance parties participating.
But in Bihar, isn’t Tejashwi Yadav of the Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) already the face of the alliance?
Tell me, have you seen a single poster here with only one face?
I have, but moving on, you contested from the Begusarai Lok Sabha seat in Bihar (on a Communist Party of India-Marxist) ticket, and the Northeast Delhi seat. Will you contest in the coming Assembly election in Bihar? From which seat?
Whether I contest as a candidate will be decided by the party. But I can tell you this: we [the opposition alliance] will contest all 243 seats in Bihar.
You have often said that elections in Bihar are different from those held in other states. Why? What message will Bihar send to the rest of India in the next election?
First, people in Bihar have a deep natural interest in politics...if you take away their name from the voter list, they feel you are robbing them of citizenship and freedom.
To answer the second question, the BJP [Bharatiya Janata Party, in power in alliance in Bihar] thought the SIR would polarise people along Hindu-Muslim lines. But they got stuck in Bihar, along with the Election Commission, because you cannot reduce this issue to Hindu versus Muslim. Every caste and community is affected by deletions [of names from the voter list]. In the 65 lakh deleted names are all sections of society: Hindus, Muslims, Dalits, Adivasis and the backward classes.
But what role will the SIR issue play, vis-a-vis other concerns of voters, such as education, healthcare and employment?
People are connecting SIR to everything else. Ask anyone in Bihar: what happens if you don’t have a voter ID? And they’ll tell you: without it, we have no citizenship; and without citizenship, we lose the right to education, jobs, speech. It’s a huge issue. If the government and the Election Commission don’t backtrack and restore the deleted names, it will definitely become a major issue.
But the INDIA bloc members are accused of blaming Electronic Voting Machines (EVMs) and the Election Commission whenever its constituents lose elections.
That’s the BJP's old tactic of diversion. Ask them a question about what’s happening today, and they’ll respond with what happened in the Congress era decades ago.
We remind people that it was LK Advani [BJP leader and former Deputy Prime Minister) who first raised doubts about EVMs. But we are not raising generic doubts like the BJP. We are pointing to actual irregularities, like those in the Mahadevapura constituency in Karnataka, with evidence.
So was it a Congress party mistake to have introduced EVMs in elections?
We never questioned the machine itself. We question the machinery running it. A machine works depending on who controls it. The EVM was introduced to improve elections. But if it now disrupts the electoral process, it must be reconsidered.
What do you think about the charge that what was once booth capturing, seen in former Chief Minister Lalu Prasad Yadav's RJD's time in power, is now EVM-based control over electoral outcomes? It is what your rival parties and leaders, including the BJP and Jan Suraj's Prashant Kishor allege.
The SIR issue cannot be oversimplified this way; it’s far too serious. Talk to someone whose name has been deleted [from the draft voter list]. Ask them what it means to them. They know how difficult life becomes without their name on the voter list.
This is what I pointed out earlier: whenever asked questions about what is happening today in Bihar, the BJP jumps back to the past, like the Lalu era.
Prashant Kishor and Samrat Choudhary [Bihar Finance Minister and BJP leader] must answer: is vote theft happening today or not? And Choudhary should clarify: when he and his father were in Lalu’s party, did they become leaders through booth capturing?
You began as a leftist student union leader in Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU). Could Kanhaiya Kumar, who has moved from Left to Congress, move to the BJP someday? Other Left leaders have done it.
Those who don’t understand Left politics are the ones who say such things. Remember the fashionable saying, that if you aren’t Left before thirty you have no heart, and if you remain Left after thirty, you have no brain? This is a ploy by those who want to give a theoretical colour to their opportunism. The truth is simple: people change with circumstances, whether due to compulsion or greed. [They should] accept that plainly; there's no need to dress it up.
Left politics means raising questions against power. Today that tradition of questioning is being weakened, because questioning requires courage.
OK, let me ask the question differently. Bihar has strong parties like the Janata Dal (United) and the RJD. Why did you then join the Congress?
