Thread by @NamasteNiHao

Mahesh Raut was a classmate in our Community Org&Development Practice(CODP) specialisation &we did fieldwork in Bikaner. Mahesh hd multiple personalities; a friendly chap in classroom, a jhola and naarebaazi activist on the street and what I came to know later-a naxal sympathiser

Mahesh had a politician's aura about him. He could just stand and deliver a speech anywhere. I thought he would become a yuva neta someday and uplift the naxal hit Gadchiroli district out of poverty and violence.

Instead in 2014 when he was a Prime Minister's Rural Dev Fellow(PMRDF) he was in news along with a junior from tiss, Harshali Potdar, who were both questioned when two arrested Naxals revealed that Raut and Potdar were to go and meet senior naxal leaders.

So this arrest in 2018 was waiting to happen for a long time. If in 2014 I was surprised at seeing his name flashed in newspapers, now in 2018 im no longer shocked.

If nothing, this fresh slew of arrests where academicians, lawyers and activists from urban areas are involved, gives more credence to the dangerous phenomenon of #UrbanNaxals.

Sometimes it can be a fine line between being an activist to later developing naxal sympathy to storing incriminating literature, engaging in violence and even planning to kill the country's PM. Ppl who come to study in top social sci institutions don't maybe come with this aim..

But in social sci institutions that use the western critical studies pedagogy that is mostly Marxist and critical theory based, the praxis i. e marriage of theory and practice is very imp. What it means is that you don't just discuss theory but also work on ground ...

The impressionable minds who are mostly awed by Marxist dogma( thankfully not me) then look for an outlet to express their idealism... this toxic theory+ideology + practice on ground is very potent and that's why u see such institutions, Ppl, alumni are at forefront as ....

...the major breaking India forces. They have the intellectual power, the intellectual support from their alma mater, their professors, media being leftist supports them, they have their alumni based outside who carry their activism and signature campaign outside.

It's not enough to only focus on the nation security threat aspect but carefully assess the problem of where and how these thoughts, ideas , money, support is coming from. Otherwise just like the many occasions whn these naxalites were let off& now arrested, cycle will continue

I might sound alarmist but somewhere very close to our homes and in our cities, in coffee shops , campuses, media rooms there is a concerted desperate effort at reigniting the flame of "revolution" by overthrowing the bjp govt in 2019. Things are going to get uglier

I sense a desperation with the erstwhile dynasty and the left establishment who are both wedded to each other and lived in a state of permanent status quo- a padmashri here, a history chair there...today those soft velvety gloves are off so India total is shown to be boiling

The beauty of this so called revolutionary movement is that there is no one leader except may be their grandfather Marx and his ideology guiding them. You cannot pin point and blame one person or leader.Its nameless, it has multiple faces and has multiple attack points

What are their weapons?
1) narrative before facts-just manufacture the damn narrative and Twitter and media will take it forward
2) the media-wholly left bias
3) tell a lie 100 times and it's becomes the truth + amplify by relaying fake news to our foreign friends

4) keep the pot boiling- divide the establishment attention. When they solve one issue, create one at the other end

1) Addendum: not an expert of naxalism in India but while reading reports in newspapers, chanced upon the name 'Milind Teltumbde', a Maoist mastermind involved in the recent case. Surname sounded familiar, so checked online and found his brother Anand Teltumbde

2) so one thing led to another and I found a whole ecosystem involving politics, intellectual activism and Maoism and it's manifestations. Attqching a sort of flow chart I prepared.

3) Also do read this article by Anand Teltumbde in light of arrests:google.com/amp/s/amp.scro…