Myth of the Urban Naxal

Six years after acquiring notoriety in the 2018 Bhima Koregaon case the Urban Naxal threatens to haunt the citizens again courtesy the Maharashtra Special Public Security Bill Introduced but not passed in the outgoing state Assembly it is feared the Bill could be promulgated as an ordinance before the next government is constituted later this yearThe citizensrsquo fear of the Urban Naxal arises from the Billrsquos Statement of Objects and Reasons which says that Naxalism or Maoism is no longer limited to remote areas but has acquired an increasing presence in urban areas through its frontal organisations These organisations the Bill says provide refuge and logistics to the Naxal cadre stoke social unrest create public disorder and propagate the Maoist ideologyFrontal organisations are defined as those that have a legal personality and operate openly but their clandestine mission is to further the agenda of the Communist Party of India Maoist It is for the State to determine whether an organisation is a Maoist front and ought to be banned There thus always exists a possibility that those controlling the levers of the State for the reason of ideological partisanship could declare democratic organisations expressing social discontent through nonviolent protests as Maoists frontsThe ambiguity inherent in identifying the frontal organisation creates an architecture of suspicion there is no way to distinguish a social activist from a Maoist functioning undercover This architecture the Hindu Right exploited to construct the persona of the Urban Naxalndashvillainous operating in cities under the veneer of middleclass respectability to execute the Maoist agenda of destroying the Indian State and capturing powerHindutva harnesses State power and control over the media to spawn the myth of the Urban Naxal Typically after arresting citizens the State identifies them as Urban Naxals to the media which disparages and demonises them This was the ploy deployed to try to trigger a wave of national revulsion against 16 activists arrested on the basis of allegedly manufactured evidence in the 2018 Bhima Koregaon case Six years later even the charges against the Bhima Koregaon accused for their alleged links with the Maoists are yet to be framedIndeed the myth of the Urban Naxal is designed to turn citizens suspicious of each other and persuade them to perceive social movements and protests as a grand Maoist plan to destablise India The Urban Naxal is Hindutvarsquos weapon of depriving its ideological opponents of popular support apart from hoping to scare them into silenceFor comprehending the dangers of the Urban Naxal myth turn to filmmaker Vivek Agnihotrirsquos urban naxals The Making of Buddha In a Traffic Jam In this book he says he began to write the script of The Making Of Buddha after it dawned on him that he needed to tell the ldquostory of the invisible enemy the most dangerous terrorist The Urban Naxalrdquo Comparing the invisible enemy to a snake under the bed Agnihotri writes ldquoI shiver imagining that someone in my ecosystemmdasha writer a lawyer a journalist a social worker an officer a professor a historian a painter a filmmaker anyone just anyone can be an Urban NaxalrdquoEvery educated person in other words is a potential MaoistThe Naxalitersquos game plan according to Agnihotri is to split the Indian society into two warring groups On one side will be the Adivasis Dalits Muslims and other ldquoforgotten peoplerdquo consolidated behind the red flag to challenge the bourgeoisie elites and Brahmins Their confrontation is designed to demolish the Indian State and erect upon its debris a Maoist State The Naxalite in the forest fights with the gun The Urban Naxal weaponises the citizensrsquo mind and turns them into implacable foes of the State Agnihotri arguesIn a 2018 interview to the Organiser the mouthpiece of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh Agnihotri laid out the markers for identifying the Urban Naxal He said ldquoFirst anyone who is not willing to give any space to Hindu civilisation has an agenda Why would anyone not want to preserve this great civilisationrdquo He believes the Urban Naxal is opposed to the Hindu civilisation because she seeks to break Hindu unity by creating a DalitIslamic blocThe other markers of the Urban Naxal are that she would be involved in the antidevelopment movement or inclined to showing ldquounnecessary compassionrdquo for the ldquoenemies of Indiardquo The meaning of antidevelopment in Agnihotrirsquos lexicon was best captured in Gujarat Chief Minister Bhupendra Patelrsquos 2022 speech wherein he labelled activist Medha Patkar as an Urban Naxal for opposing the Sardar Sarovar Narmada project Those exhibiting excessive sympathy for the enemies of India would include a lawyer defending a person accused of waging war against the State or even an organisationrsquos press statement against human rights violations by the security forcesAgnihotrirsquos definition of the Urban Naxal keeps out of its ambit the adherents of Hindutva all those who endorse the extant development model and the legions of the apolitical Hindutva through its construct of the Urban Naxal wishes to make this mammoth bloc of Indians politically paranoidmdashand tap their unfounded fears to rally them behind the State regardless of its conduct and policiesThe writer is a senior journalist and author of Bhima Koregaon Challenging CasteSend your feedback to mailbagmiddaycomThe views expressed in this column are the individualrsquos and donrsquot represent those of the paper