Urban Naxals: The Making of Buddha in a Traffic Jam

by Vivek Agnihotri

He has a better idea of India than those who have become millionaires just talking about the ‘Idea of India’.

He decided at an early age that the safest way to make money in this city of sins is through honesty and customer satisfaction. It’s strange, how we find more honest and righteous people as we climb down the economic strata.

More low-income people have surprised me with their honesty th...

‘This, perhaps, is the only place in the world where people hate development,’ he tells me. ‘Yeh bhadralok ki rajneeti kabhi Hindustan ko amir nahi banne degi’

Prabhu turns the car to the left. And makes another quick left. It seems he has taken it upon himself to prove that Kolkata is indeed a city of the Left.

Because they are against the Leftist ideology of armed struggle, they are considered right wing.

Agitations, dharnas and strikes are good business for some.

The practice of wooing and appeasement of minority communities was started by Prime Minister Indira Gandhi. Prime Minister VP Singh’s politics of Mandal converted it into a competitive political mafia. Identity politics today has become India’s biggest socio-political malaise.

Diversity per se is certainly a beautiful thing. But politics around diversity and desperate and unethical attempt to keeping everyone happy is an ugly game. Diversity, in a competitive, electoral politics is the reason why we are in constant conflict, and therefore, poor and stagnated.

There is an India that runs on manuals and systems. And here’s this, the other India that runs on common sense.

My family is Systems India. These men are Common Sense India.

The manuals of urban life picture such men as goons. Rapists. Murderers. They turned out to be our saviours.

The Naxals who claim to work for the tribal’s cause, know that there can be no revolution.

I am not hurrying up. I have slowed down. Hurrying is an internet and mobile age syndrome. We hurry when we are not interested. We hurry when we don’t care.

What is the reason for calling someone, fighting with a gun in Kashmir, a terrorist and another man with a gun in Bastar, a revolutionary?

Indians rarely hire guides as they are not interested in history; all they want is photo, photo, photo. And foreigners have become very smart, they know that guides fleece them, so they haggle a lot and prefer guides with gora accent and the government doesn’t do anything for us.’

Everyone in India has a story for their failures, stagnation or decay.

This man is blaming the tourists, the government, but not once will he look at his own growth, his own competence...

I look at the gigantic building and wonder how they made it happen with just camels, horses and elephants. It’s an architectural marvel. An excellent example of defense, design, engineering, material science, structural design, water and waste management, cooling techniques, rich aesthetics, symbolism, lifestyle and comfort, and above all stability and durability.

Our modern buildings are structural and design blunders; they are aesthetically challenged and weak. It’s a sad commentary that in independent India we have not built even one building which is an architectural marvel and which can stand the test of time. If these old buildings are a celebration of excellence and precision, our modern buildings are a celebration of mediocrity and corruption.

Nehru judged history and filtered it to what should be told to an independent India and what should be hidden. He made sure that the history reinforced his ideology and made him look like a hero.

In independent India, only a certain kind of narrative is allowed;

The quickest way to learn technology is to just do it.

mediocrity is very addictive. Anything which makes us escape from the challenges of life is addictive. The awareness that you are living a mediocre life is worse than being mediocre.

This feeble common man is in the business of improving his life but the people who control his life are not in the business of improving his life.

In those days, stars used to do films only after seeing the DVD of a Hollywood film.

Moralities change with changing times.

Mumbai’s own Beverly Hills area – Juhu-Versova-Lokhandwala.

This is how casting is done in Bollywood – with relationships, equations, and money.

a star says he read the script before signing the film, and shot exactly to the script, my assumption is that he is either lying or he is Aamir Khan.

In Bollywood, people concentrate more on lifestyle, vanity and interpersonal equations than their craft.

dangerous nexus between the Naxal mafia and middlemen disguised as intellectuals.

I had found the theme of the film: Intellectual Terrorists.

to disrupt the status quo of an agenda-driven narrative.

The problem with the Indian entrepreneurial mindset is that even before going to the drawing board it starts looking for jugaad and connections.

After poverty, inefficiency is the second biggest curse of Indian society.

“Marxists say God is a fraud. But God has lasted thousands of years, Marx could barely last a hundred years.” - Anonymous

Apart from the paramilitary, there were two hundred thousand State Armed Police Force (SAPF). The Indian Army is also present here under the pretext of training the paramilitary forces.

Factually Incorrect

While the CRPF team was returning, Naxalites blew up the bus with improvised explosive devices (IEDs), commonly known as landmines. Though overwhelmed by the heavily armed ambush of Naxalites firing from the heights, the CRPF men fought back and the encounter lasted until all eighty men fell one by one and those who survived ran out of ammunition.

Factually incorrect

This is why we get to hear dialogues like ‘The only purpose of cinema is entertainment, entertainment, and entertainment’. It’s not true. If cinema is only entertainment, then what’s the difference between cinema and a circus? It’s because of this unshakable belief of the Bollywoodians in this maxim that our cinema has never been taken seriously as an art and has hardly been a catalyst for real impact in society. I am not denying the contribution of Raj Kapoor, Guru Dutt, Bimal Roy, Hrishikesh Mukherjee or Raju Hirani in the mainstream cinema, but nine out of ten films have diluted the impact made by such masters, whose cinema not just entertained but made us think, feel, and act.

But if the truth is not popular, it seems like a lie.

on 24 May, 1967 and police officer Sonam Wangdi was killed by arrows shot by tribal peasant leader Jangal Santhal and others.

The next day, a large armed police contingent arrived at Naxalbari and they fired at the peasants, killing nine women and two children.

Naxals admitted to their role in Sister John’s killing. In an interview with the BBC, Naxal spokesman Somnath said, without providing any basis, that Sister John was ‘working for the interests’ of mining companies. Because she had ‘let down the tribals,’ he said, the Naxals had to ‘resort to the extreme step (of killing her)’.

Every case I probe indicates that Naxals don't want any development in their area. They don't want the children to be educated, they don't want roads to be built. They want tribals to remain in the dark.

A four-month-old baby was killed in a Jan Adalat in front of her mother as her father was a suspected police informer. Naxals burn mark sheets and transfer certificates of 10th and 12th students, so that they cannot go for further education and migrate from their villages.

Naxals burnt fifteen vehicles of contractors who were building roads as they believe that roads will eventually lead to development.

Silver Tips Imperial Tea – the world’s most expensive brand of Darjeeling tea,

hell and heaven are such subjective concepts. What appeared heaven to me was hell to the rich maestro’s wife. What appeared heaven to her is hell to me.

Almost all the reports are mere copy-paste jobs.