NewsClick Raids and Arrests: Demolishing the Myth of the ‘Urban Naxal’ Nomenclature
Girish Karnad, Sep 2018 #MeTooUrbanNaxal
The Wire / Ajay K. Mehra
The current crackdown is transparently part of the same politics that resulted in the invention of ambiguous phrases like ‘tukde-tukde gang’ and ‘Urban Naxal’.
The search and seizure operation at the residences of 46 journalists associated with NewsClick and the arrests of two people are transparently part of the same politics that resulted in the invention of the still ambiguous phrases ‘tukde-tukde gang’ and ‘Urban Naxal’.
A new category of dissenters, deprecated as anti-nationals, is ‘Urban Naxal’. This came into use since the Elgar Parishad case in 2018. A meeting of human rights activists, lawyers and others in Pune on December 31, 2017, known as the Elgar Parishad and meant to commemorate the bicentenary of the Bhima Koregaon battle, turned into a pretext to round up a number of ‘leftist’ activists under the draconian Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA).
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