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We don’t want freedom from India, my brothers, we want freedom in India: Kanhaiya Kumar

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A day after making a fiery speech at Jawahar Lal Nehru University, JNUSU president Kanhaiya Kumar on Friday thanked everyone who supported the movement initiated by him.

Kanhaiya Kumar-AV

Kumar said, “People from all walks of life supported us.”

Kanhaiya made it clear that he was not an “anti-national” as was being projected by a section of the media but a true son of the soil who believed in fighting for the jawans guarding India’s borders as well as the poor farmers who toiled hard in their field to ensure food for all.

“Sacrifice of farmers, jawans and Rohith Vemula will not go wasted. Whenever a revolution started, government tried to suppress it. The sedition law was made by British to suppress us,” he added.

“I want to tell everyone and those who are taxpayers of this country that JNU students are patriotic and not anti-nationals. It is an attempt to defame our university. JNU has never and will never support anything unconstitutional. Video can be doctored, but not Constitution,” he said.

Referring Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Kumar said, “We don’t have any personal grudges against you. We have ideological differences.”

On the Afzal Guru issue, he said, “As a JNUSU president, I call him a citizen of India who was prosecuted by the Indian law. For me Rohith Vemula is icon, not Afzal Guru.”

Under pressure from almost the entire state and large powerful sections of the media, many others would have laid low and let this storm blow over. Kumar, a veteran of student’s politics, used this opportunity to deliver a scintillating speech on the steps of JNU’s administrative block. Much has been made of Kumar’s now famous “azadi” slogan ­– that was the one doctored to paint him as a separatist. Kumar used this very controversy to hit back: “We don’t freedom from India, my brothers, we want freedom in India.”

He elaborated: “Freedom from hunger, freedom from corruption, freedom from the RSS, freedom from Manu-ism, freedom from caste – we will take our freedoms.”

Kanhaiya who was booked over sedition charges was released on Thursday.

The JNUSU president announced that he will campaign for upcoming Kerala and West Bengal Assembly polls for the Left Front.

However, denying that he is a politician, he said, “I’m a student, not politician. Glad that JNU chose me.”

The Janata Dal-United stalwart said the student leader, who is from Begusarai in Bihar, had been framed. Nitish Kumar praised Kanhaiya’s long speech at the JNU campus on Thursday night in which he attacked the government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and raised issues of intolerance, hunger and poverty.

Nitish Kumar said the Modi government did not like the outspoken students of JNU who questioned the government’s policies and raised issues that embarrassed it.

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