A seminar that stirred on classifying the Urban Naxal and shielding the conventional society from their existence, philosophical or even philological emotions was organized by the RSS on September 04, 2018.
A team comprising of twelve members was appointed and sent, to study the case, to the hub center of naxals — Bastar in Chhattisgarh. Based on their inputs, a report has been published. As far as the report is concerned, it identifies BBC and Al Jazeera among media organizations that were continuously presenting the problem as one spawned by the state. The report discloses fact that the urban Naxals were using traditional ethos to entice the members.
Many intellectuals, who spoke at the seminar, were mainly comprised of Delhi University professors and lawyers. This fact alone speaks the importance of the present topic for discussion — urban naxals.
On May 27, 2018, at New Delhi, many prominent people assembled at Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan at the event organized for the launch of a book titled Urban Naxals. The author of the book is none other than Vivek Agnihotri, a filmmaker, and a social media influencer.
Presently, the word Urban Naxals, profoundly, has been making rounds from time to time. It, thus, necessitates us to comprehend what urban Naxalism, apart from understanding who those urban naxals are. Urban naxals per se is a term coined to label rights activists who purportedly provide support to Left-wing extremists.
In his book, Urban Naxals, the author Vivek Agnihotri, clearly mentions that urban naxals are the invisible enemies. He makes this statement in the context of Indian society. Further, he opined that some of the so-called invisible enemies have already been identified and detained under the custody of the police. One commonality that could be found among the urban naxals is — all of them are urban intellectuals, influencers or standing activist.
These urban naxals even-handedly dare to undertake the situation into their hands by sorting out remonstrations and rallying crowds. In the times to come, these crowds would be used for party-building dictated by the politburo strategy.
As per my understnding, Urban Naxalism is a phenomenon in which educated individuals living in urban areas deliver legal and intellectual support to Naxalites. These individuals could be any, who essentially meet the criteria of being intellectuals, influencers, and standing activist. For example, professors, writers, and activists who are not involved directly in Naxal activities could be the urban Naxalites, if they provide legal and intellectual support to Naxalites.
According to Vivek Agnihotri, urban naxals even go to that extent wherein they encourage students to join academic institutions and deliberately get failed to get themselves assisted to remain longer on the college campus. The intention behind the same might be providing legal and intellectual support to Naxalites.
If we momentarily inspect the accomplishments of the urban naxals, the very fact that could be palpably seen is that they have brainwashed the youth as if they are more concerned about social issues.
However, in my opinion, if there is a social problem, one should try to attend to it by offering some sort of amicable solution to remove it rather than instigating other means that eventually land up in violence and offer a threat to the nation’s security.
-Dr. Suman Kumar Kasturi
