From Bihar to Tihar — The boy next door.
Some call him an antinational, others say that he is the feeble voice of whatever is left of the left in India. You may agree or disagree with him but you surely cannot ignore him. It is not without reason that Forbes magazine has listed him among the top 20 people to watch out for in the 2020s.
Kanhiaya Kumar ‘s book From Bihar To Tihar starts of in Bihat in Begusarai district of Bihar. Kanhaiya takes us through his unadorned life in the mofussil of Bihar. The poor yet progressive nature of the area in spite of the abject poverty is startling. He also talks about why the CPI was strong in the Begusaria in the early 1990s but lost its hold in 1996. He also talks about the struggles that his mother, an Anganwadi worker, and his father a failed communist go through to get Kanhaiya educated. Kanhaiya as a child was very proud of the fact that he was the topper of the class but one day an uncle of his asks him the difference between 69 and 79 and he failed to answer. He decided to take life and studies seriously and not to be a frog in the well. In the quest of all this he reaches the city of Patna which he thought was a big metropolis. It is this part of the book that I relate with the most. The long queues in coaching centers. The dingy apartments and the difficulty in understanding mathematics were humbling for Kanhiaya. Just as it was for me. Kanhaiya then decides he cannot really make it up to a good engineering college and just like anybody else in Bihar, he decides to join the UPSC.
At one point in time Kanhiaya Kumar decides to go the gulf and start a business of AC repair and other such repairs. But he was afraid that once he comes back to India he would not able to exactly mention his profession and would not be treated with dignity. Clearly, the principles of equal dignity of labor had yet not taken root in the man. He quits Patna and goes to Delhi and like most UPSC aspirants he lands up at Mukherjee Nagar. But life has different things in store for this man. Kanhaiya meets a certain Professor Malakar and he convinces him to join JNU. And he complies.
The next part comprises of JNU and it’s culture of open debate and discussion particularly in the famous Ganga Dhaba. He explains how he was able to forge unity among some left-leaning parties to fight AISA and ABVP. However he deftly does not explain why he failed to do the same with AISA which is the student branch of the CPI-ML party. He also gives a vivid description of the way he debates — something that evoked my attention. Unlike many other debaters. He does not debate, to put his points forward, but he gauges the audience's response to win people over to his point of view. Then comes the fateful night when the infamous Azadi incident happens. Kanhaiya Kumar recites how he was actually sleeping, when this happened. Though the truth of the case will only be revealed after further investigation and the veracity of the claim is uncertain. After that he is arrested on the pretext of an inquiry. One thing that stands out about the book is the way Kahhaiya explains his relationship with other people. Be it the Sevadar of the jail or the guards of JNU or his father.
The jail term is very similar to the situations that we are facing through this lockdown, albeit several levels of privilege higher. In Jail Kanhaiya passes his time singing and reading books from the library. But what especially highlighted was the thoughts that were going through his mind prior to delivering that iconic JNU speech that he is so famous for. He decides to talk about binaries that are fabricated between protesting students and jawans when they happen to be of the same family or the same economic stature. He decides to explain how the RSS had already plotted and planned against JNU when they had published an article a few months ago which had said that JNU was the home for anti-national sentiments. Finally he would recount that in his cell, there were two bowls one blue in color and the other red. And to him, the red bowl represented the plight of workers and students and farmers and the other blue bowl represented the Ambedkarite movement and the plight of Dalits and Adivasis. He hoped that these two separate movements would one day come in the same banner and fight the war against oppression together.
The book certainly is not an artistic masterclass. But it paints of picture of rural India, that is bound to make you nostalgic if you belong from that part of the world. Unlike what you would expect the book does not have a great deal of hardcore leftist principles or jargon. In fact, throughout the book, he seems to be a boy next door!
