NL Hafta
Hafta 603: BJP’s Instagram problem, ‘Dimaagi Naxal’, and Maoism in India
This week on Hafta, Abhinandan Sekhri, Manisha Pande and Rinchen Norbu are joined by author, cultural commentator and podcaster Anurag Minus Verma and Biyon Sony Joseph, a lecturer in political science and former Network for Advanced Study of China (NASC) Fellow at the Takshashila Institution.
The panel first discussed how the BJP has been trying to expand its digital presence beyond its traditional social-media ecosystem, particularly on Instagram.
According to Anurag, right-wing Instagram content has often relied on a limited set of formats – targeting individuals, threatening opponents, punching down through humour and exposing alleged hypocrisy. But he argued that this has a limited shelf life on Instagram.
“These things have a shelf life because these things are not cool. These things can appeal to you for a short period of time… But Instagram especially operates on a post-irony aesthetic, so you have to have a certain kind of ideological looseness as well. You can’t be very stiff, which is also a criteria for humour,” he added.
Manisha contrasted the BJP’s “dimaagi Naxal” messaging with the issues raised by young protesters, pointing to a schoolchild highlighting poor infrastructure.
“On one side you have school kids somewhere in Rajasthan showing the pitiful state of their schools… And on the other side you have the BJP saying, ‘dimaagi Naxal hain’. It’s bound to not win… because what is ‘dimaagi Naxal’ in response to? Basically young people who want a better education.”
Anurag said the BJP’s understanding of X (formerly Twitter) does not necessarily translate to Instagram because the two platforms operate differently.
He added, “These people don’t understand irony and meta, and meta as in the meta irony… which makes it very difficult for them to do something on this medium.”
Rinchen noted that what made the Gen Z protests particularly effective online was three qualities: authenticity, originality and irreverence.
Next, the panel examined Maoism, its evolution in China and its influence on the Maoist movement in India. Biyon explained how Mao’s strategy of protracted people’s war became an important ideological model for sections of the Indian radical left.
“What Mao did in China was, in theoretical terms, called a protracted people’s war. They start from the countryside, then they go on the offensive. Basically, guerrilla warfare. They try to engulf the rural sides in the beginning, and then they go to the urban sides, and then they capture power,” said Biyon.
He also discussed how the CPI(M)’s ideological position evolved as it confronted the realities of operating within India. “The CPI(M) was also diluted from its initial stance… trying to go forward with a socialist government within a very capitalist, neoliberal environment that India is in right now, it’s very difficult for the party to go forward without making policy shifts,” he added.
All this and more.
Hafta letters: A concerned subscriber, Modiji and singing Vande Mataram
If you want to write to Hafta, click here. Click here to contribute to our Sena project. Check out the Newslaundry store and flaunt your love for independent media. Download the Newslaundry app.
Song: - Azadi
—------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Timecodes
00:00:00 - Introduction
00:03:46 - Headlines
00:10:50 - The BJP’s Gen Z problem
00:43:39 -From Mao’s China to Naxalism in India
01:16:32 – Binoy & Anurag’s recommendations
01:20:14 - Letters
01:35:05 - Recommendations
—------------------------------------------------------------------------------
References
Reclaim Vande Mataram. Help us save our Mataram.
—------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Recommendations
Abhinandan Sekhri
Death Bond: What It Is, How It Works, Pros and Cons
Manisha
Arundhati Roy : “चुनावी हार से बड़ा है जंतर मंतर का मैसेज” | NL Interviews
Rinchen
Chairman Mao: The Cultural Revolution
Anurag Verma
Binoy Sony Joseph
Check out previous Hafta recommendations, references, songs and letters.
Produced by Amit Pandey with production assistance from Sourav. Sound by Anil Kumar.
Hafta 603
[00:00:00] Manisha: This is a News Laundry podcast and you're listening to NL Hafta
[00:00:12] Abhinandan: Angrez apna lagaan aur NewsOnAir apna Hafta kabhi nahi chhodte. Welcome to another episode of Hafta. We are recording this on the 21st of August, Friday, at 11:00 in the morning. Before I introduce the panel, I want to tell you about our new campaign. As you have probably observed, Vande Mataram is in the news for a variety of reasons.
[00:00:33] Abhinandan: The Congress says we will sing two stanzas. The BJP has passed in Parliament that you-- it has to be played before the national anthem, and the whole version has to be sung. Very few people actually know, if you remember, there was this two BJP people had been asked on a panel to sing it. And one of them came up with something, Surendra Bhushwani.
[00:00:51] Abhinandan: He made up his own lyrics.
[00:00:52] Manisha: Pulkistan.
[00:00:53] Abhinandan: So Pulkistan, correct.
[00:00:54] Manisha: Pulkistan was created.
[00:00:55] Abhinandan: But if you ask someone to translate it for you, like it was translated for me when I was in school, it is a song about-- much of it is about the beautiful natural reservoir of riches that India has. You know, sujlam sufalam, you know, jal, fal.
[00:01:11] Abhinandan: Malayaja sheetlam, cool winds. Shasyashyamalam, crisp night, clean air, lush green forests, et cetera, et cetera. It is an ode to our mother country, specifically to its beautiful natural resources. So while Vande Mataram has become a political issue, we would like to reclaim Vande Mataram on behalf of our subscribers and those who believe that environmental journalism is important.
[00:01:39] Abhinandan: So maybe we can steer the Vande Mataram debate from a political hot potato to environment, which is what the song is about. And in so doing, we have been doing environmental reporting. Here's a QR code. We would like to commission a series, and among the people who will be doing this will be our environmental journalist, Hridesh Joshi, who has actually done some phenomenal documentaries on the environment.
[00:02:03] Manisha: Yeah, and he's also covered quite a few calamities in the last few years, from last year's Dharali to Himachal Pradesh.
[00:02:11] Abhinandan: Mm.
[00:02:11] Manisha: So, yeah.
[00:02:12] Abhinandan: So if Vande Mataram is I salute my mother, and if that mother is about our rivers, our forests, our air, and our land, that is something we would like to commission a series on, and we would like to call this the Vande Mataram series.
[00:02:27] Abhinandan: So there is a new fund. Here's a QR code. There's an NL Sina project about the environment, and we're calling it the Vande Mataram project purely because it is about the environment, and that is what the song is about. With that, any other announcements? Yes, we have a book club meeting coming up in Bangalore, um, September 12th.
[00:02:47] Abhinandan: We will be discussing Ghachar Ghochar by Vivek Shanbhag, and Vivek himself will be joining us, and the conversation will be moderated by the wonderful Puja Prasanna. So you can scan this QR code to register, uh, for tickets. If you are already a subscriber, you will definitely get preference. If you are not, scan this QR code or click on the link, and instructions will follow.
[00:03:11] Abhinandan: Right. With that, in the studio, Manisha Pandey.
[00:03:14] Manisha: Hello.
[00:03:15] Abhinandan: Rinchin Norbu.
[00:03:16] Rinchen: Hi.
[00:03:16] Abhinandan: Joining us online later will, later will be Anurag Minez Varma, filmmaker, writer, podcaster, cultural commentator, columnist. He also writes for News Laundry. And beyond, Sony Joseph. He's a China expert. He's a lecturer in political science.
[00:03:32] Abhinandan: And, uh, I think we need some serious discussion on what is Maoism. With China 說什麼都行 here, but let's just get a more informed perspective on it.
[00:03:41] Manisha: Hmm.
[00:03:42] Abhinandan: A more detailed introduction to them later, but before that, Manisha, the
[00:03:46] Manisha: headlines. Headlines. In his Independence Day address, PM Modi said Naxalism has been largely pushed back in the jungles, but those with a Naxal mentality are still a threat to society.
[00:03:56] Manisha: He said that these guys are threatening our society. We have to find and isolate these Dimagi Naxals. So after Tukde Tukde and urban Naxal, we have Dimagi Naxal.
[00:04:06] Abhinandan: And on cue, there were panel discussions and- Yeah ... primetime debates on what is a Dimagi Naxal. Manisha-
[00:04:12] Manisha: Economist, artist, writer, journalist, lawyer, doctor.
[00:04:16] Manisha: So Manisha
[00:04:17] Abhinandan: has dissected this very well in The News Sense.
[00:04:19] Manisha: Yeah.
[00:04:20] Abhinandan: And also, there has been the social media campaign about Dimagi Naxal on all BJP handles. We will discuss that also in this show.
[00:04:26] Manisha: The Congress said that the party would sing only the first two stanzas of Vande Mataram at its functions, citing a Congress working committee resolution from 1937.
[00:04:34] Manisha: Reacting to this, Amit Shah accused the party of reviving its extreme policy of appeasement, said the move was an insult to those who sacrificed their lives for India's independence. Although, I mean, Congress should at this point say that it is mostly Congresses only who sacrificed their lives. So, like-
[00:04:50] BJP reel: Yeah
[00:04:50] Manisha: what is Amit Shah saying about? Congress should be more concerned, no?
[00:04:54] BJP reel: Yeah.
[00:04:55] Manisha: For the lives of- Okay. Former Congress MP Sajjan Kumar, who was convicted in two cases related to the 1984 anti-Sikh massacre, died at Delhi's hospital on Thursday. The PM-CARES Fund, set up in March 2020 to respond to emergencies and distressed situations, had a corpus of rupees 8,452 crore by the end of '24, '25, but very little amount has been used.
[00:05:20] Manisha: Only about 15 crore was spent in 2023, '24, and 87 lakh in 2024, '25.
[00:05:27] Abhinandan: Basically, I think this government and the BJP are the greatest hoarders of wealth we have ever seen, whether it's in their party coffers, whether it is through PM-CARES Fund and through other sources that we may or may not know of. And if you were to say that, you know, even some of the industrious money is at their disposal- Yeah
[00:05:44] Abhinandan: no one has had this kind of concentration of wealth- Yeah ... other than Elon Musk.
