Dimagi Naxals were on everybody’s mind after Prime Minister Narendra Modi spoke of them in his Independence Day speech from Delhi’s Red Fort.
No wonder it made news throughout the weekend and into Monday alongside the controversy over Congress leader Sonia Gandhi’s alleged attempt to “stop” the singing of Vande Mataram in its entirety during the flag-hoisting at Congress headquarters on 15 August.What followed in the news media was a tussle between the BJP and Congress to promote their conflicting narratives. Television news witnessed the seesaw battle: one moment, the Congress attacked the BJP on ‘Modi’s dimag mein keeda’ (bug in the head), the next, the BJP was on the offensive about Sonia’s Vande Mataram moment.
Before we knew it, a Dimagi Naxal Party had sprung up on social media and was duly recognised by newspapers such as The Economic Times. The paper found it had close to five lakh members on Instagram.By the way, the episode also inspired a song overnight.A profound confusion
Much of the debate on TV news channels concerned the identity of the ‘Dimagi Naxal’.“Who exactly is a Dimagi Naxal?” asked anchor Navika Kumar on Times Now.Youtuber Ravish Kumar was equally confused. On his channel, he arrived with a plastic model of the brain. He said a ‘neuro expert’ was needed to explain where the ‘Urban Naxal’ resided in the human brain, and where the domain of the Dimagi Naxal fell.CNN News 18 India anchor Rahul Shivshankar read the prime minister’s mind and between his lines, saying Modi didn’t mention “who he was directing his phrase towards. It’s a coinage.” So, Shivshankar acted as the interpreter of Dimagi Naxal maladies and identified those he thought fit the phrase: “idealogues” in Jammu and Kashmir and the Urban Naxals.Opposition leaders rushed to identify themselves as Dimagi Naxals. P Chidambaram, Arvind Kejriwal, and Mahua Moitra were among the first to join the ranks.BJP’s Assam chief minister Himanta Biswa Sarma characterised Congress leader Chidambaram as a “Naxal”, pure and simple. (Times Now)The Opposition claimed the PM was wagging his finger at Gen Z and the Cockroach Janta Party-led protests in Delhi during July. Such was the backlash on social media and TV news that Union minister Kiren Rijiju was forced to define the term.This debate over Dimagi Naxals raged “fast and furious”, in Navika Kumar’s words, across TV news channels. So much so that the discourse elbowed out PM Modi’s “saptdhara” (seven streams) mission for youth and the future of the country, which was at the heart of his Independence Day speech.
