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By:

Correspondent

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.

HSRPs can be fitted in society-sans extra fees

Mumbai: In a laudable move, the Maharashtra Transport Commissionerate has directed that the mandatory High Security Registration Plates for old vehicles can be fitted in housing society premises without levying extra charges.


The order was issued today (March 22) by Joint Transport Commissioner Shailesh Kamat today, extending the facility for group bookings and fitting of HSRPs at the venue of their choice.


The move is ostensibly due to poor response and low implementation of HSRPs in the state for multiple reasons, as the deadline of June 30 looms ahead.


Accordingly, Kamat has directed the local Regional Transport Officers (RTO) to hold discussions with associations/unions of trucks, buses, taxis or three-wheelers and exhort them to go for the HSRPs.


In places with 25 applications or more from two-wheelers, four-wheelers, autorickshaws, taxis, buses and trucks, the RTO should make arrangements through the authorized agency to fit the HSRPs without levying the ‘home fitment fees’.


The venues can be cooperative housing societies or the place of choice of theassociations/unions as per the convenience of their members, and would be applicable to vehicles registered prior to April 1, 2019, said Kamat.


The Commissionerate admitted that since Jan. 1, 2025, when the drive for HSRP kicked off in the state, the implementation has been ‘very poor’.


The government has appointed three (03) authorized agencies to complete the stupendous task through their fitment centres, adhering to a strict deadline.


However, in some districts, there are very few fitments centres and the public have complained of experiencing difficulties in securing appointments, including through the online process.


The state RTOs have been asked to review the situation in their respective jurisdictions and direct the fitment agencies to open additional fitments centres as required.


Discarding the red-tape, the Transport Commissioner has even authorized the local RTOs to grant approval to the fitment agencies for starting more fitment centres.


As per reports, of the total 1.15 crore vehicles registered in Maharashtra, nearly 10 lakh new vehicles (post-April 1, 2019) are plying without the HSRP, and barely a fraction of the old vehicles (pre-April 1, 2019) have either applied for or are fitted with HSRPs.

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