[00:05:47] Manisha: I think every year we hear of, uh, natural disasters from Sikkim to Arunachal to, uh, Ladakh, Himachal, Uttarakhand, and there are these headlines that 300 crore worth of loss, 500 crore. Mm. One should really look at the kind of losses that the country has faced in these natural calamities, and-
[00:06:04] Abhinandan: Money that's
[00:06:05] Manisha: been lying
[00:06:05] Manisha: like why is 8,000 crores just lying and not helping rebuild bridges, hospitals, farms, acres and acres of... Punjab also, I think last year suffered, like, heavy flood.
[00:06:15] Abhinandan: Election may come
[00:06:16] Manisha: anyway. Yeah. BJP announced its new team of national office bearers with party leaders Smriti Irani and Piyush Goyal among those given key organizational responsibilities.
[00:06:25] Manisha: Amit Malviya has been removed as the head of the BJP's social media department and replaced by Deepak Maskey. And, uh, there are new co-conveners also like Alok Bhatt, Preeti Gandhi, two more who've removed all-
[00:06:39] Abhinandan: Whose, uh, social media has gone dark ...
[00:06:41] Manisha: all their footprint from Twitter has gone. The OG
[00:06:43] Rinchen: trolls.
[00:06:44] Abhinandan: The OG trolls have been rewarded.
[00:06:46] Rinchen: Yeah.
[00:06:47] Abhinandan: See, this is what I mean by the incentive
[00:06:49] Manisha: structure. And the m- moment they were named, like, their profiles just vanished.
[00:06:54] Abhinandan: Mm.
[00:06:54] Manisha: So no one can dig out-
[00:06:56] Rinchen: Old
[00:06:57] Abhinandan: tweets. Mm.
[00:06:58] Manisha: AAP leader Satyendra Jain and former Delhi Jal Board CEO Udit Prakash Rai were arrested by the Anti-Corruption Branch over irregularities in the tendering process of sewage treatment plant projects in the national capital.
[00:07:10] Abhinandan: Right. And in fact, a total of six people were arrested. Mm.
[00:07:13] Manisha: The Indian government issued nearly two lakh content blocking orders to Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube between March and July, asking the platforms to take down posts, accounts, and other stuff. This amounts to around 1,200 orders every day. Each blocking order may cover hundreds of individual posts.
[00:07:28] Manisha: In fact, this morning in the newspaper, there was this, uh, news report of a-
[00:07:36] Abhinandan: person in Kerala being arrested for insulting the prime minister. I mean, I don't know why the Kerala police is so su-super active. And there was, in the press club yesterday, Manisha, it's not part of the headlines, but- Yeah ... there was a hun- there was a- But Modi chalisa ...
[00:07:52] Rinchen: Modi
[00:07:52] Abhinandan: chalisa event that was held.
[00:07:55] Abhinandan: It's the- I just don't... I don't know what the hell is happening, man ... it's
[00:07:57] Rinchen: the latest addition to the, to this canon of, uh-
[00:07:59] Manisha: And I think CJP was denied, no? Anubhatty.
[00:08:02] Rinchen: Huh?
[00:08:02] Manisha: They... CJP was denied, uh, space for press conference. Yeah. Early days, I think Saurabh Das.
[00:08:07] Abhinandan: Hmm.
[00:08:07] Manisha: Anyway. The Gujarat police conducted simultaneous raids in Kerala and Delhi on Monday, seizing electronic devices belonging to journalist Ravi Nair, his son, and a colleague.
[00:08:17] Manisha: The seizures are linked to an FIR filed against Ravi over a post on X about a story he co-reported for The Washington Post on the Adani Group. It was published in 2025.
[00:08:27] Abhinandan: In fact, he has done a series of, uh, reports and investigations on Adani, and I mean, we're not discussing this in detail today, but it's extremely rare, where the complainant in this, who has registered the complaint, the FIR, is an employee of Adani's.
[00:08:44] BJP reel: Hmm.
[00:08:44] Abhinandan: So, you know, defamation, et cetera, is par for course for journalists. But a criminal complaint being registered and his devices being asked to be seized in the, you know, pursuit of that investigation for a report is bizarre. Mm-hmm. It is just highly unusual, like this-
[00:09:05] Manisha: And nothing for Washington Post, like the publication- Yeah
[00:09:07] Manisha: also usually in these cases is-
[00:09:09] Abhinandan: Yeah, 'cause they have gone o-on his-
[00:09:11] Rinchen: Tweet ...
[00:09:12] Abhinandan: tweet. Yeah. Not the report. Not the report.
[00:09:13] Rinchen: Mm-hmm. And what's even more bizarre, I think is, uh, his son and h- his colleague's devices were- Yeah, laptop was taken ... I mean, and they've n-not named the complaint or case or anything, but they, they would just say, I mean, what's, what is this?
[00:09:26] Rinchen: Hmm.
[00:09:27] Manisha: Delimitation, protecting the South's political representation, NEAT, Kaveri water sharing, and greater fiscal autonomy were among key issues raised by chief ministers at the Southern Zone Council meeting chaired by Amit Shah in Tamil Nadu Three leaders of the Khasi Students Union were arrested after violence during a black flag bike rally in Shillong.
[00:09:49] Manisha: The arrests came after clashes, stone pelting, vandalism across several parts of Shillong. The Israeli military has for the first time acknowledged that its forces opened fire on a car carrying five-year-old Palestinian girl, Hind Rajab, who was killed along with six members of her family in Gaza in 2024.
[00:10:06] Manisha: IDF said it'll open a criminal investigation into the deaths of Hind, her family, and the paramedics who were killed while trying to reach her. Hmm.
[00:10:14] Abhinandan: Hmm. Yeah, that's a truly tragic case. In fact, that's a audio which most people must have already heard, and there's a film made on that. Right. With that, let me introduce our guest who has just joined us.
[00:10:28] Abhinandan: So we are very fortunate and grateful that Anurag has joined us for Hafta today. He's not well, and I'm guessing he is recovering from one of the many things- Having
[00:10:39] Anurag Verma: kada.
[00:10:40] Abhinandan: Hmm. Kada. So there is- In the cold ... a H1N1 outbreak in Delhi. There is a- Yeah ... some virals. Yeah. Also- Also some viruses are happening. But get well soon, Anurag, and thank you so much for joining us.
[00:10:50] Abhinandan: Let me do your "" introduction. Writer, filmmaker, podcaster, cultural commentator, author of Love in the Time of Pokémon, I Love You But Only on Weekends, and The Great Indian Brain Drought, which we have discussed in the studio. The link below in the show notes, you can order the book as well He hosts the Anurag Minus One podcast.
[00:11:11] Abhinandan: He explores politic, culture, society, and internet life through conversation with writers, artists, and thinkers. So you can also check that podcast out. The link will be in the show notes.
[00:11:23] Manisha: And he's my favorite decoder of Instagram.
[00:11:26] Abhinandan: Right.
[00:11:26] Manisha: I am always looking at the things he posts to see what's happening on Insta and his insights into it.
[00:11:33] Abhinandan: So actually, uh, we will also be joined later in the show by Beyond Joseph talking about China, Maoism, and this whole new thing Naxal. I'm hoping Anurag can stay on till that, because there is this major, uh, you know, social media outreach by the BJP on the Dimaagi Naxal.
[00:11:50] Anurag Verma: Yeah.
[00:11:51] Abhinandan: And because I saw some, uh, really beautiful artwork you have also created, I think, right, Anurag?
[00:11:56] Abhinandan: Which you've posted. Is that-
[00:11:59] Anurag Verma: Yeah, I think one story maybe. Yeah, yeah.
[00:12:01] Abhinandan: Yeah. So that, I mean, you've created that or someone you know has created that artwork on Dimaagi Naxal?
[00:12:06] Anurag Verma: I don't know which one you're talking about. I posted one meme, but, uh-
[00:12:09] Abhinandan: Yeah, that's not created by you, but-
[00:12:10] Anurag Verma: No, I posted one meme, but I don't know which one you're talking about.
[00:12:13] Abhinandan: I see.
[00:12:13] Anurag Verma: Okay. Uh, yeah.
[00:12:14] Abhinandan: Are you an artist as well?
[00:12:16] Anurag Verma: I mean, yeah. Not the visual artist in that sense. I don't draw or anything, but I make stuff from internet, yeah.
[00:12:23] Abhinandan: Right. So we'll be discussing that also, uh, later in the show with a China expert. Uh, but before that, let's discuss what would you like to start off with Anurag, with Manisha?
[00:12:35] Manisha: I think this whole BJP's, you know, Instagram push, how does Anurag view it? Mm-hmm. Because we've been discussing quite a bit about the CGP protest, the memes that came out of it, how BJP was completely losing the narrative, and now it seems like they want to get back into the game, but with these kind of memes that we were seeing- Mm.
[00:12:55] Abhinandan: Yeah ... on- Which we will also discuss We
[00:12:57] Manisha: can show one.
[00:12:58] Abhinandan: Yeah. In fact, okay, let me show you not one, let's show two. Mm. I find both these really disturbing. Actually, one is not that disturbing. One is extremely disturbing where this animated character... Here, see for yourself.
[00:13:32] Abhinandan: The National Party's official account is showing two characters, one Modi, one Shah- ... one throwing on something that is clearly a body-
[00:13:40] Song: Yeah ...
[00:13:41] Abhinandan: setting fire to it, which, you know- The important question that comes up is why is Dilbar Dilbar playing in the background? What is that all about, Adhira? You are the master of memes
[00:13:55] Abhinandan: and pop culture. W- what does that mean and how effective is this? Who is it appealing to?
[00:13:59] Anurag Verma: Dilbar Dilbar I think maybe because it's trending on Instagram at the moment. Okay. Uh, so mostly they pick songs which are trending on the Instagram. But, uh, regarding these, uh, this push of, uh, BJP, uh, to appeal to Insta user is not new.
[00:14:15] Anurag Verma: I mean, it was happening even before, uh, this whole CJP protest because if you remember that whole, uh, Modi and, uh, Meloni reel, it has no purpose to be honest- Mm ... apart from, uh, getting the eyeball on Instagram. And also even before that they were also pla- they planned, uh, this Bhajan clubbing in Delhi.
