Uprooting Urban Naxals would remain incomplete until UGC issues ultimatum on secessionist activities in university campuses
New Delhi: In the last few months on several occasions Prime Minister Narendra Modi has warned the country about the dangers that India faces from ‘Urban Naxals’ and the need to ‘unmask’ them. He also warned about the threats to India’s unity being posed by external and internal elements who are trying to sow seeds of division.
It must be remembered that Maoist terrorists that ravage and impede India’s development, and have been responsible for death of thousands of innocent people in rural India, are no different from the Urban Naxals that operate from the urban landscape of India. They are just two sides of the same coin.
TWO SIDES OF THE SAME COIN
Some Western funded, pseudo-intellectuals even go to the extent of terming the Maoist terrorists as ‘Gandhians with Guns’. This is exactly the kind of romanticisation of Maoist terrorism that Urban Naxals do. Not only can one witness a trajectory of some of the most dreaded Maoist leaders, and their sympathizers or conduits, having alleged connect with some top higher education institutions in India, one can also witness as to how for long, at least up till 2014, before Modi Government came to power, the Urban Naxals were at the forefront of justifying Maoist violence, and were routinely shadow boxing in television debates defending the indefensible and horrendous Maoist atrocities.
When 75 security personnel from CRPF were brutally killed by Maoists in a devastating ambush in Chhasttisgarh, in 2010, Urban Naxals in some of the so-called elite universities of India, especially in JNU, allegedly went on celebration spree with war-cry exhorting the killing of CRPF men in the hands of Maoists. The same ideology was also behind the Tukde-Tukde Gang and their sloganeering in JNU in 2016.
Even now, reports have surfaced about posters in Jadavpur University which openly advocate secession of Kashmir, Manipur and several other regions from Republic of India. This was not the first time though. In 2016 too, Pro-Afzal Guru slogans and posters for freedom of Kashmir, Nagaland and Manipur surfaced in Jadavpur University.
URBAN NAXALS CORRODING INDIA FROM INSIDE
For India to emerge as a $5 trillion economy, a hub for innovation and entrepreneurship, and place where Vikas and Virasat can walk hand in hand, India would have to take concrete steps to dismantle the edifice that breeds and cultivates Urban Naxalism in India. Urban Naxals are nothing but Woke Radical-Leftists who, like parasites, corrode the very abode that they reside in. They have utter disdain for concept of nationalism, abhor cultural heritage, denigrate India’s growth story, and are always on the lookout for fault lines which they turn into fissures. They then harvest those fissures to cultivate deep societal divisions so that the nation’s growth is impeded. At the core, Urban Naxals, are deeply intolerant, undemocratic, and believe in armed violence as a means to revive their long-lost dream of inculcating Marxist-Leninist ideologies in mainstream governance. From anti-CAA protests to anti-farm law protests, Urban Naxal elements were key players in spreading disinformation and instigating violence.
ARE URBAN NAXALS CONDUITS OF WESTERN DEEP STATE?
Since India is rapidly challenging the global status quo, it is apparent that there are many who are trying to rock the Indian growth story. Many such Deep State elements want India to be externally stable but internally in chaos. Such chaos is created through fault lines cultivated and expanded through anti-India narrative building with use of media, academia and civil society.
This is exactly where the Urban Naxals pose a severe danger for India, because these elements have been the perfect conduit for India’s adversaries to cultivate internal fault lines, given that they (Urban Naxals) have already deeply penetrated various structures of administration, academia, civil society and even media of India.
From pushing caste narrative, to endorsing north-south divide, from promoting regionalism and sub-nationalism, to undermining Indian nationalism by equating it with ‘fascism’, from promoting language wars, to using pretext of ‘Human Rights’ to criticize actions by security agencies, and ‘Minority Rights’ to target Hindu community, from denigrating cultural ethos and traditions of India, to resisting any kind of industrial activities, and spewing hatred against Indian entrepreneurs and industrialists, from questioning India’s institutions, to resisting any kind of economic reforms, and even supporting secessionists forces, the Urban Naxals have done it all. One must not forget that they have even opposed abrogation of Article 370, and would never spare an opportunity to term India as a ‘Regressive and Patriarchal’ society, even though India remains one of the very few civilizational nation-states in the world where the supreme divine is still worshipped in feminine form.
IS ACADEMIC FREEDOM BEING MISUSED?
The big question that needs to be answered is whether, in the name of academic freedom, at least a section of India’s higher education institutions, is promoting such discourses, which instead of promoting national and social harmony, are only ending up aggravating the divides, and spawning anti-Indian Urban Naxal mindset. Why is it that some of India’s top institutions have for long been breeding grounds for ultra-left ideologies? Is it just a few students’ unions responsible for this, or is it that there is now a need for UGC to keep a hawk-eye on what is being taught as discourse?
