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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.

Runway Reckoning

The death of former Deputy Chief Minister Ajit Pawar in a plane crash at the Baramati airstrip has shaken Maharashtra’s political establishment like no other event in recent political history. It is a personal tragedy for a family that has dominated the politics of western Maharashtra for decades.


The preliminary findings into the Learjet crash at Baramati deepen the tragedy of late Deputy Chief Minister’s death and sharpen uncomfortable questions about negligence, oversight and political responsibility.


The Aircraft Accident Investigation Bureau (AAIB), in its initial report, flags a chain of failures from pilots’ non-adherence to standard operating procedures, low visibility and the absence of basic meteorological facilities at what it describes as an “uncontrolled” airfield.


The AAIB’s interim safety recommendations are telling. It has asked the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) to ensure stricter compliance with standard operating procedures at uncontrolled airfields, particularly adherence to minimum visibility norms. It recommends strengthening oversight and audits, introducing basic meteorological facilities and examining whether such aerodromes should be formally licensed to ensure regulated operations.


That a figure of Ajit Pawar’s stature should perish in an aviation accident at his political home turf of Baramati is tragic enough. But tragedy turns into indictment when the airstrip was functioning without adequate safety protocols.


If an airfield was cleared for training activity without robust safeguards, the responsibility must fall on New Delhi and its aviation regulators. Yet it would be disingenuous to confine scrutiny to the Centre alone. Baramati is not an anonymous outpost. It is the political citadel of the Pawar family. For decades, its development narrative has been intertwined with the ambitions of Sharad Pawar, Ajit Pawar and Supriya Sule. If an airstrip in this political bastion functioned with subpar oversight, its local representatives cannot plead ignorance.


This is not an exercise in blame-seeking at a moment of grief. Ajit Pawar himself built a career on managerial competence. As a senior leader of the NCP and a multiple-term Deputy Chief Minister, he combined administrative stamina with a reputation for hands-on governance. He was often described as a politician who understood files and figures better than slogans. To honour that legacy requires clarity about what went wrong.


There is a deeper unease here about India’s tier-two infrastructure. Across the country, small airstrips have been revived or expanded under ambitious regional-connectivity schemes. They are symbols of aspiration, linking provincial towns to national circuits of commerce and power. But an airfield is not a ribbon-cutting opportunity. It requires constant maintenance, transparent audits and independent scrutiny.


If Baramati’s airstrip was indeed operating as a training hub, were safety drills regularly conducted? Were emergency services adequately staffed?


Ajit Pawar’s death is a shock to Maharashtra’s political establishment. If the Baramati crash was the result of avoidable negligence, it also exposes a paradox at the heart of Indian federalism that strong leaders in family strongholds can still preside over weak systems. 


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