[00:14:35] BJP reel: Hmm.
[00:14:36] Anurag Verma: So for that they were also trying to push, uh, that outreach to, to Gen Z. So s- this is something which was happening even before, uh, before CJP, and even I saw one post by Vivek Agnihotri, uh, three, three years ago, two years ago, where he said that, uh, we are losing the narrative on, um, uh, we are losing the Instagram narrative and we have to, uh, take Instagram seriously.
[00:15:01] Anurag Verma: So he, he was also very prophetic in that sense. So there were many... BJP were trying their strategy since two, three years, but they were not succeeding. Uh, and, and in fact there are many, uh, leaders of the BJP who are quite active on Instagram who are making reel. There is one from Purpur Ganj, I, I think his name is Negi.
[00:15:22] Anurag Verma: Mm. So he has been making, uh, reels on, uh, Instag- uh, Instagram since very long time, but the content of the reel is just "... Hmm.
[00:15:34] Anurag Verma: And then there is one more, uh, leader from, uh, BJP, uh, uh, her name is Chaudhary, and she's also, she also became viral on Instagram and now, you know, as Ravi Kishan became viral- Hmm ... on, on Instagram. So there are few leaders who were making it, uh, but their prob- the main problem is not that they are not taking it seriously or they don't understand that Instagram is useful, their problem is their genre and content is not suitable for the Instagram.
[00:16:05] Anurag Verma: That is their b- biggest problem because, uh, there is very limited thing that they can do, which is if you look at the right wing pages, so there are many right wing pages on Instagram even before CJP. But if you look at their content, they have just three, four genre and they can't do anything apart from that.
[00:16:23] Anurag Verma: One is, uh, uh, doxing people. Uh, the second genre is threatening people. The third genre is punching down humor. So like for example, Umar Khalid- Hmm I think you might have seen, I think Goa or J- Jammu and Kashmir, uh- Omar Qaid ... BJP Jammu Omar Abdullah, Omar Qaid
[00:16:38] Abhinandan: Omar
[00:16:38] Anurag Verma: Qaid. So they do mostly around this or may- maybe some jokes on Zubair or maybe some, uh, uh, revealing, uh, uh, a very mundane fact as a hypocrisy.
[00:16:49] Anurag Verma: So their, their attempt is always about catching the hypocrisy. So, so they are hypocrisy catcher mode 24/7. So but these things have a shelf life because these things are not cool. These thing can appeal you for a short period of time that, oh, you caught the hypocrisy of that liberal, th- th- this liberal.
[00:17:07] Anurag Verma: But in specially Instagram currently is a post irony aesthetic. It operates on that aesthetic, so you have to have a certain kind of... To, to, to win on Instagram you have to have a certain kind of ideological looseness as well. Mm. You can't be very stiff, which is also a criteria for the humor. And I think these people just don't understand humor.
[00:17:29] Anurag Verma: These people don't understand irony and meta, and meta as in the meta irony. But, uh, so, so which makes them very, it difficult for them to do something on this medium. Uh- To, to
[00:17:43] Abhinandan: create
[00:17:43] Anurag Verma: something that is- So that, that is their corre-
[00:17:45] Abhinandan: To create something that is suited for that medium. It's, and there's a mismatch in what the- Yeah
[00:17:50] Abhinandan: aesthetic is and what the medium is, right?
[00:17:52] Anurag Verma: Yeah, because they understand Twitter quite well, uh, because also Twitter has a different kind of a audience, uh, mostly millennial and post-millennial audience. So but Instagram they don't understand how to appeal because to appeal they have to be cool, and that is not possible for any right winger-
[00:18:09] Anurag Verma: uh, to be cool, so It's not possible for any. Anurag minus
[00:18:11] Abhinandan: Sharma has- It's not possible ... completely said possible
[00:18:23] Abhinandan: He
[00:18:28] Anurag Verma: said this, yeah.
[00:18:29] Abhinandan: And so, you know, I've discussed this book often on Hafta, Amusing Ourselves to Death by Neil Postman. Yeah. In the '70s it was written, and he was saying, he was predicting that stupidity in America will, television and network television, cable television will do that. And I had said that he got it wrong because television, in fact, made people more aware.
[00:18:48] Abhinandan: You know, whether it was the Public welfare schemes, people... But I think he had, what he had predicted is happening now. I think now being famous for the sake of being famous is enough. Even Andy Warhol, what he had suggested, it did not come true when they had said it would come true, but it's coming true now.
[00:19:05] Abhinandan: What, uh, Ravi Kishan is going viral for is the sheer stupidity of his communication, what he's saying, how he's... But it works.
[00:19:15] BJP reel: Mm.
[00:19:16] Abhinandan: Trump has wr- written that. So now I... And, and even if you see some of the podcasters, et cetera, who want to be seen, you know, they will do that- Yeah ... these memes which they do- Yeah
[00:19:25] Abhinandan: and, you know, dance and it's just really strange for middle-aged or aging people to try to be cool like that. But if that works, it'll work.
[00:19:35] BJP reel: Yeah.
[00:19:35] Abhinandan: And that's enough to be fa- I mean, being famous is, is the aim. Now, whether that leads to governance, power, it appeals to the people who will vote you into power and take you seriously, I don't know.
[00:19:50] Abhinandan: But so far it's clear whether it is news anchors, whether it is panelists, like, what do you have to be on a, to, what do you have to be to get invited to panels today? A ridiculous-
[00:20:01] Manisha: Yeah ...
[00:20:02] Abhinandan: vile loser who gets, you know, enough engagement. That's it. So we'll come back to, uh, you know, Anurag 'cause I know he, uh, has also spoken about this book, and has that prediction come true, but, you know, 40 years late.
[00:20:17] Abhinandan: What do you make of this campaign, uh, a- and this entire aesthetic of Insta?
[00:20:22] Manisha: I think it's, A, like Anurag said, it's just not cool and it's not gonna work. And I think the big problem with... See, right now I see this completely as a response to CJP. I think they were just completely caught unaware with the volley of memes and reels that came out of that protest, which was so organic and so authentic in some sense.
[00:20:43] Manisha: I think the best things came from not even content creators, traditional content creators. It was just, like, the average person on the street throwing up something funny, ironic, like Anurag was saying, and I think they were completely caught off guard with this, so this is their way of responding. But the lens or the language is still so 2014.
[00:21:00] Manisha: You're still talking about Naxals. Mm.
[00:21:07] Manisha: You're still talking about enemies within. You know, it is still JNU Umar Khalid. The poor Rajdeep also still features in it. Yeah. Like, why is he still being-
[00:21:17] BJP reel: Mm.
[00:21:17] Manisha: It's been so long. So I think that's one of the, one of the big th-... I don't see this working at all because again, like, it's just the same thing, but you've just put a background music of Dilbar Dilbar-
[00:21:29] Manisha: or you've just done a vertical shoot rather than a horizontal thing. So I don't see it going anywhere. But I have actually, I've been thinking about this quite a bit, on why Twitter trolling works and why trolling doesn't quite work on Instagram. Mm. Like, what is it about the m-... And that is also one of the problems that BJP is facing, that it's not enough to have a troll farm and unleash them onto someone and actually create problems for them the way they can do it on Twitter.
[00:21:55] Manisha: They can't do it on Instagram, and there's something about that medium. One of my assessments is, and I'd like to know from Anurag and you guys also, that I think essentially a visual medium, uh, trolling is essentially for faceless people. People are not gonna put their face there upright. You know, even if it's not an anonymous troll, it's still a small DP and it's words.
[00:22:17] Manisha: Mm. You know, words are cheap. You can just say whatever you want, forget about it tomorrow. I think putting your face to a thought is what makes it very difficult for trolls to behave in the way they do behave on Twitter. Mm. For Instagram, even if I wanna take on someone Or even I wanna do a pile on.
[00:22:34] Manisha: Putting my face to that thought, I think requires some amount of thinking courage, and also some amount of authenticity. Which is why maybe hate content really works on Instagram, because they authentically hate people. Like the Mrityu Dal and the, you know, all these guys. They, they are who they are. Mm.
[00:22:49] Manisha: And that's why they're very watchable maybe- ... and that's why they go viral. But to manufacture outrage, I think it's way harder on Instagram, and that's something to do with just how it's designed. It's photos, images, videos first.
[00:23:01] Abhinandan: Hmm.
[00:23:02] Manisha: So, yeah. I, but I've ... Yeah, I'd like to know from Anurag and you guys also.
[00:23:06] Anurag Verma: Yeah,
[00:23:07] Abhinandan: I think- Yeah ...
[00:23:07] Anurag Verma: does he have a response? Okay.
[00:23:08] Abhinandan: Okay, let me go to Anurag first. Yeah. So Anurag, uh, what Manisha said, and also Neil Postman's prediction has come right 40 years late.
[00:23:15] Anurag Verma: Yeah, kind of. And also, just to, uh, uh, talk about the ... Like, the trolling thing can work on Instagram, and you don't need to, uh, have your face all the time because people do it through, uh, uh- Artwork
[00:23:28] Anurag Verma: that, uh, artwork as well. And some- sometime it work pretty well. Yeah. So that trolling aspect is also central to Instagram's existence. Even if you look at 2020, 2021, '22, Instagram was more of a text medium. Hmm. And I think it was more toxic than uh, Twitter at that time. And even right now also, if somebody can...
[00:23:49] Anurag Verma: Like, if they want they can do it through it. But there is a very distinctive, uh, uh, uh ... I mean, there is a lot of difference between the, how these platforms are designed. For Twitter is more centralized in that sense. Like, you can, uh, work with one single hashtag, and everybody can connect it to that hashtag.
[00:24:09] Anurag Verma: So trolling become very easy because then one thing becomes central, and everything can be connected to that. But on Instagram, since algorithm controls everything, so you are not exactly, uh, you know, uh, uh ... There is no one single anchor point through which you can be connected. So that becomes very difficult for people to get together and be in the same rhythm of that trolling, because for trolling you have to be in the same rhythm also.
