Urban Naxal: A Masterclass in Branding

Who is an Urban Naxal? Well, if you ask the intellectual father of the term—Vivek Agnihotri—his definition of the term will compel you to ask: ‘Who isn’t an Urban Naxal?’

Although in its essence, the concept of Urban Naxals seems easy enough to grasp, Agnihotri has provided an extensive array of professions that potentially fall into his category of so-called Urban Naxals.

In an article in Swarajya Mag in 2017, Agnihotri states: “The urban-based cadres of the party fight for basic amenities like water, electricity, toilets and sewerage, against corruption and exploitation of ration-shop owners, adulterators and black-marketers, against slum-lords, goonda gangs and other lumpen elements. They organise struggles on these issues through the local committees and the slum-dwellers’ organisations. As women and unemployed youth play a leading role in most of these struggles, the Mahila mandals (women’s associations) and youth clubs are asked to be involved.”

Not to overly generalise, but who, in India, doesn’t fight every day for basic amenities against slum lords and corruption? If the people who do this—push back and fight for their rights—could potentially be Urban Naxals, then it becomes impossible to pinpoint who doesn’t fall into this category of Urban Naxals.

At this point, if you are of the opinion that painting Urban Naxals with such a broad brush is lazy and, to some extent, even ill-thought of by Agnihotri, you couldn’t possibly be more wrong.

The idea behind such a loose and extremely broad definition of an Urban Naxal is not to have a conversation about the serious (and demonstrably real) problem of insurgency and Maoism. The idea is to propagate the branding of a term that will be used to demonise people involved in “prominent occupations for Urban Naxals” across the country. It comes as no surprise to me that the occupations and professions Agnihotri feels have been infiltrated by Urban Naxalism are “urban intellectuals, influencers or activists of importance.” It is also worth noting at this point that all these three terms are so vastly broad that they include a mixed bag of practically every urban dweller’s profession: teachers, professors, lawyers, journalists, social activists, pressure groups, charity workers, comedians, actors and social influencers.

What’s even more astounding—and hard to miss—is the overlap of the time frame between the waning of the term “anti-national,” and the rise of its successive counterpart “urban-naxal.”

For about two years, following the Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) row in 2016, the term “anti-national” was the primary branding tool for the Right-wing in the country to demonise people speaking against the establishment. However, the term began to lose its lustre over the past two years, and the effect of its caustic nature began to drop. To keep up the momentum of “Us vs Them,” there arose the need to establish a new term that could be used to classify “them.” This is when Agnihotri came to the rescue with a fancy new word: Urban Naxal.

People who have been consuming information on social media over the last few days would have noticed that the name calling has already begun. In the comments section of an opinion piece published in The Quint, several people could be seen calling the media outlet “Urban Naxal.”

If a branding strategy bears the fruit of its efforts this soon, then in my opinion—that is genius.

Incidentally, Urban Naxals belong to the same group of people who previously used to be “Libtards” and “Sickulars” in 2015, “Anti-National” in 2016—and have now finally completed the metamorphosis that transforms them into “Urban Naxals” in 2018.

The genius of this branding exercise lies in the flexible use of the term. If I am a Right-wing supporter, I can flay any dissent or opinion contrary to mine, by calling the person an Urban Naxal. With the historical baggage of the word Naxal, the other party is quickly reduced to an element that is deemed dangerous to the fabric of the country.

The term “Urban Naxal” can be used as an extremely effective put-down during quick repartee with those belonging to the opposite side of the spectrum, or could even, metaphorically speaking, be a loaded 50-calibre bullet aimed at killing dissent.