Before you call someone a Naxal, a bhakt or an anti-national, listen to the argument
I was the Collector of Gadchiroli district in Maharashtra for two years, from 1992 to 1994, when the hold of Left extremist groups was quite strong. I remember a review meeting in Nagpur when I told my boss, the Divisional Commissioner, that instead of reviewing the achievement of targets under existing development schemes, it might be a good idea to rethink the approach to “development” by understanding the specific needs of tribals living in forest areas.
My boss, clearly taken aback, responded, “You sound like a Naxalite.”
I was 31 years old, and the remark was perhaps meant as a joke. But I have remembered it ever since.
My experience as Collector of Gadchiroli, particularly my understanding of what “development” means in a predominantly tribal and forested district, may have to wait for another occasion. But my own experience has perhaps made me more wary of the word “Naxal” being used as a casual description of someone who questions the way the State is approaching a problem.
A Naxal is not simply someone who disagrees with the government. The Naxalite movement has a particular ideological and historical lineage, and its armed manifestations have involved violence against the State and civilians. To equate an activist, journalist, academic, lawyer, student or ordinary citizen who criticises government policy with someone who supports or participates in an armed insurgency risks obscuring an important distinction.
The expression “urban Naxal” has, however, acquired a remarkably elastic meaning. Depending on who is using it, it can be applied to someone protesting a land acquisition, questioning an environmental decision, defending tribal rights, criticising a government policy, supporting a civil-liberties cause—or simply expressing an inconvenient opinion.
Political leaders may perhaps be forgiven, at least occasionally, for using such language. Political speech naturally lends itself to simplification, exaggeration and memorable labels; they are useful tools for speeches and sound bites.
But there is a risk that the repeated use of such terms gradually normalises them. Once a label becomes part of everyday political vocabulary, it can find its way into the language of public discourse and even into the pronouncements of very senior persons in government.
That, in my view, is unfortunate—not because those who hold public office should be immune from expressing strong views, but because the authority of their office gives particular weight to the words they use.
When such terminology is casually adopted by journalists, academics, civil servants and sections of the intelligentsia, I find it more troubling. Those whose role is to question, analyse and inform have a particular responsibility to examine labels before adopting them.
A journalist or academic describing someone as an “urban Naxal” gives the label additional weight because it comes from someone expected to examine the underlying claim. There is a danger that a convenient description begins to take the place of a more difficult examination of what the person actually believes or argues.
Once the label is attached, the argument itself can disappear from view.
A democracy is supposed to distinguish between dissent and disloyalty. It should be possible to oppose a policy without opposing the country; to question the government without questioning the State; and to defend the rights of a marginalised community without being assumed to support an insurgency.
But the principle should work both ways.
Someone who criticises a government should not automatically be called an “urban Naxal”. Equally, someone who has something favourable to say about a government should not automatically be dismissed as a “bhakt”.
Both labels can have the same effect: they shift attention from what a person is actually saying to which political camp he or she is presumed to belong.
In a democracy, neither criticism nor praise should require a declaration of political allegiance.
People who criticise governments may sometimes be wrong. Their criticism may be ideological, exaggerated or politically motivated. People who praise governments may sometimes overlook genuine shortcomings. But in either case, the appropriate response is to engage with the argument.
There is another label that illustrates the same problem: “anarchist”.
The term has sometimes been used to describe groups or individuals who are unconventional, disruptive or hostile to authority. As someone who studied political science, I am always struck by how casually the word can be used.
An anarchist, in the political sense, is not simply someone who creates disorder, opposes the government or refuses to conform. Anarchism is a political philosophy with a long intellectual history. At its core is a scepticism about the necessity or legitimacy of coercive political authority, particularly hierarchical State power. Different anarchist thinkers have proposed different forms of voluntary association, decentralisation and self-governance.
One may disagree profoundly with anarchist ideas, but that does not make the word synonymous with chaos, disruption or political opposition. To describe a group as “anarchist” merely because it is unconventional, unruly or critical of authority is another example of a political term losing its precise meaning in everyday discourse.
There is another label that deserves particular caution: “anti-national”.
To disagree with a government, oppose a policy, criticise an institution or express a deeply unpopular opinion is not, by itself, evidence of disloyalty to the nation. Patriotism is not demonstrated by agreement with whoever happens to be in power.
Indeed, one of the strengths of a democracy is that a citizen can challenge the government precisely because he or she belongs to the country and cares about its future.
There will, of course, be circumstances in which conduct genuinely threatens national security or involves assisting those who seek to harm the country. Such matters require evidence and due process. But casually describing a dissenting citizen as “anti-national” short-circuits that distinction.
Naxal, urban Naxal, bhakt, anarchist, anti-national—words that have particular meanings in political or historical contexts can become remarkably imprecise when used as labels in everyday political conversation.
There is another, subtler danger.
When officials begin to see criticism as hostility, they can gradually stop listening to the people they are supposed to serve. This is particularly important in places such as Gadchiroli, where the distance between the State and the citizen is not merely geographical.
Development cannot simply mean constructing roads, opening schools, spending budgets and achieving targets. It has to begin with understanding why people may distrust the State, what they value, what they fear, and what they consider development to mean.
That was the point I was trying to make in that review meeting more than three decades ago.
I was not a Naxal. I was a Collector trying to understand why conventional development programmes were not always producing the outcomes we expected.
Looking back, I think that experience taught me something that extends well beyond Gadchiroli: it is much easier to classify a person than to understand an argument.
Labels can be convenient. They can also discourage people from listening to one another. Once someone has been placed in a political category, there is a temptation to judge everything he or she says through that category.
And the problem is not limited to any one political camp. A democracy becomes poorer whenever a label is used to avoid engaging with an argument—whether the label is directed at a critic, a supporter, an activist, an official or an ordinary citizen.
The real test of a democracy is not how comfortably we listen to people who agree with us. It is how patiently we listen to people who don’t.
Perhaps, before attaching a label—or questioning someone’s loyalty—we should ask a simpler question:
What exactly is the person saying—and is there something in it that we need to hear?
