RSS, BJP trying to displace Mahatma Gandhi: Kanhaiya Kumar

Student leader Kanhaiya Kumar on Thursday alleged that the RSS and the BJP were trying to displace Mahatma Gandhi as a national icon.

"Right-wing groups could never appropriate Gandhi as they never believed in his ideology. Their real objective is to replace Gandhi with their ideologue. They will first try to appropriate him and then replace him," Kanhaiya Kumar told reporters at a media interaction organized by the Press Club of Bengaluru.

He was responding to a query on Prime Minister Narendra Modi's picture replacing Gandhiji's in the calendar and diary by Khadi Village Industries Commission recently. "They would appropriate Bhagat Singh and BR Ambedkar, too but they can't since they don't believe in their ideologies. While Bhagat Singh was an atheist, Ambedkar was up against Manusmriti," he added.

Kumar added that criticising the prime minister was not sedition. “You can't say the Prime Minister is equal to the nation. Criticizing the government is not sedition," he said.

The student union leader also said that he had no interest in joining a political party or starting one of his own. “I am an academic and I will teach,” he said in an interview to The Hindu.

Kumar, along with two other JNU students Umar Khalid and Anirban Bhattacharya - were charged with sedition in connection with alleged anti-India slogan-shouting during an event in February 2016 at JNU campus. While Kumar spent time in Tihar jail, he wrote a book titled ‘From Bihar to Tihar’.