Kanhaiya Kumar’s speech: Here are the top 10 quotes

Mangalore Today News Network

March 05, 2016: JNUSU president Kanhaiya Kumar, after being freed on an interim bail, returned to JNU campus on Thursday night and addressed the gathering with a power-packed speech.

 

The student leader in his fiery address took a dig at PM Modi, the BJP, Smriti Irani and RSS along with emphasizing his stand on wanting "freedom in India, not freedom from India". Here are the top 10 quotes from his speech:

1.  We will fight for Umar (Khalid) and Anirban (Bhattacharya). Let the courts decide what is ‘deshdroh’ (anti-national) and what is ‘deshbhakti’ (patriotism), Madam Smriti Irani will not decide this because we are not her children.

2. Modiji was talking about Stalin and Khrushchev in Parliament. When I heard him speaking I felt like jumping into the TV screen, grabbing his suit and saying — ‘Modiji, please speak about Hitler a little’. Forget about Hitler, talk about Mussolini whose black cap you wear, who (RSS founder M S) Golwalkar sahab went to meet.

3. They said I raised slogans about freedom. They asked me why I wanted freedom from India. But I want to set this straight. I do not want freedom from India, but freedom in India.

4. Modiji tweeted Satyamev Jayate. I also say ‘PMji, I have huge differences in opinion with you, but Satyamev Jayate is from the Constitution. Today, I also say to you Satyamev Jayate’.

5. A BJP MP in parliament said that ‘jawans are dying on the border’. I want to ask you. Is your brother there? In this country, the crores of farmers who are dying.

6. Do not try to separate the constable, the farmer, the soldier, poor people like me, by creating distorted binaries. I salute the soldiers but have you ever thought of their families, the families of farmers who are forced to commit suicide?

7. I told my mother that she took a nice dig at Modiji. But my mother said she was not taking a dig at him, she was only expressing her pain. Those who understand that pain, cry, and those who do not understand, laugh.

8. If you speak against this anti-people government, then their cyber-cell will send doctored videos, they will abuse you and count how many condoms there are in your dustbin.

9. 69 per cent of the country do not believe in your (BJP) ideology. Even the 31 per cent who voted for you were fooled by your jumla. We Indians forget easily but we still remember all the ‘jumla’ used during election campaign.

10. All this was planned. All this was planned to derail the movement seeking justice for Rohith Vemula and Occupy UGC (the recent agitation against the proposed scrapping of PhD fellowships). I have not said this before, but my family earns Rs 3,000 a month. Without JNU, I would not be able to do a PhD.