Today’s reality is that on one side are those who want to destroy the Constitution and sell the country’s assets, and on the other are those who want to save the Constitution and ensure people’s rightful share [in national resources]. In this do-or-die battle, I cannot prioritise my personal gain. The Congress is the biggest opposition party, the party that won us independence and it is uniting parties and giving platforms to students, Dalits, Adivasis, anyone fighting on the streets. I, too, saw this possibility under Rahul Gandhi’s leadership, which is why I joined Congress.
What is your relationship with Tejashwi Yadav like? When did you last meet? Rumour has it, there's insecurity about your popularity in your alliance partner.
I met him this morning (before the interview). We spoke as we always do: why would he feel insecure about me?
Everybody saw the video of you and Pappu Yadav being prevented from joining Rahul Gandhi and Tejashwi Yadav and other alliance leaders in their vehicle during the anti-SIR protests. What had really happened?
In one line: that story is false. It was deliberately shot in a way to make it look like I was being blocked. Half-truths are planted in people’s minds to build the narrative that RJD feels insecure about me. In reality, nothing of the sort happened.
Do you agree that caste politics is more pronounced in Bihar than in other states?
Caste and caste-based politics exist across India, including in Bihar. But when you evaluate only on party lines, you will miss key points. The BJP, for example, doesn’t do backward caste politics in Bihar, and that is why it needs Nitish Kumar [the Chief Minister and Janata Dal (United) chief, behind whom Kurmi and other backward class voters have rallied in several elections]. Until it wins power on its own and installs its own Chief Minister, the BJP will keep using him. The BJP uses caste only to divide people. It wants to do in Bihar what it did in Uttar Pradesh—reduce the politics of social justice to narrow casteism. They try to discredit social justice movements by labeling them as caste politics.
Let us talk about your time in JNU, where you and Umar Khalid (now in jail facing serious charges) raised similar issues, often vocally raising your voice against the oppression of Muslims. But after joining the Congress party, you seem to avoid speaking specifically on Muslim issues. Is that a party directive?
That’s a wrong way of framing the question. To call issues Umar raised as “Muslim issues” is problematic. The issue was about citizenship being stripped away. When he raised questions on freedom or education, was that only a Muslim issue? This binary is dangerous. It is like separating Ashfaqullah Khan from Ram Prasad Bismil. The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) does this and, unfortunately, we’ve internalised that narrative. Don’t label these issues as “pro-Muslim”. I still speak up, still raise my voice. My tone may have changed, but my courage hasn’t.
Nevertheless, you’ve become a national-level leader while Umar Khalid is still behind bars. It's because of his Muslim name, would you agree?
There’s no denying it. Discrimination does happen on the basis of identity, whether religious, caste or regional. And those who raise their voices against such discrimination are also targeted. So it’s vital not to weaken those voices. Yes, BJP especially targets Muslims, but it also suppresses those [of any religion] who speak in their support.
Umar Khalid has been in jail for five years. You were close in university. Have you met him in jail?
No, I haven’t. Yes, we fought together against the BJP, but we also belonged to different student unions.
Will you visit him in jail, just as a friend?
Why not? Of course I will. Politics and friendship are separate from humanity. I don’t like to constantly invoke my own jail time, but the fact is that I went to jail for one case, and Umar for another.
What do you see as the fundamental difference between the politics of the BJP and the Congress?
The Congress party fought for this country’s independence, whereas the BJP had no contribution in that struggle. That, I believe, is the fundamental difference.
Last December, former Chief Minister and RJD leader Lalu Prasad Yadav said West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee should lead the INDIA bloc. Now, his son Tejashwi says Rahul Gandhi should become Prime Minister in 2029. One family, two views: whom does Kanhaiya agree with?
I don’t want to dwell on the past. My answer in the present is this: it has been established that Rahul Gandhi is the best candidate for Prime Minister.
