Student leader Kanhaiya Kumar, whose arrest on sedition charges sparked a controversial debate over nationalism, attacked the govt of Prime Minister Narendra Modi as “anti-people” on Friday, expressing the campus movement would continue until the ruling alliance was thrown out.

Kumar additionally made it clear that as a “leftist cadre”, he would stay engaged in politics and do what his organization – the All India Student Federation – would ask him to try and do.

CPM leader Sitaram Yechury aforesaid the JNU student president would canvass for the Left during this year’s province polls.

Asked what was the goal of the students’ campaign and if it might finish with the discharge of fellow students, Kumar said, “This movement is for rights and justice. You need to see it as a part of a larger struggle — in FTII, the tolerance-intolerance discussion, the Occupy UGC movement, what happened in Dadri, the Hyderabad episode and then JNU... the movement can continue until the end of this government. People will keep coming together.”

He said individuals — soldiers at the borders, farmers and students —were dying and it absolutely was his duty to show the regime.

Did he agree -- in the lightweight of the February 9 incident-- that basic rights and free speech go together with restrictions? “Yes, I endorse that rights need to be coupled with duties. Restrictions are important, but this is a gray area and it's precisely the area power centres seek to manipulate.”

He conjointly said, although his politics are completely different from that of Umar Khalid they were along on the requirement to fight this government. Khalid is in jail facing sedition charges and is additionally accused of organizing the February 9 event during that alleged anti-India slogans were yelled.

Kumar was cautious on being asked if he saw the developments of the last 3 weeks as a turning purpose. “But people coming together against a government trying to impose one ideology, murder democracy and impose authoritarianism is a good factor.”

Indian left remained robust on the streets and on problems, though its electoral strength had diminished, he said, adding the 2 people he felt closest to and loved the foremost in recent times were Rohith Vemula and Govind Pansare.

His attraction for Left politics, he said, began along with his reading of Hindi literature. “Literature makes you sensitive, your creative aspects get strengthened, you become aware and so you seek for an alternative. And you get drawn to politics that speaks of equality, justice and the end of exploitation.” If Left politics was concerned siding with the weak and overwhelmed, he was and would stay a leftist.