Kanhaiya Kumar used to head the Jawaharlal Nehru University's student union.
Student leader-turned-politician Kanhaiya Kumar has accused the centre of launching a two-pronged attack on the country through the amended Citizenship Act and the impending National Register of Citizens (NRC) exercise, saying that it will put every poor citizen who does not have his documentation in place at risk of being sent to detention centres.
"The government says that the two initiatives will not affect the country's Muslim citizens. On the contrary, it will affect Muslims as well as every poor citizen who does not have the documents they will demand when the NRC exercise is launched. This will affect all of India," the Communist Party of India (CPI) leader told NDTV in an interview, adding that the amended Citizenship Act and the NRC should be viewed together to get a complete picture of the threat they pose to the country.
Mr Kumar, who used to head the Jawaharlal Nehru University's student union before becoming a full-fledged politician, said it is this very concern that has made students cutting across states rise up in protest against the amended Citizenship Act. "If the government does not give up its divide-and-rule strategy, all the people who love this country and its constitution will come out agitating," he warned.
His comments come at a time when students and oppostion parties across the country are up in arms against the amended Citizenship Act, which aims to make it easier for non-Muslim migrants from Bangladesh, Pakistan and Afghanistan to become Indian nationals. While critics claim that the amended law is inherently communal, BJP leaders such as Himanta Biswa Sarma have already indicated that the amended Citizenship Act is meant to provide a protective umbrella to non-Muslim migrants when the NRC exercise is launched.
The CPI leader dismissed the argument that politics is best kept out educational institutions, pointing out that even Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Union Home Minister Amit Shah were student leaders before they shot into prominence. "It's the responsibility of educational institutions to turn students into responsible citizens. And being a responsible citizen means protesting if there is an attack on the Constitution, if there is an attack on the unity or diversity of the country, or if there is an unconstitutional law being introduced to divide the people," he said.
The primary problem, he said, was with centre not listening to the country's Mann Ki Baat. "It's very sad that the Prime Minister only cares to talk about what's on his mind. If he was ready to listen to what's on the minds of students, the country wouldn't have been facing such a situation today. It is only when a government stops listening to the people's voice that they are forced to come out on the streets in protest," he said.