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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.

Misplaced Shrine

Navi Mumbai

In Navi Mumbai, atop a hill overlooking the soon-to-be-operational Navi Mumbai International Airport, an unauthorized dargah poses an unexpected security risk. It stands, perched on CIDCO-acquired land, with a clear view of the airport’s main runway and the highway leading to the JNPT port. This dargah, which began as a single stone in 2011, has since expanded into a structure covering an acre, complete with a barricade, housing several rooms, and offering those inside a vantage point over critical infrastructure.


It is tempting to frame this controversy as a conflict of faith, but that misses the mark. The issue is not religious belief but public safety. Encroachments — religious or otherwise — around key infrastructure sites like airports are threats in any country, and India cannot afford a compromised approach. The stakes are higher in a nation that houses one of the world’s largest populations and maintains ambitions as a global hub. Allowing religious encroachments to proliferate near such critical areas, whether a Hindu temple or a Muslim dargah, sets a perilous precedent, one in which religious tolerance erodes public trust in civic governance.


For over a decade, authorities, despite multiple complaints, have hesitated to enforce regulations against the dargah, citing fears of backlash or administrative inertia. Yet, any hesitation that views encroachment as too sensitive to address only fuels further challenges. CIDCO served notices and Hindu groups alerted authorities to the risk. Yet, action remains elusive. National security cannot be the collateral of inaction, especially when strategic locations and the movement of millions lie in potential jeopardy.


Such challenges are not unique to airports. Across India, unauthorized religious structures have sprouted on railway land, highways, and even sensitive defence sites, using faith as a shield against regulations. The risks posed by unauthorized structures near airports are not theoretical. Airports, hubs of commerce, connectivity, and national security, must be safeguarded as neutral, secular spaces free from any form of encroachment.


Security implications aside, there is an unsettling trend of “land gifting” to religious boards, including the Waqf Board, which turns what was originally public land into a permanent religious property. This tendency is problematic not solely for one group but as a matter of unchecked encroachment and resource allocation. The concern is not which group occupies the hill today, but the message that unchecked growth of any unauthorized structure sends to future generations.


The country’s founding principles enshrined secularism to ensure that no creed or culture would surpass the collective interest. Encroachment on public land has no exemption in religious guise. Thus, the path forward must be decisive, removing unauthorized structures with the same impartiality as it would any other security risk. Indeed, progress cannot afford to be obstructed by misplaced shrines on strategic land — a message that both secular authorities and civic society must enforce with resolve. Only by doing so can India build cities and infrastructure that serve the public interest over narrow or sectarian ones.

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