[00:24:36] Anurag Verma: It should go on for three, four days at least to work. So I think that that platform thing is a- Hmm ... is a key. Yeah.
[00:24:43] Manisha: Also this just reminds me that actually since, uh ... I remember the Rhea Chakraborty incident. That time I remember Instagram was very vicious, and the kind of posts- Yeah, yeah ... that were going viral.
[00:24:52] Manisha: But I guess maybe-
[00:24:54] Anurag Verma: During lockdown it
[00:24:55] Manisha: was, yeah ... yeah. I, it ... And it was very vicious, and actually it was very- During
[00:24:58] Abhinandan: lockdown ...
[00:24:59] Manisha: it was very disturbing to be on Instagram back then. Yeah.
[00:25:01] Abhinandan: Hmm.
[00:25:01] Manisha: I think it was the first time that I saw Instagram move away from pictures, food, fun stuff, to something very, like-
[00:25:08] Abhinandan: Dark
[00:25:08] Manisha: dark. That, you know, she's-
[00:25:10] Abhinandan: But I think that was also, uh ... I mean, I noticed in retrospect, 'cause at that time it did not seem unreasonable, um- Of how short we were, our fuses were so short. My fuse is famously short even non-COVID times. But, uh, during, uh, COVID, I remember 'cause when we had just started playing football, we used to have such vicious fights on the pitch, and we are old men who've been playing together for 20 years.
[00:25:36] Abhinandan: Mm. And now when we discuss it, I said, "What made us do that?" 'Cause that hasn't happened before that, it hasn't happened after that. During that time, do you also remember we had a Zoom with subscribers where one subscriber said something a little, you know-
[00:25:49] BJP reel: Mm ...
[00:25:49] Abhinandan: distasteful about a colleague, and I flipped out.
[00:25:51] Abhinandan: Yeah. Now, I was just thinking, during... And I was thinking in our colony- Yeah ... some of the fights that happened with people who've been living together for years, it hasn't happened before, it hasn't happened after. I think COVID, that entire not knowing when this would end, had made everybody a little darker than they normally were.
[00:26:08] BJP reel: Yeah.
[00:26:09] Abhinandan: But-
[00:26:09] Manisha: Yeah ...
[00:26:10] Abhinandan: before I come back to Rinchen, uh, on the Neil Postman's prediction kind of coming true 40 years late It, it really has, hasn't it? At it... The discourse all around has become really dumb, which television did not necessarily do in the '90s, '80s and '90s.
[00:26:28] Anurag Verma: I mean, you can look it from both side. I mean, uh, since internet is so vast, it al- also depends on where you are looking at.
[00:26:36] Anurag Verma: Mm. Because at one point it has become dumb. If you look at the, these, uh, kind of memes and these kind of videos that we are discussing, then it is dumb. But at the same time, I think it has given a lot of political awakening to many people- Mm ... because there is great stuff that are happening, and they are also, uh, translating the whole ideological intellectual point in a very small bit-sized video.
[00:27:00] Anurag Verma: So I think there is a lot of awareness in the people as well, which I think we have seen during the CJP protest, because if you go- Mm ... I mean, if you are at the site, then you can look at the people, how they were organizing, how they were making memes, and what was their political idea, and I was very impressed by this- Oh, yeah
[00:27:16] Anurag Verma: this generation, so.
[00:27:17] Abhinandan: They were very well-informed
[00:27:18] Anurag Verma: So that is their side, that side as well.
[00:27:19] Abhinandan: I guess it's a double-edged sword. It works both ways. Yeah, yeah. Because, you know, like the Monu Manesars, like, I don't think he would've become famous in the '80s or '90s, but today he's famous. Even Pinky
[00:27:30] Anurag Verma: Chaudhary.
[00:27:31] Manisha: Pinky
[00:27:31] Abhinandan: Chaudhary
[00:27:32] Manisha: also.
[00:27:32] Rinchen: Yeah. Yeah, so, uh, on Ravi Kishan, I saw a hilarious, uh, reel yesterday of there are these two, uh, young boys who are playing this video game with Ravi, uh, and, like, Ravi Kishan's voice is in the background. Uh, it's like a horror video, video game, but you have, there's a song which he sings, there's some Koteshwara or something he sings, and then it's like
[00:27:55] Rinchen: And people are getting psyched by walking into a room and someone just sings that song. So that's on Ravi Kishan. But, uh, three things. One is, uh, one is, um, one thing during this CJP sort of protests that especially on Instagram that I saw, three things was, um, authenticity, originality, and irreverence. Now, I don't know if these are three qualities that the BJP, uh, like, their whole ecosystem will sort of-
[00:28:20] Manisha: Irreverence, certainly not
[00:28:21] Rinchen: Irreverence, certainly not. Uh- It's not their forte ... originality also, um, um, I don't think that's really their forte anymore. And, you know, authenticity maybe, like, you can maybe, uh, put a point to that. But more import- more substantively, I think the BJP in the last 12 years has sort of built its reputation on turning real issues, like real substantive issues into narrative battles Now, in this case, it stuck- Hmm
[00:28:46] Rinchen: I guess, you know, with the whole-
[00:28:47] Abhinandan: In this case, this case as in Naxalism ...
[00:28:48] Rinchen: the, the whole, no, the whole CJP- Okay ... uh, the whole... With especially because education is a real thing. Hmm. I mean, the education system really needs fixing, and this is a substantial issue that I think requires, you know, substantive thought, policy action or engagement with what is essentially a very disgruntled and frustrated, uh, you know, youth.
[00:29:07] Rinchen: But all it has right now is a social media strategy. I mean, they simply can't move beyond social media engagement. I mean, now you, as we were discussing earlier, now, like, we literally, they literally, like, they've literally set, like, KRAs for, like, ministers and MPs to get on Instagram and, you know, increase their engagement and stuff like that.
[00:29:25] Rinchen: So I think, uh, this, also this whole turning everything into a battle of narratives also I think has a shelf life. Because ultimately when you come across an issue that requires genuine engagement and you sort of r- real thought policy action, um, and then you just, all you have is just, you know, "Okay, let's just get on Instagram," uh, it doesn't really work that way, I think.
[00:29:48] Rinchen: That's-
[00:29:49] Manisha: And actually compare the two things, the narrative battles we're seeing. On one side you have school kids somewhere in Rajasthan, you know, a little child- Yeah ... showing his school, «... tin ki chat hai.»
[00:29:58] BJP reel: Hmm. «
[00:29:59] Manisha: Yeh hum khate hain yahan pe.» You know, you can see it... And on the other side you have BJP sh- saying,
[00:30:04] Manisha: ki dimaagi naxal hain.» It's bound to not win, and it's bound to seem very... Because what a, what is «dimaagi naxal» is in response to basically young people who want better education.
[00:30:19] Abhinandan: Yeah, so basically- It's just- ... th- this is their response to the, the entire Gen Z- Yeah ... cock- the Cockroach Janata Party. This is that response, right?
[00:30:27] Abhinandan: Hmm. To discredit that-
[00:30:28] Anurag Verma: Yeah ...
[00:30:29] Abhinandan: that, that entire grouping.
[00:30:30] Manisha: And channels are also doing it. Like yesterday, that video went viral of this lady-
[00:30:34] Anurag Verma: Yeah ...
[00:30:34] Manisha: in Ladakh, I
[00:30:37] Anurag Verma: think she was- Rhea ...
[00:30:37] Manisha: like, and- Rhea is? I don't know why she called herself Gen Z. I think that's also become a thing.
[00:30:40] Abhinandan: No, no, I, I think what you're talking about- Okay, okay
[00:30:42] Abhinandan: is Arnab, uh, uh, you know- Arnab's lady. Yeah. Mm ... telling that girl and- Yeah ... just trying to basically, you
[00:30:48] Manisha: know- But this la- this lady whose video went viral where she's saying, «Hum Gen Z hain,» and then so all these TV channels did a show yesterday ca- Gen Zilla. Hmm. They're calling Gen Z Gen Zilla. That basically now they're
[00:31:01] Manisha: an entitled- Hmm ... you know, generation. Hmm. But again, like, um- What would, what should, I was just curious to know from Anurag, like what should BJP do to fix this problem? Yeah,
[00:31:11] Abhinandan: if you were given that contract-
[00:31:13] Manisha: If
[00:31:13] Abhinandan: you were- ... instead of Amit Malviya, if they said, "Anurag Mahajan-" If you were the IT cell chief ... "Save us, get us out of this."
[00:31:13] Abhinandan: Instead of, instead of Di- Dilip Ganddal. It is, yeah. Instead of
[00:31:20] Anurag Verma: Dilip Ganddal.
[00:31:20] Abhinandan: If
[00:31:24] Abhinandan: they came to you, how would you deal with it? Uh,
[00:31:27] Anurag Verma: I think the easiest thing is to hire some... I mean, still, for them it is still very difficult, but if they have to do, they should hire some better people, better agencies, because at the moment what they're doing is, uh, they have the same, I'm presuming, the same kind of a- agencies which they have, which are making ads or content for the millennial or the boomer audience.
[00:31:52] Anurag Verma: So they are doing the same with the Gen Z, because if you have seen that recent ad, uh, whi- which they m- made after that CJP protest where they, they, there are people in the gym, there are, uh, young people in the gym and the trainer comes, "Hey, political podcast." Ha. Ha. Ha. Yeah. So they took like- 10, 15 keyword ki achcha aaj kal kya chalta hai, podcast chalta hai, aaj kal kya chalta hai, ye chalta hai, ye chalta hai.
