One sees himself from a decade ago in Neha Bora and another feels her rise is only natural.
Jignesh Mevani and Kanhaiya Kumar, who had spearheaded movements that catapulted them onto the national stage, differed on their take on Neha Bora, one of the most prominent faces of the students’ movement against the government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
Mevani sees something of himself from 10 years ago in Neha
“She is fiery, articulate and ideologically committed. I can see the Jignesh from 10 years back in her,” Mevani, a two-time MLA from Gujarat’s Vadgam, told The Telegraph Online.
The student and youth mobilisation at Jantar Mantar in the peak of Delhi’s summer propelled Neha, 29, national president of the Leftist All India Students’ Association (AISA), into national prominence.
The BBC headlined its profile of Neha: ‘Meet India's feisty Gen Z protester who is taking on Modi’.
A compelling speech after a 23-day hunger strike at Jantar Mantar was only the beginning for Neha. She has since then visited campuses across the country and addressed students.
On October 10, Neha was back on the streets of Delhi, marching hand in hand with Dipankar Bhattacharya, the CPI (Marxist Leninist) Liberation’s national general secretary, activists Yogendra Yadav and Prashant Bhushan.
She eluded the Delhi police, running through the streets, her photographs prompting encomiums and vicious, obscene trolling from two opposite sides of the political spectrum.
On another day, Neha shared a bus-ride and the dais with Lok Sabha leader of Opposition Rahul Gandhi and others and addressed the media from the opposition INDIA bloc’s pulpit.
Movements make leaders: Jignesh Mevani
A decade ago Balu Sarvaiya, a resident of Mota Samadhiyala village in Gujarat’s Gir Somnath district near the town of Una, was assaulted and his two sons along with four others were tied to a vehicle and flogged for allegedly skinning a dead cow.
The flogging of the Dalit family members brought the spotlight on Mevani, who led a series of protests including marches demanding justice for the victims.
While continuing to fight for the rights of the Dalit community in his home state Gujarat and elsewhere, Mevani has since moved to electoral politics and remains among the 12-odd Congress MLAs not swayed by the BJP’s pulls and pressures.
“A movement makes a leader and a leader builds a movement too,” Mevani said. “The Una protests made me look glamorous, got me name and fame. People flocked to the rallies to hear me speak. Though I have moved into electoral politics, at the core of my heart I remain an activist, an agitator, a protester. That is the space where I am the most comfortable.”
Mevani was in Delhi over the last few days with other Congress leaders and workers marching on the streets of Delhi against the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls and demanding the dismissal of chief election commissioner Gyanesh Kumar.
Since his return to Gujarat, Mevani has been slapped with multiple cases for obstruction of justice during the recently held civic polls in the state.
“Ten years back too, they slapped cases on me. Nothing has changed. The BJP remains as vicious as ever,” Mevani said.
Neha Bora’s rise a natural process: Kanhaiya Kumar
Five months before the Una incident, then JNU students’ union president Kanhaiya Kumar, a member of another Leftist students’ body, the All India Students’ Federation, was charged with sedition, arrested, assaulted by a group of lawyers at the Tis Hazari Court in the capital and lodged in the high security Tihar jail.
Kumar, who contested twice in the Lok Sabha polls on a CPI ticket and later from the Congress, said that Neha Bora’s emergence from campus politics to the national stage was only natural.
“Yeh ek swabhavik prakriya hai [This is a natural process]. This is the truth of life,” Kumar, AICC in-charge of the National Students’ Union of India (NSUI), the Congress’s student wing, told The Telegraph Online. “In my time students on campuses raised certain questions. The students of today are raising other questions. Both have their own relevance.”
Kumar said this was not the moment for seeking individual glory.
“This movement is beyond any political party, beyond any political ideology. This is everyone’s fight. This fight is to ensure how the democratic framework of India will survive,” he said.
In post-Independence India popular movements have often served as a grooming ground for leaders. Some among them went on to play key roles in India’s parliamentary democracy; others walked away from the limelight.
“I don’t know what she will do later. But I can say she will remain where she is, rock-solid and the last person to compromise. She will remain pro-democracy, pro-Constitution, pro-poor and secular,” said Mevani.
