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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.

RSS outreach adds to BJP's convincing win

RSS

Mumbai: The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) still holds the key to the BJP's electoral success as the outcome of the Maharashtra Assembly polls showed on Saturday.


According to latest figures of counting of votes, the BJP-led Mahayuti could win over 230 of the 288 assembly seats in the state, leaving the opposition Congress-Shiv Sena (UBT)-NCP(SP) combine with just 50 seats.


Ahead of the elections in Maharashtra, the RSS had launched an extensive outreach programme to shape public opinion in favour of the BJP-led alliance in the state.


The BJP's ideological fountainhead had started the move in coordination with all of its affiliates.


According to sources, small 'tolis' (teams) of 'swayamsevaks', formed under the plan, reached out to people in every nook and cranny of the state.


Each of these teams held small group meetings with five to ten people and also reached out to families through their local network in 'mohallas' in their respective localities carrying the message.


"They did their work," a source said.


These teams shaped public opinion by holding discussions around topics of national interest, Hindutva, good governance, development, public welfare and various local issues concerning the society without explicitly endorsing the BJP, the source added.


Maharashtra Deputy Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis recently said that he had sought the Sangh's help to fight "anarchists and vote jihadists" in the assembly polls following the BJP's setback in the state in the Lok Sabha polls.


Hours after polling in Maharashtra ended on Wednesday, he called on RSS chief Mohan Mohan Bhagwat in Nagpur.


According to sources, the Sangh workers' 'tolis' had held over 1.25 lakh small group meetings across Haryana in the run up to the state assembly polls.


Bucking anti-incumbency, the BJP secured its best-ever haul of 48 seats in the 90-member Haryana Assembly pulling off a hat-trick of wins in the state to retain power and halt the Congress' comeback attempt in the elections.


It is widely believed that lack of enthusiasm among the RSS workers was one of the key factors behind the BJP's underwhelming performance in the Lok Sabha elections this year.


BJP president JP Nadda's remarks during the parliamentary polls that his party needed the RSS' support in the beginning but over the years it became capable of running itself is understood to be one of the reasons that had demotivated the Sangh workers in various states.

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