[00:32:15] Anurag Verma: 10 keyword and they made something which obviously no Gen Z is going to relate to that. So they are doing the same thing. They think that, "Okay, so we will clock it in the parliament or do this thing," or Tejasswi Surya is saying there is no Dilulu, there is no FOMO. So they are doing that whole boomer harkat that we-
[00:32:36] Anurag Verma: if we, uh, pick these words then we may succeed. Boomer harkat. But I think if they, if they, if they do the same thing that they did in 2014 where they hired, uh, a, I mean, giant of that time, Piyush Pandey- Yeah ... for that, uh- Mm ... campaigning and all. So if, if right now they hire some companies like that who understand this whole thing, then they might have some chance.
[00:32:59] Anurag Verma: But to be honest, right now the wave is so against them that they will also get trolled even if they do it. And just to one more point, I just forgot about it, that, uh, that whole Gen Z outreach, they were even doing it, as I said before, CGP. And one more example is that, uh, instead of giving any interview to any media, Modi gave the interview to Nikhil Kamath-
[00:33:23] BJP reel: Mm.
[00:33:23] Anurag Verma: Who- Yeah ... whom they think that is some- something like, you know, this young generation or the inte- internet generation likes. So they have been, as I said, doing this outreach since long, but I don't think they have great chance to, to- Also
[00:33:38] Manisha: cabinet ministers- ... succeed on it ... speaking to BeerBiceps.
[00:33:40] Anurag Verma: Yeah. The, the- Like at one point they were all speaking
[00:33:42] Anurag Verma: I think it's also the aging thing now because there is no charismatic, uh, uh, leader in that sense who, who fits that Instagram archetype because Modi himself is very old and doesn't have any great auditory skill at the moment. Yeah. And apart from that, there is no leader who has that Instagram archetype.
[00:34:00] Anurag Verma: Instagram for that, there has to be certain kind of visual appeal, the way you speak
[00:34:04] Abhinandan: and- Vijay
[00:34:05] Anurag Verma: Keshawn. Non-Vijay
[00:34:05] Abhinandan: Keshawn, sorry. Ravi Keshawn?
[00:34:07] Anurag Verma: Ravi Keshawn is caricaturish so people are enjoying it, but they are not like they don't respect Ravi Keshawn as such. Yeah. But they are enjoying it because it's funny.
[00:34:15] Anurag Verma: So he's also said thank you to Gen Z, "Gen Z ne itna shandaar humare pe kiya hai. Main toh Gen Z ko salaam fekta hoon, ye fekta hoon." But people are trolling him, but he do- don't understand. Like the same thing with Modi, he also said that, "Itne mere pe, uh, I got so many views, I got so many likes." But if you look at the, uh, comment- Yeah
[00:34:33] Anurag Verma: then most of the people are, you know, uh, making fun of it. So it's like koi aap pe ande fek raha hai and you are saying, "Arre waah, aaj mujhe 20 gram protein mila."
[00:34:45] Manisha: And what about Congress? Like, how would you rate, uh, Rahul Gandhi and Congress' Instagram outreach?
[00:34:50] Anurag Verma: I mean, it's at the moment working quite well for them because, uh, Rahul Gandhi is also seen as an underdog.
[00:34:55] Anurag Verma: Mm. So that whole underdog archetype also works because Instagram is also very loser-friendly in that sense. Like somebody who's underrated, who's trying to do something. So that archetype really works very well. And Rahul Gandhi's persona is also pretty much suited because he's built in a certain way.
[00:35:15] Anurag Verma: He's also very pro- progressive. Like, he also like cats and dogs. So I mean, there are many things which works for him, for him on the Instagram at least. Yeah. Uh, but do these thing translate into, you know, votes or election? That I don't know. But at the moment, this whole, uh, uh, Instagram thing is quite working for him.
[00:35:35] Anurag Verma: Now we are also seeing Rahul Gandhi thirst edit, thirst traps, and all that thing. So that is also happening. So he is appealing more to the Gen Z audience. Also, also for Saurav
[00:35:44] Abhinandan: also. Saurav also-
[00:35:44] Anurag Verma: Yeah ...
[00:35:45] Abhinandan: Saurav also the thirst trap kind of thing. But- Yeah ... like, you know, the one thing, I mean-
[00:35:48] Anurag Verma: Abhijit Dipke also
[00:35:49] Abhinandan: I, I don't know so much about the, uh, the format and, you know, the aesthetic, but I mean, at, at least having even my days as a reporter in the '90s and seeing so many elections of what works, what doesn't work from the psychology point of view. Yeah.
[00:36:05] BJP reel: Mm.
[00:36:05] Abhinandan: I think what worked at one point was these imaginary you know, balloons that were shown to us- Mm.
[00:36:12] Abhinandan: And said, "I will achieve this." Right? Whether it was Garibi Hatao, whether it was Achhe Din, you know, whether it was the entire, just this imaginary hate that, you know, this. I think now whatever narrative has to be built, whatever is the format that has to be used, it has to be on the basis of something real.
[00:36:33] BJP reel: Mm.
[00:36:33] Abhinandan: And then use that to create... Like for example, if they were to say, "Okay, let's give one year." And I think the BJP and the government has enough money to do that. They say, "You know, let's make three AIIMS which are state-of-the-art." Like, they will make AIIMS Delhi look primitive in comparison. Mm. It, it's possible to do.
[00:36:49] BJP reel: Mm, mm.
[00:36:50] Abhinandan: Right? They make, like, 10 such showcase or showpiece institutions, whether it's colleges, hospitals. Because Dipke and CJP now are going at them. In fact, he said that, "Why wasn't this money used, which is lying in the PM-CARES Fund, for schools and colleges?"
[00:37:06] Manisha: Mm.
[00:37:07] Abhinandan: So I get in a country of 1.6 billion, you know, 10 is a, you know, drop in the ocean, but it is something tangible, real, which you can sell as a positive message.
[00:37:20] Abhinandan: "Okay, we heard you. We are building f- 10. Give us five more years, we'll build 100."
[00:37:25] Manisha: Yeah.
[00:37:25] Abhinandan: But it has to be on the base of something tangible. Something real.
[00:37:28] BJP reel: Yeah.
[00:37:28] Abhinandan: The psychology that they're playing with still is that I will create this hawa. Mm. Or I will create this gajar for you in the air. Mm. And give you that.
[00:37:36] Abhinandan: That people don't buy anymore. Mm. You want to give me a really good shoe? Show it to me.
[00:37:41] BJP reel: Mm.
[00:37:42] Abhinandan: See the shoe? Now I will package it and show Dhoni's wearing it, or again, I'm being a boomer, Dhoni is not the guy there. But whoever is the person, uh, today wearing it. But it has to be based on a tangible, real- You know, graspable object institution or anything.
[00:38:01] Abhinandan: If they were to just give themselves like a one-year plan and say, "By '29 we will have... By '20 we'll have it ready, and one year we will plaster that everywhere"- Yeah.
[00:38:08] Manisha: Mm ...
[00:38:09] Abhinandan: then it may work. But the imaginary burning this Naxalism thought- ... that mindset, we will... I don't think that works anymore. Mm-mm.
[00:38:17] Manisha: Yeah. Very well said.
[00:38:17] Anurag Verma: I mean- And they are also working, like I said, underdog archetype works very well on the internet, so they are still doing it. In 2014 it worked for them because they thought that Modi is fighting with whole, you know, intellectual circuit, whole liberal circuit, and all that anti-Hindu circuit. So it worked very well for them in 2014, but they are still doing it in, in 20- Which he kind of was
[00:38:38] Abhinandan: also
[00:38:38] Abhinandan: 20- Yeah ... I mean, that, that was authentic. He was fighting that circuit.
[00:38:40] Anurag Verma: Yeah, yeah. But right now they are doing «Ki mere ko gaali de di» Ah, now it, now- Now you're not the underdog ... they are still doing the same thing.
[00:38:46] Abhinandan: Yeah. You can't. Yeah.
[00:38:47] Rinchen: You were
[00:38:47] Abhinandan: saying?
[00:38:47] Rinchen: Uh, so I'm saying, uh, on this point, exactly what you were saying, uh, which is that, uh, I mean, like Dipkes, Abhijit Dipkes post lately where he's going inside schools, he's showing under, like, the paint is sort of falling off and, like-
[00:39:01] BJP reel: Mm
[00:39:02] Rinchen: you know, the alcoholic, you know, principal turn that in his village school and, like, the state of, like, benches are... So the one video I think where, uh, benches, I think, uh, were brought to the school in his village, I think that, like, just the sheer level of virality and engagement that post got. Because as you said, it's based on something real.
[00:39:23] Rinchen: And so to, just to add to your point that now that gets a lot of traction.
[00:39:28] Abhinandan: Mm.
[00:39:29] Rinchen: Right? And then f- over the... And on, on top of that you can build. But the thing is they have nothing right now, the BJP has really nothing major to, nothing to build on. Yeah, it
[00:39:36] Abhinandan: is just this imaginary «Hawa» that we will-
[00:39:38] Rinchen: Yeah ...
[00:39:39] Abhinandan: do it on that.
[00:39:40] Rinchen: Exactly. So,
[00:39:41] Abhinandan: like... Oh, so we have our, uh, guest who's joined us. Let me f- first introduce him. Um, and I hope you'll stay, Anurag, your input's always valuable. We are going to be now getting into Maoism, Naxalism, how it's not a thing in China anymore, but it is here. So we should get a little expertise on China as well.
[00:40:03] Abhinandan: And, uh, since you don't have Ravi Kishan, we have V on live. V on, we were just talking about the people who go viral for good or bad reasons. But your, uh- Formal introduction. Beyond Sony Joseph is a lecturer in political science at St. Thomas College in Palai, Kerala. His research focus on international relations, India foreign policy, and political theory.
[00:40:26] Abhinandan: He's a former NASE fellow at the Takshashila Institution. He researched the influence of Chinese Communist Party on the Communist Party of India Marxist, with a focus on their relationship from a political economy perspective. He has received the NASE Fellowship Award for his work. Thank you for joining us, Beyond.
[00:40:43] Abhinandan: Thank
[00:40:43] Biyon : you. Thank you so much for having me. Am, am I audible?
[00:40:46] Abhinandan: Yes, you are. Yes. And where are you joining us from?
