The Kanhaiyas are a misfit in today’s politics

Shiv Visvanathan
Academic associated with Compost Heap

A friend of mine who is an acute observer of university politics described Kanhaiya as a collection of exclamation marks and question marks. Kanhaiya is new and yet easily fits into folklore, challenging the orthodoxies of the time. A creation of university politics, he is almost a national figure. There is a freshness, even an adolescence about him. He has the makings of a charismatic leader who looks like the boy next door. Yet, the very name suggests a playfulness, threatening to alter the game of politics, dismantling its stereotypes. This is precisely why the Opposition has no place for him.

Electoral politics today is rarely ideological. It is a creation of interest groups. Ideology has given way to policy and psephological calculation. The Kanhaiyas of the world do not fit. They look like extra pieces added to the jigsaw, altering the sense of the world we live in. 

Kanhaiya rose to attention by creating a storm in the JNU teacup. He was accused of raising anti-national slogans during an election rally. The administration is using this charge sheet to harass him. But Kanhaiya belongs to an India that wants to raise the issue of Kashmir. Like many Indians today, he can only be Indian by being an anti-national. The official definitions of patriotism are so narrow and provincial that they allow no critical creativity. The nation-state is the first orthodoxy of Kanhaiya challenges arguing it has little place for minorities and migrants. 

Yet if one looks at the evidences, there is little that can be logged against him, though the Delhi police claim that they possess the video footage of Kanhaiya raising anti-national slogans. The timing of the charge sheet seems awry. It was filed three years after the incident. One has to ask whether he is being harassed for being anti-national or for being a political challenge among the youth of today. Kanhaiya is a difficult presence to contend with at election time.

Kanhaiya does not fit the national orthodoxies like patriotism and the idioms of the national security state; he is a misfit in opposition politics too. The opposition, for all its tirades, is like the BJP, a mere calculus of interest group politics. Kanhaiya does not fit the fabric of interest group politics. He is more an ideological figure, invoking the firebrand radicalism of the socialist sixties. 

Worse, his presence threatens the likes of Lalu Yadav. Next to Kanhaiya, Tejashwi, Lalu's son, looks banal, a party politician with all the makings of a fixer. Kanhaiya, as a new entrant, challenges the patriarchal bureaucracy of Bihar politics. He dreams ideas while Tejashwi and Lalu dream holding on to power. His very idealism creates a lack of fit in the current state of opposition politics. As factional politics tends to play out, and kinship and caste networks dominate, there is little place for Kanhaiya in the orthodoxy of organisational politics. 

His messages are clear. While youth is a radical force of change today, the freshness of youth, the idealism of its ideas are still seen as a disadvantage in bureaucratised politics. 

In fact, in this election, what is fresh seems unwelcome. It is an election where stereotype can meet stereotype, party bosses jostle each other in happy contentment. After a while, one wonders whether there is any difference between Ahmed Patel, Upendra Kushwaha, Lalu Yadav and Sharad Yadav. They all look faded, but content with power. 

A Kanhaiya raising new ideas, talking about Kashmir or terror or the radicalisation of the university seems to rock the boat of political contentment; an unwelcome act, which hardly suits electoral politics. Yet, the Kanhaiya episode, in its latest incarnation, hides three issues which deeply concern the Indian democracy.

Firstly, interest group politics cannot do without infusions of ideology, sustaining both effervescence and idealism. While old ideologies need to be discarded, fresh ideas and ideologies emphasising new forms of pain, critique and vulnerability need a place in Indian politics. An opposition built purely as interest group politics cannot defeat the majoritarian politics of the BJP. It can, at best, salvage a few constituencies. The Lalu Yadavs and Kushwahas are not going to bring anything new into Indian politics. Lalu's association with Jayaprakash Narayan must sound a laughable piece of nostalgia today. Kushwaha's ability to work across politics shows his ability more as a fixer than as a representative of new vulnerabilities and ideas.

Secondly, one has to see universities like JNU, Hyderabad University and Delhi University as creating models of politics and ideas of politics which can challenge the orthodoxy of parties. Parties often tend to be rigid official structures. But the idealism and ideals of student politics, which are often more cosmopolitan, can add a vision, a narrative full of openness and passion to party bureaucracies. Kanhaiya adds to the politics of the CPI, raising visions of a more radical past. By sustaining such unorthodox voices, the CPI is raising new possibilities for itself. One Kanhaiya’s  presence creates an excitement, an ideological debate that the presence of 10 Tejashwis cannot.

Finally, the Kanhaiya conundrum exposes the hypocrisy of a politics which raves about youth as a vote bank, cites it as a demographic plus point but refuses to respond to the dreams of youth unless they happen to be sons of established families. Kanhaiya is a rank outsider who appeals through his ideas, not through his patronage and background.

The presence of Hardik, Kanhaiya and Rohit Veramula does add a sense of excitement and anticipation to politics. The Kanhaiya episode in its famous incarnation highlights the limits and possibilities of modern politics, becoming a litmus test of the new opportunities. 

One hopes the future is open to more such fables, where a Kanhaiya a day can keep arbitrariness and even dullness away. Kanhaiya will not be a single episode in Indian politics. He has become a long-running serial, highlighting the silences politics might want to forget. As a persistent gadfly, he is more than welcome.