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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.

Plastic’s Silent Assault on Marine Life

Dear reader, last week, we saw how microplastics enter the aquatic food chain and eventually reach giants such as whales. This week, let us move a little further through the marine world and understand how plastic pollution is harming other ocean creatures as well, including sea turtles, seabirds and many other marine species.


Like many other animals, sea turtles have been around for 100 million years. They have survived periodical mass extinctions and they have survived through the “Golden Age of Reptiles”, outliving the dinosaurs who once ruled the Earth. But now their survival is at stake, and they are struggling to withstand the impacts of plastics on them and their environments.


There are seven different species of sea turtles living in the oceans, and all of them are at high risk from plastic. Depending upon the species, their natural food includes sea animals and plants such as jellyfish, crabs, shrimps, corals, algae and seagrass. But plastic has never been part of their diet. How could it be? However, when a turtle comes across a light, translucent polythene bag floating on the surface of water and moving along with the current, it gets delighted, thinking that the bag is a jellyfish. Yes, that floating bag looks exactly like a jellyfish, and so it immediately grabs the bag in its mouth and gulps it down.


Such ingested plastic bags and other plastic items keep accumulating in the poor turtle’s stomach, giving it a sense of fullness. However, in the long run, this leads to starvation and, ultimately, death. In addition to this, plastic articles thus swallowed can also damage the delicate lining of the gut wall. Many a time, plastic straws — used by us to sip a cold drink, lassi or similar beverages and later discarded in the dustbin — are found stuck in a turtle’s nose, injuring its delicate inner tissue lining. Scientists have also found that plastic debris settling on algae or seagrass is easily consumed by turtles while eating their natural food.


Another major hazard turtles have to face is entanglement in worn-out and discarded fishing gear, often labelled as 'ghost nets'. Most of the time, fisherfolk do not bother about repairing torn and worn-out nets and simply discard them in the oceans. Turtles get trapped in such nets and find it impossible to swim around. With restricted movements or no movement at all, turtles rarely survive. Additionally, microplastic consumption is also taking a heavy toll on the survival of turtles.


Seabirds at Risk

Seabirds are especially vulnerable to plastic pollution because of their surface-feeding habits. Often, they mistake floating plastic debris for food, which can lead to internal blockages, tears, starvation and toxic accumulation in their bodies. Alarmingly, some seabirds have even been observed feeding plastic to their chicks, putting entire populations at risk. (See the accompanying cartoon as an eye-opener!)


The threat is so severe that a new disease — plasticosis (plastic-induced fibrosis) — has emerged exclusively in seabirds. In this condition, tiny pieces of plastic irritate the digestive tract and cause scar tissue formation, which disrupts their growth, digestion and overall health.


According to the Ocean Blue Project, plastic waste kills an estimated one million seabirds every year through ingestion, entanglement and toxicity, while nearly 90 per cent of seabirds have already ingested plastic by mistake. By 2050, it is projected that 99 per cent of seabird species will be affected by plastic ingestion. And now comes an important question: what about us humans? Let us explore that next Saturday. Till then, have a great weekend!


(The writer is an environmentalist. Views personal.)

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