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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.

Whatever life is destined is destined: Salman on death threats and security

  • PTI
  • Mar 27, 2025
  • 2 min read

Mumbai: "Jitni umar likhi hai, utni likhi hai," a philosophical Salman Khan said in his first comments about death threats from the Lawrence Bishnoi gang and the heightened security that has significantly restricted his movements.


The security protocol has impacted his daily routine, Khan told reporters on Wednesday night.


"Bhagwan, Allah sab unpar hai. Jitni umar likhi hai, utni likhi hai. Bas yahi hai. (It is up to Bhagwan, Allah. Whatever life is destined is destined. That's all)," Khan said in a rare interaction in which he opened up about his personal life and the many challenges after the death threats.


"I cannot do anything about it (security). Khallas. So I go from Galaxy (home) to shoot to Galaxy, no detours," he added.


The 59-year-old could earlier be seen cycling around the city unhindered by his security team.


His security concerns escalated in 2018 when incarcerated gangster Bishnoi openly threatened to kill him during a court appearance in Jodhpur over the actor's involvement in the infamous 1998 blackbuck poaching case


Since then, Khan has faced multiple threats. In April 2024, two shooters, allegedly from the Bishnoi gang, fired gunshots outside his Bandra residence before being arrested.


After this, security was enhanced with bulletproof glass protecting his balcony and CCTV cameras keeping watch on the road outside. Two months later, Navi Mumbai Police claimed to have discovered a plot to kill the actor when he travelled to his farmhouse at Panvel near Mumbai.


Security around the actor was further tightened following the murder of politician Baba Siddiqui, who was known to be a close friend of Salman, in October 2024.


Asked about the elaborate security around him, Khan said, "You guys are sweet; that's why they are sweet to you. I don't wish for them to be sweet with those people who are not sweet."


"It's not when I'm with the press, but when I'm without the press. This (security) cramps my style," Khan said in the interaction ahead of the release of his film "Sikander" this Sunday

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