Pattambi: Pattambi's air once reverberated with Inquilab zindabad, and the constituency produced the first elected communist chief minister in the world. Sixty years later, it's air reverberated with azadi, when thousands gathered for the election campaign meeting of CPI candidate Mohammed Muhasin followed Jawaharlal Nehru University Students Union president Kanhaiya Kumar shouting the slogan took the nation by storm.
Mr Kumar who ended the speech with his trademark azadi song said the people of Kerala have a historic opportunity to send a message to those who called JNU a den of anti-nationals by electing Mr Muhasin, a PhD scholar at the university. “He brought Pattambi to JNU, and he will now bring JNU to Pattambi,” he said.
Mr Kumar in his speech tried to battle the tag of 'anti-national' that was stuck on him by the NDA and Sangh Parivar. “They call all those who ask for education and job for the youth of this country anti-nationals,” he said.
“But we refuse to buckle and will raise the questions again and again. We are anti-RSS, not anti-national.” He said the Modi government was trying to deflect the people's attention from its abject failures on all fronts by taking refuse in communalism.
“This government in the last two years produced 1.34 lakh jobs," he said. "We ask questions for the two crore unemployed youth.” The movement for social justice and gender equality started on campus seek an alternative politics and not a political alternative, he said.
The crowd cheered Mr Kumar whenever he attacked NDA or when he invoked the name of EMS, the first MLA from the constituency though there was no translation. Mr Muhasin, Palakkad MP M B Rajesh and JNU student leader Aparajitha Raja also spoke. Mr. Muhasin is pitted against UDF’s C.P. Mohammed who is also the sitting MLA. In 2011, he had won a convincing majority of over 12000 votes.
