Kanhaiya Kumar, Congress, and the village on fire

Kanhaiya Kumar’s campaigning style and speeches are reminiscent of his election campaign in Begusarai in 2019.

The news of Kanhaiya Kumar joining the Congress in September 2021 came as a surprise to me. Having done my ethnographic fieldwork in Begusarai, in Bihar, to capture Kumar’s 2019 Lok Sabha election campaigning with the Communist Party of India (CPI), I, like most others, had always seen him as a man of the Left.

A couple of days after he joined the Congress, I asked Kumar the reason for this move. He replied, “When the whole village is on fire, no one can save just their own house.” He said he felt the need to leave the Left party for a wider national platform.

The image of a village on fire has stayed with me.

An interesting choice

Kumar joined the Congress a year after Delhi was hit by communal violence which took the lives of over 50 people. Most of the violence was in North-East Delhi, and Kumar is contesting as the Congress’ candidate for the May 25 polls from the North-East Delhi Lok Sabha constituency.

A lot has changed since then. In 2021, it was not clear that there would be a credible challenge to the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) at the national level. It is not just Kumar, but the Congress too has changed since then.

The Rahul Gandhi-led Bharat Jodo Yatra, in which Kumar occupied a prominent space, has moved the political and social discourse of Indian democracy. Gandhi’s declaration of ‘Daro matt’ (do not be afraid) decisively shifted the narrative of oppositional politics in India. The arrest of Opposition leaders, the blocking of Congress’ access to its funds, and the limited (and at times biased) media coverage received by the Congress and other Opposition parties, show the ruling BJP’s strength.

Given this, fielding Kumar as a candidate from the North-East Delhi seat is an interesting choice for the Congress. The Congress has the odds stacked against it having last won the seat in 2009. However, it did pull off a surprise win in the 2022 MCD elections in the area, with AAP voters punishing the party for Arvind Kejriwal’s inability to confront the violence of the riots. This poses a tricky situation: the typical AAP voter in the Delhi assembly elections votes for the BJP in the general elections. With Kejriwal being sent to jail (and now on bail), the challenge for the Congress is to push AAP voters to turn against Modi’s BJP.

Kanhaiya Kumar — then and now

What Kumar brings to the electoral fray is his cultural politics. His campaigning style and speeches are reminiscent of his previous election campaign. The nomination rally on e-rikshaws, and slogans of ‘Jai Kanhaiya laal ki’ are reminiscent of the 2019 nomination rally in Begusarai where e-rikshaws and tempos occupied prime place in the rally, along with slogans of ‘kaanha ko jityainge’.

What has changed since Begusarai are his light-natured interviews which belie the depth of his commitment to the issues of social justice. His refusal to attack his rival from the BJP, Manoj Tiwari, on the lascivious songs that he has starred in, and instead dignifying Tiwari’s ‘work’ and labour to support his family, is an interesting way of connecting to the working class who form the bulk of the North-East Delhi voters.

In this new avatar, however, he has rightly dropped ideological slogans like ‘Azadi’ and freedom from caste, class, and patriarchal oppression. Having come from outside Delhi, he can touch a nerve with the migrant working population in the constituency. He has been active on issues like price rise, falling employment, and the Agniveer recruitment programme, which directly affects the youth.

While the Congress is pitching itself as the solution to these problems, the BJP is digging in its heels having promoted Kapil Mishra, one of the most provocative leaders of the party in Delhi, to the position of party vice-president.

Behind the scenes

What remains to be seen is how Kumar can pitch himself as an alliance candidate of the Congress and the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP); this will require some quiet work, and a balancing act that is easier said than done. Kumar as an activist had the flair for the spectacular. By 2019, his impact was such that one of the biggest Bollywood films of that year, Gully Boy, which had a Muslim working-class protagonist, used his voice and slogans from his speeches in the song Azadi. Those days are well behind us and Kumar the politician has now developed a penchant for working behind the scenes.

Only time will tell if he and the I.N.D.I.A. bloc are able to extinguish the flames that continue to burn the village.

(Shray Mehta, a PhD candidate at the National University of Singapore, is the co-editor of The New Republic: Populism, Power and the Trajectories of Indian Democracy)

Disclaimer: The views expressed above are the author's own. They do not necessarily reflect the views of DH.