What makes any literature “Naxal literature”? Last year, when activists and lawyers were arrested due to the “plot to kill the PM” letter, the Pune police produced books and literature seized from the homes of the accused and called it “Naxal propaganda”. This included a book by Karl Marx and, bafflingly, the prosecution even raised questions on the books of Swami Vivekananda during a court proceeding.  

More recently, a Nagpur-based organisation called Bhumkal Naxal Virodhi Sanghatan, which claims to fight Naxal ideology, objected to some academic material on social sciences in the archives of Savitribai Phule Pune University’s website. The documents in question were uploaded over 10 years ago by a former professor at SPPU’s Centre for Social Science and Humanities, and was part of a research project to archive documents on human rights violations in India. The documents include details on alleged fake encounters and stories of alleged Naxalites being killed.

Pune University said the archived material is written by reputed organisations and is already in the public domain; they said this was merely an exercise to archive material in a single place to make it easier for students, governments and bodies researching Naxalism and human rights violations.

Nitin Karmalkar, the vice-chancellor of Pune University, tells Newslaundry, “It was a research project made in 2004 and 2009, sponsored by the UGC. It was about the violation of human rights at different places in the name of caste, communal violence, Naxalism and other such issues. There is no objectionable content in it. It was reading material that’s already published in the public domain which was compiled and uploaded on the website. This is academic material solely for students and readers—there’s nothing wrong about it.”

Newslaundry also contacted Sujata Patel, the former professor who had been the coordinator of the project in question. Currently a national fellow at the Indian Institute of Advanced Studies in Shimla, Patel says the sole purpose of the project was to give students access to the documents without having to go to libraries across the country, to help them write their thesis on social sciences. She emphasises the project was “solely meant for academic and educational purposes”.

But Arvind Sovani, the founder of Bhumkal Naxal Virodhi Sanghatan, isn’t happy with SPPU’s stance. A professor himself, he firmly believes the archive constitutes Naxal propaganda, and has demanded its removal from the website. Sovani released a YouTube video where he alleges the documents on the university’s website are “Maoist” and have no connection with human rights violations; instead, he says, they’re documents of banned Naxal outfits.

Sovani even demanded an investigation into the intent with which the documents were posted on the website.

All this circles back to one key question: what is Naxal propaganda? Does merely owning books on Naxalism make you a Naxal? Does researching one of India’s largest internal socio-economic problems make you a Naxal? Newslaundry talked to police officers, distinguished thinkers, experts on Naxalism and terrorism, and Right-wing activists to find out.

Jayant Umranikar is the former Director General of Police (Special Operations), Maharashtra, who also had a stint with Research and Analysis Wing, India’s external intelligence agency. He calls Sovani’s objections “idiotic”: “The archives on the website of the university on human rights violations under the department of the Centre for Social Sciences and Humanities is totally academic in nature and doesn’t have anything to do with any kind of Naxal propaganda. It’s a very idiotic and nonsensical argument.”

Umranikar, who’s also a faculty member at Pune University, adds: “Whenever there’s a reference given to the material, it is safe to presume that the views expressed in the material are of the person whose reference has been given, and not the university. The university will soon issue a disclaimer that it doesn’t endorse any kind of political views.”

Umranikar says this  disclaimer has become a necessity only because these kinds of “funny questions” have been raised. “If I am citing Aurangzeb, it doesn’t mean I have become Aurangzeb!”

Ravindra Kadam, Joint Commissioner of Nagpur police and former Deputy Inspector General (Anti-Naxal Operations), Maharashtra, is more cautious. “I don’t believe that by reading Naxal literature, one becomes a Naxalite. But yes, one should be wary of whether material posted on university website promotes war against the state or not. One should keep in mind that Naxal literature is subversive and it easily influences young minds.”

PV Rajagopal, a renowned Gandhian and founder of Ekta Parishad, doesn’t think reading and researching a social problem or ideology automatically makes someone a follower. “I believe people have the right to write about human rights violations, there is a lot of repression in tribal areas. There is a lot of marginalisation of many communities. Documenting these realities is always good, provided you are not prescribing an armed struggle as a method to deal with it.”

Rajagopal believes such documentation allows young people to get sensitised to the concept of human rights and how to protect it. “But repression should not justify violence … Human rights violations should be projected but should not promote violence in retaliation. Gandhiji faced a lot of violence but he always taught how to react and respond non-violently.”

So does uploading Naxal or Maoist literature for academic purposes constitute Naxal propaganda? Counter-terrorism expert Ajay Sahni, who is also the executive director of the Institute of Conflict Management, Delhi, says: “As far as we are concerned, we upload Maoist documents on our websites. We believe these things need to be studied and understood and there should be no objection to their archiving and their continuous research. In fact, if we understand Maoist strategies and practices better, the state will be able to better understand and respond … If there is something which directly incites people, those things can be limited. We upload Maoist documents on our website and nobody has ever raised an objection.”

He points out, “The purpose of it is to understand. If you aren’t going to understand them, how are you going to confront it?”

Anirudh Deshpande, the akhil bhartiya sampark pramukh or communication chief of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, agrees that reading about an ideology doesn’t make someone a follower of it. However, he says, “But some writings are deliberately written for propaganda purposes, or to attack some other school of thought and show it in an inferior way. Such literature doesn’t have good intentions. Such literature should be resisted, but not by banning them but by criticising them. Just as a writer has the right to write, a critic has the right to criticise. Both things exist in a democracy.”

Manisha Sethi, associate professor at the Centre for Jawaharlal Nehru Studies, Jamia Millia Islamia, tells Newslaundry: “The basic requirement of research is that you try and understand the ideas and thoughts of whoever you’re studying, whatever groups you’re studying, whatever social formation you are studying. It doesn’t necessarily turn you into one of them. By that logic, our whole country should be Gandhian as we’ve been reading about him since childhood. Basically, what they are trying to do is censor thoughts and ideas.”

Newslaundry contacted Arvind Sovani, Bhumkal Naxal Virodhi Sanghatan’s founder, to ask him if researching Naxalism implies that a person is a Naxal. He said, “Considering the question asked by you, it seems you are opinionated and biased against the activism done by me.”

When asked if he thinks the documents (which he considers Maoist) uploaded on the SPPU website promote violence, he told this reporter to consider his previous response to be his answer.

It’s significant to note that the archive include articles related to police violence in Telangana and Andhra Pradesh, the first encounter death in Maharashtra (of Peddi Shankar), extra-judicial killings, reports on unrest in Assam, Army atrocities in Nagaland, investigations into the alleged torture of Basanti Devi, and various other reports on rapes and custodial deaths.