[00:40:48] Biyon : Uh, in Kerala, Kottayam.
[00:40:50] Abhinandan: Kottayam. So, uh, thank you so much. Uh, with you on the panel, there's Manisha Pandey and Rinchin from Team News Laundry. I'm Abhinandan, and joining us from his home is Anurag Varma.
[00:41:03] Abhinandan: I do hope you have read his pieces and books. So, um, we'd like to discuss, A, you know, you're an expert on how the whole Chinese Marxist philosophy influenced our political party, and I don't know if you've seen, but this entire blitzkrieg of media through establishment, conventional media, through social media, the BJP, of this Naxal mentality becoming a thing.
[00:41:29] Abhinandan: So bef- you know, we discussed the pop culture angle, but we'd also get into the- You know, as an expert on the subject, on the whole political ideology here being influenced by what of it originally was a, a Chinese Maoism, uh, and Naxalism also being a huge aspect of that. We'd like to get your views on, and your expertise on what it meant for the political movements, you know, when you studied it.
[00:41:59] Abhinandan: How relevant is it today as communication or even as actual political philosophy? But before you do that, have you read our book Amar Bari Tomar Bari
[00:42:10] Manisha: Naxal Bari? Subtle.
[00:42:12] Abhinandan: Oh. So subtle. It is done by Newslaundry. Our wonderful producer, Amit, will send you a copy. I really want to know your thoughts. It is done by Sumit, whose artwork is amazing, and also most the story was put together by him.
[00:42:22] Abhinandan: I just, like, helped him edit it. And I don't know whether you have also received a cup- ... a mug of- Wow ... Newslaundry, which is which Naxal are you? Urban, suburban, turban, or bourbon. But now we have to add, our designer has to add,
[00:42:37] Manisha: uh- Dimagi ... Dimagi
[00:42:38] Abhinandan: Naxal. But
[00:42:38] Manisha: Dimagi is in rhyme.
[00:42:39] Rinchen: Yeah.
[00:42:40] Abhinandan: So if you want a copy of Amar Bari Tomar Naxal Bari, or this mug-
[00:42:45] Abhinandan: there is a QR code next to my face, or on my face hopefully. And you can order this, uh, get a subscription. If you take a six-month or longer subscription, we will courier this to, one of these to you for free. You have to tell us which one you want. So scan this QR code, get a subscription, or gift a subscription, but we can only courier this to an Indian address, not overseas.
[00:43:09] Abhinandan: So you please give us an Indian address we can courier this to.
[00:43:12] Manisha: Mm.
[00:43:12] Abhinandan: So scan this QR code, get a subscription for someone you like or someone you want to gift a subscription to, six months or above, and get one of these for free. With that subtle plug-
[00:43:26] Manisha: Very subtle ...
[00:43:26] Abhinandan: out of the way. Uh yeah. So tell us, beyond when you see this as a scholar of the subject, and you see how it's being used in political communication or just pop culture, do you cringe?
[00:43:39] Abhinandan: Do you see it as an obvious extension of what this entire movement could be used as? Or are you just perplexed as we are?
[00:43:48] Biyon : Uh, to be honest, I, I have studied... So I, I studied the influence of the Communist Party of China on the CPIM.
[00:43:56] Abhinandan: Mm.
[00:43:57] Biyon : And how the CPIM, uh, has, uh, tried to gain theoretical legitimacy for its actions in the current scenario, uh, by drawing inspiration from the Communist Party of China.
[00:44:09] Biyon : So, um, honestly, I haven't delved into the, the pop culture aspect or the, the ongoing political, very heated debates. I am focused on, uh, the, the ideological aspects-
[00:44:21] BJP reel: Mm ...
[00:44:22] Biyon : how, uh, the ideology has penetrated into the Indian political realities and, um, how the, the political forces in our country have tried to adapt those, uh, ideological aspects to our own contemporary scenarios.
[00:44:38] Abhinandan: So what is their ideology if you were to just present it to a beginner's guide to-
[00:44:42] Biyon : Yeah. So, uh, classical Marxism was very different to what Mao preached- Yeah ... because classical Marxism was set in a very, uh, urban environment. It was talking about how the industrial working class would rise against the bourgeoisie.
[00:44:57] Biyon : But, uh, later on, uh, Marxist or, or Marxism's realities changed in other societies. For example, Lenin revised Marxism for his own environment, and later on Mao made his own revisions to Marxism. So, uh, Maoism or Mao's ideas, uh, with respect to Marxism became very important because in less developed societies which were not very industrialized, uh, the peasants, the peasantry became a, a very powerful force.
[00:45:26] Biyon : And, uh, Mao felt that the industrial working class need not be the primary revolutionary force. The peasants can become the primary revolutionary force. And this became a very attractive notion because in less developed societies they felt that, uh, Maoism or what Mao's China did in order to, uh, seize power, uh, after the Chinese revolution, that could be adapted in, in a way to other, uh, political environments like in India.
[00:45:55] Abhinandan: Right. So would you say the Naxal movement was basically derived from Maoist-- Mao's version of what Marxism is? Because that also leaned heavily on peasants, although a lot of as, you know, Hazar Khwasi- Yeah ... also-
[00:46:11] Song: Yeah ...
[00:46:11] Abhinandan: you know, a lot of urban, relatively wealthy, and privileged people went there for the romance of it.
[00:46:17] Abhinandan: But Indian Naxalism derives its entire ideological grounding from Maoist int-- Mao's interpretation of Marxism. Is that correct?
[00:46:26] Biyon : No, not entirely. I, I don't want to oversimplify it that way. Uh, we cannot say that, uh, the, the Ma- Maoist ideology was entirely transplanted into India, but it's also not the case that, uh, it was simply a, a very peasant uprising as well.
[00:46:42] Biyon : It was a mix of both because there was a peasant, uh, uprising that was happening in the region in '67, uh, because there were a lot of grievances against the existing feudal structure. But at the same time, uh, a very radical section of the left was also very prevalent in those areas. So it was a mix of both, and the radical leftist, uh, the radical communists in that region felt that this was a turning...
[00:47:06] Biyon : a, a very, a groundbreaking moment because they felt that this could be a, a part of a broader, uh, Maoist project or a broader communist project which can, uh, spread into other parts. Because, uh, so what Mao did in China was, uh, it's in, in theoretical terms, it's called a protracted people's war. They, they start from the countryside, and then they, uh, go on the defensive.
[00:47:29] Biyon : They, they try to checkmate the state power, and then they go on the offensive. Basically, guerrilla warfare. They dr- they try to engulf, uh, the, the rural sides in the beginning, and then they go to the urban sides, and then they capture power. So, uh, Majumdar or Kanu Sanyal, all the, all the extreme leftists in those times, they drew a lot of inspiration from Mao's ideas directly.
[00:47:52] Biyon : So, uh, in the context of, uh, extreme grievances present among peasants and other marginalized communities, this served as a very effective organizational and ideological vehicle, uh, for the people who were trying to, uh, get back land or, or trying to overcome the unequal land relations existing in those times.
[00:48:10] Biyon : So
[00:48:10] Manisha: I had a question, um, and this is to do with the popular discourse today. Mainstream parliamentary left-wing parties in India have always been against Maoism
[00:48:21] BJP reel: Yes ...
[00:48:21] Manisha: we, yeah. And today we, we're at a point where the mainstream party in power would even double Rahul Gandhi a Maoist. So, uh, if you could shed some light on left-wing parties, you know, parliamentary left-wing mainstream parties, opposition to Mao or Maoism, where, wh- why were they opposed to it, and what do you make of this mishmash today that, you know, even, like, Congress is
[00:48:45] Manisha: I mean, it's a joke that, you know, even Rahul Gandhi is being shown as also- Rahul Gandhi is a
[00:48:49] Abhinandan: Naxal?
[00:48:50] Manisha: I mean, it shows a complete lack of understanding of- Hmm ... you know, what, of our own history, actually.
[00:48:56] Biyon : Yeah. The, the left in itself is a huge political spectrum because they have so many ideological and theoretical disagreements among them, even though they try to stand as a united left front.
[00:49:05] Biyon : So if you, if you look at how the CPI split into CPI and CPIin 1964, it's all about revisionism. One section feels that it is, uh, necessary to adapt to the existing political realities, while the more radical section feels that- The, the section which is trying to adapt is becoming very revisionist in nature.
[00:49:27] Biyon : It is diluting what Marxist Leninist ideology says. So in, when in 1964 they split, uh, CPIM argued that they are the actual Marxist Leninist party while CPI is trying to collude with the Congress, trying to collaborate with the progressive, uh, bourgeoisie alliance. And later on, after the Naxalbari uprising happened, people within the CPIM started feeling the same.
[00:49:51] Biyon : They, they said that the CPIM is now diluting. It's becoming very parliamentary in nature. It is abandoning the revolutionary stance that it always had in the beginning. So that's how the CPIM ML started, Marxist Leninist Party. And after, uh, Majumdar's death, I think it was in '72, uh, the CPIM ML started disintegrated, disintegrating again.
[00:50:12] Biyon : It started fragmenting a lot, and after that, so many other parties, the CPIM ML Liberation, which is more prominent right now, uh, the CPIM ML Red Star, uh, so many parties, uh, came after that. So if you look at all these parties, their ideological alignments vary a little bit. Uh, for example, CPI is more diluted right now.
[00:50:33] Biyon : CPIM was also diluted, um, from its initial stance. And that was my study in, um, uh, Takshashila Institutions fellowship, where I focused on the, how the anti-capitalist are very rigid or very inflexible stance of the CPIM has... Uh, it, it was so forced to dilute its stance over
[00:50:52] Biyon : the years because trying to, trying to, uh, go forward with the Socialist Party or socialist government within a very capitalist, neoliberal environment that India is in right now, it's very difficult for the party to go forward without making policy shifts. So while making these policy shifts, while making these changes in the policy directions of the party, these parties, the communists and the, and the left forces are very particular about theoretically backing their shifts, uh, in terms of policies.
