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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.

Strategic Asymmetry

Emmanuel Macron’s India visit signals a quiet reordering of power between Europe and the emerging world. France today is politically brittle, fiscally strained and strategically boxed in. Domestic instability has eroded Macron’s authority well before his presidency ends in 2027. Europe is struggling to convert economic heft into geopolitical agency, caught between American security guarantees and Chinese industrial dominance. In that narrowing corridor, India appears not merely attractive but indispensable with a large market and a technology ecosystem open to partnership.


India’s engagement with France is not born of urgency but of choice. New Delhi values Paris because unlike other Western powers, the latter offers advanced technology without overt political conditionality and a European connection unencumbered by Brussels’s regulatory zeal. The elevation of ties to a ‘Special Global Strategic Partnership’ reflects this calculation.


Defence remains the spine of the relationship between the two countries, but it is being re-engineered as the shift from arms purchases to joint production and technology sharing marks a structural change in India’s external strategy. The helicopter assembly line inaugurated during the visit is emblematic of this shift. India no longer wants equipment alone; it wants design capability, manufacturing depth and export potential. France, under pressure from American defence giants and shrinking European procurement, is unusually willing to oblige.


This convergence is anchored in a shared attachment to strategic autonomy. For India, autonomy is a hedge against great-power volatility. For France, it has become economic realism.


Technology cooperation sharpens the asymmetry further. France’s insistence that the question is no longer whether India will innovate, but who will innovate with India, is revealing. Europe has lost ground in successive technology waves, from digital platforms to frontier AI. India, by contrast, combines talent, scale and a growing startup ecosystem, even if it still lacks deep capital and cutting-edge hardware. For France, embedding itself early in India’s innovation architecture through joint research centres, startup networks and student exchanges is a bid to remain relevant in a world where technological leadership increasingly defines geopolitical weight.


The announcement of an India–France Year of Innovation in 2026 fits neatly into this strategy. By institutionalising collaboration ahead of time, Paris hopes to lock in influence before India’s choices narrow or tilt decisively towards American or East Asian ecosystems. The proposal to showcase Franco-Indian initiatives ahead of a G7 summit similarly signals France’s ambition to act as India’s principal European interlocutor, thus bypassing slower continental mechanisms.


The broader implications extend beyond bilateral ties. As uncertainty clouds America’s future role and Europe’s coherence frays, India is emerging as a stabilising pole in an increasingly multipolar order. The partnership also carries an unspoken China dimension, particularly in the Indo-Pacific, where France’s residual presence gives it interests that align more naturally with India’s than those of most European states.


All said, Paris is competing for relevance in India’s crowded diplomatic marketplace. That competition, politely disguised as partnership, is the defining feature of Macron’s visit.

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