The activities of NGOs linked to George Soros, and USAID, have vindicated how Western Deep State often use seemingly benevolent research institutions, think-tanks, and NGOs, to push specific narratives to undermine democratically elected governments, often through deliberate dissemination of finely crafted disinformation. Many such Western NGOs and think-tanks collaborate with not just NGOs based in India, but also with India based academic institutions, and promote such discourses that have ultimate objective of expanding fault lines, much like the fake Aryan invasion theory that was taught to students in India for decades.
URBAN NAXALS MORE DANGEROUS THAN MAOIST TERRORISTS
In many ways, Urban Naxals are more dangerous than weapons wielding Maoist terrorists operating from dense forests, simply because it is difficult to identify Urban Naxals. They have deeply entrenched themselves among city folks, are suave in their demeanor, and with a garb of intellectualism corrode India by deliberately drilling through fault lines, and vitiating nascent minds.
In today’s era of major proliferation of digital media, the ability of Urban Naxals to influence young minds, and turning them against the Indian state, through disinformation, has gone up manifold. Most in their tender age do not realise how Maoist violence, terrorism or civil wars have destroyed nations. Most take their peace and prosperity for granted, not realizing what it takes to create and secure national well-being. Urban Naxals play on that ignorance to spread their poison.
WHAT MUST UGC DO
It is now imperative for Ministry of Education, and UGC, to cleanse the curriculum of any such discourse that breeds ultra-leftist mindset, or is promoting Western motif that deliberately sow societal disharmony. It does not mean that critical issues concerning a nation cannot be taught in universities, and neither it means that incumbent governments cannot be criticized. It only means that discourses should aim at seeking sustainable solutions rather than allowing them to be weaponized for political purposes, and for weakening the sovereign nation.
The necessity for Ministry of Education and UGC to keep a hawk-eye on fault lines promoting academic discourses can also be traced to the warnings already given by US-based Indic author Rajiv Malhotra, who has enumerated how in US, ‘caste has been mapped as race, which has become the basis for developing Critical Caste Theory’, which is then deliberately applied to pin blame on caste as the sole reason for all problems plaguing
HOW WESTERN DEEP STATE INVESTS IN DEEPENING INDIAN FAULT LINES
Take for example the CV of Ranjani Srinivasan, the Columbia University Doctoral Candidate who got herself self-deported from US to evade arrest by US law enforcement agencies given her stand in favour of Hamas, a brutal terror organization. As per the twitter page of news portal Drop Site, Ranjani Srinivasan got a Fullbright Nehru and Inlaks Scholarship for pursuing Master’s Degree from Harvard University in Critical Conservation. Her graduate research thesis was titled, ‘Gold & Cyanide: Family, Caste and the Post-extractive Landscape at Kolar Gold Fields’. It explored, ‘the continuities and transformations of caste rights within extractive economies in postcolonial India’.
One might be intrigued to wonder as to what has caste to do with mining activities in India. The answer lies in what Rajeev Malhotra had warned about extrapolation of caste in Critical Race Theory to deliberately push caste narrative in every aspect of India’s economic activities, with ulterior motive of impeding India’s growth story in the most subtle manner. This is new generation hybrid war.
CURB SECESSIONIST MINDSET OR LOSE RECOGNITION
There has to be clear-cut strictures by Ministry of Education that universities, autonomous institutions, and colleges, are liable to lose their recognition if it is found that they are lax or reluctant to take action against those who have been promoting secessionism inside campuses. UGC must also introspect as to why universities need to be totally out-of-bound for law enforcement agencies. Are they at par with embassies of other countries in India? There is also a persistent need to introspect as to whether India’s top tech institutes like the IITs and NITs, need to continue with humanities and social science departments. What path breaking purpose is served by that? Should they not concentrate on STEM subjects instead?
ARE FOREIGN SCHOLARSHIPS HELPING INDIA?
India also needs to have an institutional mechanism to review foreign scholarships offered to Indian students for studies abroad, including scrutiny of what kind of issues are being prioritized for scholarships, as well as their ramifications on India in the long run. Even as Trump Administration has been dismantling the Neo-Marxist Woke Agenda that was being implemented by Globalists through organizations like USAID, similar clean-up in India is much needed. Unless India thoroughly reviews what is taught in Sociology, Political Science and History Departments of higher education institutions, and probe why some of the higher education institutions remain safe haven for far-left ideologies, uprooting the Neo-Marxist agenda of Urban Naxals would remain a grossly incomplete project.
Pathikrit Payne is Geopolitical Analyst and a Senior Research Fellow with Dr. Syama Prasad Mookerjee Research Foundation.