[00:51:20] Biyon : So, uh, if you look at the party programs of the CPI or the CPIM or the CPIM ML, the party programs differ a little bit. Uh, CPIM does not speak about a revolutionary, uh, overthrow of the government. Uh, it, it does not, uh, speak about a very violent struggle. It speaks about creating a people's democracy Uh, it, it talks about, uh, the longer goal, the longer term.
[00:51:44] Biyon : Uh, it's very aspirational, but it knows that it has to contest parliamentary elections, parliamentary route is to be accepted. But on the other hand, if you look at CPI, uh, it also accepts parliamentary, uh, struggle, but on the other hand, it does not abandon a, a revolutionary stance completely. But if you look at the CPI, which was completely banned by the government in 2004, it was taking a completely different route altogether.
[00:52:10] Biyon : It was boycotting elections. It did not want a parliamentary route to class struggle. It firmly believed in a very pure armed violent struggle in order to overthrow the capitalist neoliberal government in the center. So it's a mix of a lot of forces, and often it's very confusing. But, uh, there are minor differences in what they believe each of them.
[00:52:31] Abhinandan: And was most of this fragmenting in Bengal? Because Bengal and Kerala are the two places which really had significant political influence of, you know, the far left.
[00:52:40] Biyon : Yeah. Uh, the, the, the differences were more prominently, I believe, in Bengal and in central India.
[00:52:47] Abhinandan: Mm.
[00:52:48] Biyon : The, the, uh, leakage of this ideology to Kerala and the southern areas were relatively less, I think.
[00:52:55] Biyon : Mm. Uh, and, and Kerala has not been, uh, more affected compared to other states. And, yeah, uh, it, it was more around central India, uh, up from the Deccan Plateau towards northern India.
[00:53:07] Abhinandan: Yeah, because- Jharkhand,
[00:53:07] Biyon : Bihar ... I, around the '80s and '90s,
[00:53:09] Abhinandan: I don't know if this joke is still a thing, it was, uh, what do you call a Bengali?
[00:53:14] Abhinandan: A communist. What do you call two Bengalis? A Communist Party. What do you call three Bengalis? Two Communist Parties. That was, you know, the joke back in the '80s and the '90s. But on this, you know, I'd just like to go to Anurag. Do you think this has been, uh... and Binoy, you know, I'll come back to you, if you could weigh in on this.
[00:53:32] Abhinandan: Has been the bane of the left that, that ideological purity prevents its growth? Because either you can remain ideologically pure or can, you, you can scale. You know, that's true for NGOs and political parties. I mean, I've seen that myself as, you know, a member of what later emerged into the India Against Corruption movement.
[00:53:54] Abhinandan: And, you know, when there were just 12 of us- Yeah ... it was a very different place. When it became 10,000, it became very different. And when we get... You either are ideologically pure or you're scaling. You cannot remain pure and scale at the same time, and this is what market has- Cracked. They are not libertarian.
[00:54:13] Abhinandan: Like the libertarians will remain dug in, but, you know, they'll say, "No, let's let- we'll accept the new deal."
[00:54:21] BJP reel: Hmm.
[00:54:21] Abhinandan: We'll accept welfare programs. That puritanism that I'm purer than you.
[00:54:25] BJP reel: Yeah.
[00:54:26] Abhinandan: And I think that is what the RSS has cracked. They make sure the ideologue remains outside the party- Hmm ... and maintains ideological purity, but the party Can do real w- yeah
[00:54:36] Abhinandan: kyunki scale karna, you cannot scale with purity. It's just not possible, and I think that has been the weakness of the non-left. In fact, if you see- The non-left ... the, the, sorry, the weakness- The left ... of the left. Left. Uh, like if you see, I saw some data that recently there were a bunch of elections, and how many of the far left in the US, what they cons- have won some of these elections, but as compared to the Boston, the, the new Tea Party jo hua tha na- Mm
[00:55:05] Abhinandan: when that entire thing. The Tea Party was ideologically pure, but they were politically relevant in the electoral thing. Here, they enter the electoral race, but that scale will be lost Uh, thoughts on that, Anurag?
[00:55:19] Anurag Verma: Yeah, it's a, it's a old, I think, thing which ha- which has been happening. It's like a Raghu ke liye preet sada chali aayi type thi- Because if you look at the JNU also, there are so many left parties, and then there would be some new left party which will be more purer ideologically than the previous one.
[00:55:38] Anurag Verma: So offline you can see the example, uh, of, of it. But on the online as well, the kind of discourse that happens on, on internet, there is always a moral group, then there is some group which is more moral than that group. Then there would be a group which is more and more moral than that group. So that whole infighting is something which is more, uh, human nature, and which, as you rightly said, that also prevent any kind of scaling.
[00:56:05] Anurag Verma: But also, just to add one more point about this whole pop, the Naxal in the pop culture aspect to it, I don't think many, I don't think most of the Gen Z have any kind of, uh, great association with this word called Naxal. Mm-hmm. Because they don't have any special memory of, you know, Naxal or-
[00:56:25] BJP reel: Yeah ...
[00:56:26] Anurag Verma: anything which is related to Naxal.
[00:56:27] Anurag Verma: Be it violence or be support or anti whatever. They don't have any special memory of it. So just to use this word, the Maggi Naxal, is more aimed, I think, at the, uh, millennial or post- Millennials ... millennial or that section. Gen Z has no great association with it, so I think if they wanted to appeal to the Gen Z, then they have chose a very, uh, wrong, uh, villain because, uh, uh, there is no, you know
[00:56:55] Anurag Verma: So this is one of the reason why they have made, uh, Umar Khalid as the main villain now. You know, just, just put Umar Khalid thing and then they associate him with the urban Naxal or Naxal. This is what Naxalism has done to you and all that things. So this is one of the reason why most of these right-wing pages, especially those who are, are trying to aim at the Ge- Gen Z, make Umar Khalid as something which represent this whole thing.
[00:57:19] Anurag Verma: So there's a l- lot of confusion in them as well a- about how to, you know, villainize this whole thing. But as far as I know, they don't, they will not- Greatly succeed because there is no great memory of the Naxal in, in this generation.
[00:57:33] Manisha: Yeah,
[00:57:33] Abhinandan: very important
[00:57:34] Manisha: point. Jinshan,
[00:57:35] Abhinandan: what is your take on the entire grounding of this movement here, which is very well explained in this book, Amar Bari Tomar Bari Naxalbari, which you can order later.
[00:57:44] Rinchen: No, I mean, uh, I think, I guess sort of ex- sort of explained the sort of historical sort of antecedences very well. But just want to, uh, make two, uh, sort of smaller points, which is that, uh, the, uh... There was this, when the Naxalbari sort of the uprising happened in '67, uh, the, uh, Chinese, sort of the CCP's, uh, Pe- People's Daily Newspaper had, uh, I think, put out an editorial, and I'd like to read out one sort of small- Hmm
[00:58:17] Rinchen: segment of it, which is, um, so, uh, when May 25th, 1967, the uprising happened, uh, in Naxalbari Village, um, so they said, quote, "A appeal of spring thunder has crashed over the land of India. Revolutionary presence in the Darjeeling area have risen in rebellion under the leadership of a revolutionary group of the Indian Communist Party.
[00:58:38] Rinchen: A red area of r- rural revolutionary armed struggle has been established in India. This is a development of tremendous significance for the Indian people's revolutionary struggle. The revolutionary group of the Indian Communist Party have done the absolutely correct thing, and they have done well." Hmm.
[00:58:53] Rinchen: But subsequently, uh, Mao himself and, uh, the CCP themselves, um, had serious sort of questions and issues of, uh, the, uh, sort of, uh, armed communist revolutionary sort of movement that was trying to take root in India. Particularly, I think famously, Mao Zedong really disliked Charu Majumdar. Hmm. He said, like, he called, I mean, you had, like, the CCP, I think, used to call the Indian communists, uh, as revisionists, right?
[00:59:26] Rinchen: Because they believed that we were just trying to replicate the Chinese model in India without, uh, you know, without really addressing the Indian conditions- Hmm ... so to speak, right? And, but Mao himself, and you want to talk, you made a point about ideological purity. Now, Mao himself, I think, sort of struggled with his own ideological sort of prognosis, uh, later on, like, at least, at least definitely towards the end.
[00:59:50] Rinchen: Like, in '72, he famously, uh, you know, welcomed Richard Nixon- Hmm ... uh, to Beijing. Um, and, uh, you know, I mean, he, throughout his life, he talked about his visceral dislike for capitalism, as you know. Hmm. But then in '72, he invites Nixon to Beijing, and they have that famous summit. And so, um, then again, this whole- Attempt, because I think towards the end Mao himself also maybe possibly saw for all his, despite his paranoia and all the crazy, crazy things he did, um, he, I think eventually some doubts started to emerge within himself as well, and that sort of did reflect in state policy to some extent.
[01:00:30] Abhinandan: In fact, Buddhadev Bhattacharya was criticized so much when he said that we need private capital without which Bengal can- Yeah ... say goodbye to anything, and I remember the ide- the ideologically pure went at him.
[01:00:42] Rinchen: Yeah.
[01:00:42] Abhinandan: And he was the most pragmatic of them. Uh, but beyond can you, you know, tell us, first of all, what Mao, you know, his prognosis was very different from what people said it was.
[01:00:53] Abhinandan: And Marx, I don't know whether it's true, famously said, "I'm not a Marxist," because how he saw Marxism was being interpreted by different people who called themselves Marxists. Uh, but what do you make of what Rinchin just said?
[01:01:05] Biyon : Uh, yeah, it, it's a very interesting point. I, I think, uh, a Naxalite delegation had gone to visit China at some point, uh, after the uprising happened.
[01:01:13] Biyon : Uh, not Mazumdar, I think it was Kanu Sanyal because, uh, I read that portion in a biography of Kanu Sanyal, and, uh, I think they, they went, uh, through Nepal.
[01:01:24] BJP reel: Mm.
