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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.

Pashtun activist condemns Pakistan Army drone strike killing children in North Waziristan



Paris: Pashtun Tahafuz Movement (PTM) activist Fazal ur Rehman Afridi has vehemently criticised the recent drone strike conducted by the Pakistan Army in Hurmuz, North Waziristan, which resulted in the deaths of four young children and their mother.



In an interview with ANI, the activist claimed that the areas populated by Pashtuns in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa are being utilised as a "laboratory" by the Pakistani military to test various weapons, notably drones.



Afridi disclosed that there have been more than 32 drone strikes in North and South Waziristan and Tank districts over the past few years. "This is not the first instance where the Pakistani army has assaulted innocent Pashtun civilians, particularly women and children," he stated, noting that the latest victims were children aged from five to eight.



Dismissing the military's assertion that the strike targeted militants, the activist accused the Pakistani state of having relocated over 55,000 Taliban leaders and their families into Pashtun regions through a formal arrangement. "Now they label them as terrorists and use this as justification for conducting assaults. It's a proxy conflict. The Taliban are merely pawns of the Pakistan Army," he asserted, suggesting that the true aim behind the strikes is to seize the resource-rich lands of the Pashtuns.



He also connected the drone attacks to the events following India's recent counter-terror operation. "Immediately after Operation Sindoor by India, the Pakistan army resumed attacks on Pashtun civilians. Innocent children and elderly individuals lost their lives," he said.



Voicing complete support for India's Operation Sindoor that targets terror camps in Pakistan-occupied Jammu and Kashmir, the activist mentioned that Pashtuns collectively welcomed such an initiative. "We were relieved that our regions were not affected, and we understand that the terror strongholds are in Punjab. We wish the operation had continued longer to dismantle the rogue Pakistani army," he added.



He concluded with optimism that future operations would ultimately relieve Pashtuns of their enduring military oppression.



At least four children of the same family were killed and five people injured in a suspected drone strike in Pakistan's restive Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province.

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