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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.

Shinde’s man likely to join BJP

Shivaji Sawant
Shivaji Sawant

Mumbai: While lots of political workers are switching loyalties and aligning with political parties of convenience ahead of local body polls, in probably first of such a case, a senior leader from Shiv Sena under Deputy Chief Minister Eknath Shinde is likely to join the BJP very soon.


Shivaji Sawant, brother of former Maharashtra minister for public health Tanaji sawant and the Solapur district Sampark Pramukh of Shiv Sena, is learnt to have had a series of meetings with senior BJP leaders including Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis over past few days, and now he is likely to join the BJP, sources have said.


Tanaji Sawant was very vocal about the Shiv Sena’s powers and the party’s relationship with the BJP while he was minister for public health in Eknath Shinde’s cabinet. He was one of the most controversial ministers of the Shinde cabinet and was also accused of shielding corruption. It was due to this image he could not find place in the Fadnavis cabinet. Though it came as a shock for him, he didn’t react in his typical style and tried to under play being side lined in the state politics.


However, his brother Shivaji couldn’t fathom it when similar things started happening with him. He was upset when initially his opinion was not sought while making appointments on party posts in Madha. When it became a regular feature in the district party organization, he decided to resign from his post. However, the attention seeking gesture too was ignored by the party leadership, which forced Sawant to start thinking on other viable options.


The feat is being seen as the BJP’s efforts to keep the party organization in the district in order. The party has 5 out of 6 MLAs in the district though it lost its MP to the Congress last year. Two of the MLAs have over 15 years of experience and they have their own factions within the party organisation. Before the assembly polls last year the BJP entrusted Mangalwedha MLA Sachin Kalyanshetti with the responsibility of district chief. But, that led to rise of a third faction within the party. Hence, in the recent internal reshuffle the party ensured all key posts go to long standing party loyalists who haven’t got any posts of power. On this backdrop, Shivaji Sawant’s bid to join the BJP needs to be seen.


Sawant is expected to join the BJP along with his son and supporters which include Dilip Kolhe, former deputy mayor of Solapur Municipal Corporation. So, on Sawant’s part this is clearly a move to ensure political future of his own as well as his son and the supporters. While, for the BJP it appears to be an attempt to keep the warring factions within the party under tab and ensure electoral victory by infusing new power from outside.


Sawant initially met rural development minister Jaykumar Gore last week. He then had closed door meetings with a couple of senior BJP leaders from the party organisation and on Sunday he met Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis who was in Solapur for an official function. According to Kolhe, Fadnavis has assured them of time for a detailed meeting in Mumbai very soon after which decision will be taken on whether he will be inducted in the party in Mumbai or at Madha, which is his area of influence.

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