Kanhaiya Kumar

NEW DELHI: After securing his doctorate degree from JNU on Thursday, Kanhaiya Kumar said he wanted to remain in academics and would now look for a job as an assistant professor. “Politics is not a career for me, but a responsibility towards the society,” the youth leader said.

Kumar, against whom a sedition case is pending, said he had submitted the PhD thesis in July 2018. He said that despite the propaganda against him over the alleged anti-India sloganeering, he had finished his research on time. Kumar got admitted to JNU’s Centre for African Studies in School of International Studies in 2011 in the integrated MPhil/PhD course where MPhil is for two years and PhD for five years.

“I was the first person in my batch to complete the viva,” said Kumar. His thesis was on ‘The Process of De-colonisation and Social Transformation in South Africa, 1994-2015.’

The submission was hampered after the administration fined him following a report by the JNU enquiry committee that was set up to probe the alleged February 9, 2016 Afzal Guru incident on the campus, said Kumar. The event was organised to mark the third anniversary of the hanging of Parliament attack convict Guru.

On July 4, 2018, the chief proctor had issued an order holding Kumar, the then JNUSU president, guilty of violation of discipline and a fine of Rs 10,000 was imposed on him. Another scholar, Umar Khalid, was also punished.

Kumar moved Delhi high Court on July 17, following which he was allowed to submit the thesis on July 23. Khalid was also allowed to submit his thesis on the the court’s order.



In Video: Kanhaiya Kumar secures doctorate degree, wants to be a professor