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23 August 2024 at 4:29:04 pm

Red Romance

For long, the Naxalite in news was recognisable by the gun. But the more insidious version of Naxalism has never needed a rifle. It has thrived in varsity classrooms and newspaper and magazine columns, fostered by men and women sympathetic to it. These academics and other members of the so-called intelligentsia have long enjoyed their status as ‘respectable dissenters’ even when their politics offered intellectual alibis for Naxals carrying guns. Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s recent...

Red Romance

For long, the Naxalite in news was recognisable by the gun. But the more insidious version of Naxalism has never needed a rifle. It has thrived in varsity classrooms and newspaper and magazine columns, fostered by men and women sympathetic to it. These academics and other members of the so-called intelligentsia have long enjoyed their status as ‘respectable dissenters’ even when their politics offered intellectual alibis for Naxals carrying guns. Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s recent Independence Day warning about “dimaagi Naxals” should therefore not be dismissed as another political label. His larger point was that an insurgency does not survive on ammunition alone. It survives on ideas and people willing to make violence appear morally fashionable. The most revealing feature of India’s Maoist movement was never simply its brutality. It was the strange attraction it exercised over sections of the metropolitan Left elite. The Naxalite with an AK-47 could be transformed into a romantic revolutionary while the policeman he killed became an instrument of an oppressive state. This was not merely naïveté. At its ugliest, it was the intellectual laundering of political violence. The fantasy of the romantic revolutionary has always been seductive. In this narrative, amplified through sympathetic media priding itself on telling ‘truth to power,’ India was not a constitutional democracy struggling with inequality and corruption but an inherently illegitimate state waiting to be overthrown. In the minds of this elite Left, Maoist violence has often been recast as resistance while attacks on infrastructure as blows against capitalism. The armed overthrow of the Indian republic was the liberation they craved for. Some of India’s most celebrated intellectuals have flirted dangerously close to that moral inversion. The issue here is whether intellectual prestige can be used to sanitise an ideology whose practitioners have murdered civilians, policemen and public servants and terrorised some of India’s poorest districts. A university cannot be the place where Maoist romanticism acquires the legitimacy of a fashionable campus cause. Professors who turn armed insurgents into heroic revolutionaries are not merely exercising academic freedom. If they knowingly excuse violence, they are helping to construct the moral vocabulary that makes violence possible. Let’s be clear here. A professor who criticises the Indian state is not a Naxal while a journalist who exposes state excesses is not an enemy of India. But an intellectual who repeatedly excuses, glorifies or rationalises political violence cannot hide behind the word ‘dissent.’ India has paid an enormous price for the Maoist fantasy. Thousands have died. Entire regions were held back by fear while development was obstructed. The people supposedly being liberated were often the first to suffer. The armed Naxal is now being pushed towards extinction. But the Indian republic cannot afford to leave behind the romantic mythology that made the gun respectable. A democracy can tolerate dissent. It should never be expected to tolerate the glorification of those who seek its violent destruction.

An Open Letter to the Terrorists Who Attacked Pahalgam

You bunch of spineless cowards. It is well past midnight and I just can’t sleep. Not after hearing of your gruesome, senseless killing of innocent people in my motherland. You sick people.


I write to you as a furious, heart-broken Indian Muslim. A man whose soul is torn between unimaginable grief and blazing rage. When you attacked civilians in Pahalgam, you pierced through the heart of every Indian who still believes in unity, in peace, in justice.


I speak not just as an individual, but as the son of a family that has lived and breathed service to this nation. Patriotism runs through my veins. My father, Lt. Gen. Zameer Uddin Shah, retired as the Deputy Chief of Army Staff and later became a voice for the Muslim intelligentsia as the Vice-Chancellor of Aligarh Muslim University. His younger brother, the celebrated actor Naseeruddin Shah and my father’s elder brother, a respected IITian, have all been honoured by the President of India for their distinguished contributions to this great nation.


My family has always been treated with dignity, and I have always been a proud Indian before being anything else. It is from this legacy of honour, service and nation-first values that I draw my strength. It is exactly this legacy that makes your actions even more revolting to me.


So many of the films I’ve acted in—stories that celebrated love, sacrifice, unity—were shot in the breathtaking valleys of Pahalgam and across Kashmir. National award-winning films like ‘Haider,’ ‘BajrangiBhaijaan,’ ‘Mojhi’ and the web series Avrodh (where I portrayed a Para Commando) were born in these very lands you’ve tried to desecrate. I’ve walked those serene paths and seen firsthand the harmony that lives in every fold of those hills. In my TEDx talks across the world, I’ve spoken of India’s soul, its strength in diversity, its unmatched spiritual and cultural richness. And today, you have tried to rip that soul apart.


But your bullets cannot silence beauty. Your hatred cannot erase harmony. Pahalgam is a living memory of what India truly stands for. And by spilling blood on its soil, you’ve not weakened us. You’ve reminded us of what we must protect with more resolve than ever before.


You claim to ‘fight’ for something. For what? For Islam? For Kashmir? Don’t insult our intelligence. You are not freedom fighters. You are butchers; cowards hiding behind guns, masks and false slogans. You targeted simple tourists, children, mothers, pilgrims, newlyweds—unarmed, defenceless human beings. And you dare to call this Jihad?


No, this is not Jihad. Jihad means “struggle.” What you did was ‘gunah’—sin, bloodshed and a betrayal of both humanity and God. You’ve dragged the name of Allah through the blood-soaked soil of Pahalgam. You’ve taken a religion of peace, twisted and misinterpreted it, and turned it into a weapon of terror.


I am ashamed that you and I were born into the same faith because we are nothing alike. My religion is humanity. The Islam I know teaches me to protect the innocent. Yours glorifies slaughter. My Islam teaches me to serve my country.


Today, because of you, I now carry a burden I never asked for. Every time someone hears a Muslim name or sees a skullcap, there’s suspicion in their eyes. All because of you. Right-thinking, patriotic Muslims who love their motherland are forced to explain, defend and apologize for crimes they never committed and beliefs they never endorsed.


You’ve taken lives. But worse, you’ve tried to take away trust. You’ve tried to make it impossible for an Indian Muslim to love his country openly, freely without being questioned. That is your real crime. And guess what? You’ve failed. You will always fail.


Because we, the real Muslims, the real Indians, are still standing. And we are furious. Not afraid, furious. We will not be pushed into corners. We will not be silenced by your bullets. We will not let you rewrite what it means to be one of us. To the people of India, please do not confuse these monsters with your Muslim brothers and sisters. We are bleeding with you. We are angry with you. And we are not your enemy. We are just as victimised by these cowards as every other Indian.


You are nothing but a blot, a rotting scar on the face of humanity. But this country, this unity, this idea of India is eternal. You tried to terrorize us. But you’ve only awakened us. To the families in Pahalgam, I offer not just prayers, but a promise: we shall not forget nor forgive. We will not rest until your loss echoes in the conscience of this country and justice is served. You terrorists are not ‘Muslims.’ The Muslim community around the world disowns you. You didn’t just attack Kashmir. You attacked all of us. And we will rise—as a nation, as Indians.


Jai Hind.


(The author is a former military officer, motivational speaker and actor.)

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