[01:01:24] Biyon : Uh, they reached Beijing. Uh, they were, uh, staying in China for a couple of months, I think. And, uh, like Vincent said, uh, I think Mao himself told the delegation that they need to adapt to Indian realities.
[01:01:34] Biyon : They just cannot copy-paste-
[01:01:36] BJP reel: Mm ...
[01:01:36] Biyon : what, uh, the Chinese Communist Party did in China. They need to adapt to the, the different political realities in India. And, and with regard to the ideological purity discussion, I think it's very relevant because I feel if you try to generalize things, uh, the, the communists or the leftists, when they are not in power or when they are around power, uh, they, they tend to feel very rigid about their ideological standing.
[01:02:02] Biyon : But when they are in power, even for Mao at the, at the end, uh, or even after Mao, China understood that if they are to remain in power, they need to be flexible. Without being, without showing flexibility they cannot do much. Uh, be it Buddhadeb Bhattacharya in, uh, Bengal or the, the previous government in Kerala, which was communist, uh, they showed a lot of flexibility in terms of adapting to Marxist...
[01:02:24] Biyon : Oh, sorry. Uh, i-i-in adapting to market realities. Uh, and it is for the same reason that, uh, the CPIM, uh, if not explicitly, uh, looked up towards, uh, the Communist Party of China because after the 1978 reforms, the CCP showed a lot of flexibility. But I fe- I, I feel the CPIM was a little late in, uh, showing that flexibility.
[01:02:45] Biyon : Uh, and if you look at the, at the revised party programs of the CPIM, even though they still remain very opposed to, uh, the bourgeoisie or they use a lot of technical terms about the different alliances, uh, between the capitalist state or the landlords, et cetera, et cetera, they have, uh, diluted the previous rigidity, uh, that they showed with regard to opposition to private ownership.
[01:03:10] BJP reel: Mm.
[01:03:11] Biyon : They are more, uh, accepting towards, uh, particularly cooperative, uh, movements and cooperative organizations. Uh, and if you look in Kerala, there are a lot of cooperative organizations backed by the communists which indulge in very capitalist activities.
[01:03:26] BJP reel: Mm.
[01:03:26] Biyon : So, uh, ideological purity, when the, when the communist parties are in power, they know that if they do not make a very pragmatic policy shift, they cannot go forward.
[01:03:37] Biyon : And, um, e-even, even, uh, the, the Communist Party in China, uh, they, they know that state capitalism is the only way forward. Uh, they, they try to keep a very strong hold on the capitalist activities, but the control of the party, the control of the state remains
[01:03:54] Abhinandan: intact. In fact, the conviction life imprisonment of the Ever- Evergrande
[01:03:58] Abhinandan: Evergrande- Yeah ... founder is an example of how, you know, someone of that level can be thrown in jail in China. That is something that they're very clear about. But, uh, if I could just now bring the discussion back to on the intersection of with this kind of context of the history of Maoism, the movement, its adoption India, how relevant is it in the entire outreach campaign and the political messaging of today?
[01:04:26] Abhinandan: Uh, Beyond, have you seen any of the memes or the videos that the BJP has been putting out about the Dimagi Naxal? Who is a Dimagi Naxal?
[01:04:34] Biyon : Uh, honestly, no. I'm not very active on social media. Uh-
[01:04:38] Abhinandan: As Saif Ali Khan would say, "Get with the program."
[01:04:43] Biyon : Uh, I, I've been following the news, but not the meme materials, to be honest.
[01:04:48] Abhinandan: No, but have you watched, um, I think everyone from Sudhir, Manisha Khetrapal to Arnab- Mm ... did who is a Dimagi Naxal
[01:04:55] Manisha: and they give- Even Yogendra Yadav made it to Dimagi Naxal.
[01:04:58] Abhinandan: Yeah, so these are the, these are the symptoms of a Dimagi Naxal. You have to, I don't know, be a professor or you have to-
[01:05:03] Manisha: Yeah, yeah, economist, journalist, writer.
[01:05:05] Abhinandan: So- Yogendra Yadav is one, Rahul
[01:05:05] Manisha: is one, Arundhati Roy is one, Umar is one, so yeah.
[01:05:09] Abhinandan: So now let's come back to the, the pop culture intersection of this. Uh,
[01:05:16] Manisha: Manisha- Mm ...
[01:05:16] Abhinandan: based on, you know, what Beyond has just shed light on, how much of this do you think is relevant to- the communication happening right now, it doesn't even matter.
[01:05:26] Abhinandan: Like, say anything about, I mean, just chipkao a name, you have to have no context.
[01:05:31] Manisha: Yeah, like Anurag said, that there's no context for Gen Z when it comes to Naxalism. And at least if you talk about the politics of it, Amit Shah and the Modi government have a real win on their side with what they've managed to do in Chhattisgarh.
[01:05:44] Manisha: This Independence Day, for the first time in jungles, which were in f- you know, had, w- I mean, you have people there who've not seen what India has- Achieved ... become. You've had the national tricolor, you know, fly there. So I think there is a real achievement there, and if you wanna understand the hold of Maoist, the story of the fall of Naxalism in Chhattisgarh, if it is the fall.
[01:06:05] Manisha: Hmm. Because we've said this is a fall many times. Yeah, and- But for now it is a huge fall, it's a huge victory for the Indian state. Uh, there's a very good piece that we have on our website which explains that the final days from 2024 onwards, why this, the Indian government was able to completely go in and dent the movement is because the Adivasis themselves and Adivasi commanders, for the first time during an ambush, which failed, got together.
[01:06:30] Manisha: For the first time they were talking to each other. And they said that, "Look, the villagers no longer support us. We cannot go on like this because there's no human intelligence."
[01:06:37] BJP reel: Hmm.
[01:06:37] Manisha: So forget for the rest of India, but Maoism as an idea has failed in Chhattisgarh itself, where it had survived for so long.
[01:06:45] Manisha: So I think, I mean, as an idea it doesn't make any sense because with the advent of phones, with, you know, so much changing, I think even for people who are very beleaguered recognize that picking up arms against the state no longer works for us. Which is why, you know, commanders, Maoist commanders, tribal commanders felt that we have no support, so let's give it up.
[01:07:07] Manisha: But what has happened is that Amit Shah and all would have liked to celebrate this victory as big, and they've been leading up to this for almost two years, right? Every year he would give us a deadline. Hmm. "I'll finish it, I'll finish it." Yeah. While they finished it, uh, what happened in urban India is that you saw a lot of...
[01:07:24] Manisha: I mean, it was completely overtaken by headlines of exam leak, youth unrest- Hmm ... people unhappy, people making fun of, um, you know, Modi. So again, they lost the narrative battle, the headline battle. The headline they would have wanted is that, you know, we've gone and we've destroyed Naxalism. And so to me, all this means nothing other than the fact that this is just their way to counter a very real urban angst that they don't know what to do with.
[01:07:48] Manisha: Hmm. So it's... And we've seen them do this from Bhima Koregaon time, right? People like Sudha Bhardwaj and all. Why were they put in jail? Hmm. Yeah. Because you couldn't counter the real angst, so you, you know, the imaginary whatever Maoist thing. And they're doing the same thing here, that look, we destroyed it there.
[01:08:04] Manisha: Hmm. And I knew this, like I, this is a very typical thing. Anyone who studied BJP now for 12 years or even media narratives, the moment something goes out of control And in this case, it was so simple to say this, that, "Look, we cracked down in Chhattisgarh. We destroyed them there, but they are coming out from the woodwork in your hostels and your universities and your movies, and they're attacking us back through these nefarious means."
[01:08:27] Manisha: So it's really that, but like Rinjin also said, and Anurag also said, your reality today is... I mean, people ultimately respond to propaganda, and effectiveness of propaganda depends on people's own realities. Yeah. If I have a child at home who is getting, like, no midday meal scheme or there's like, I don't know, watery dal for nutrition, not eggs, or there's no scope, you know, the child is just working to crack some or the other exam and failing, then all that cannot be countered by, like you said, an imaginary enemy.
[01:09:03] Manisha: You have to give people something real. Rinjin?
[01:09:06] Rinchen: Yeah, so interesting the, uh, you talked, all these anchors are, you know, making a list of who's I'm trying to
[01:09:12] Abhinandan: define what that is.
[01:09:13] Rinchen: Yeah, which is what? Artists- Yeah ... uh, writers- Professors ... professors. It's, the irony is, I mean, I've just listened to a bunch of podcasts on the, uh, cultural revolution yesterday, and, uh, a lot of, uh, so these writers intelle- basically writers, intellectuals, artists, um, during the cultural revolution, Mao and his sort of Red Guards and his sort of, you know, his sort of these extreme factions of his l- uh, extreme sort of loyalists, I mean, they would, all these people would be deemed as the sort of bourgeois intellectual class- Mm.
[01:09:51] Rinchen: the counter-revolutionaries. Sure. And these were the people they went after. So the irony is so thick that you have what is essentially a right-wing government in this country backed by a media that is also predominantly right-wing in its outlook, creating a list-
[01:10:09] Abhinandan: Owned by billionaires ...
[01:10:10] Rinchen: owned by billionaires, uh, creating a list of who is a Hmm
[01:10:28] Rinchen: during the cultural revolution, and then that list would look exactly the same. So,
[01:10:33] Abhinandan: uh, so I'm, you know, let me just come back to the guests for last thoughts. But I just found Sudhir's entire examination of Dimagi Naxal a Pol Pot handbook. Yeah,
[01:10:45] Manisha: yeah. Completely. Yeah,
[01:10:46] Abhinandan: yeah. He was just Pol Pot. He was just short of saying that if you are literate and wear specs-
[01:10:51] Manisha: Yeah
[01:10:52] Abhinandan: you should be killed. Exactly. He was like, I think, five steps short of that. I-
[01:10:55] Manisha: Anyone with spectacles should be shot dead ...
[01:10:56] Abhinandan: I heard him, I was like, "Dude, this is Pol Pot's, like"-
[01:11:04] Abhinandan: Intellectual,
[01:11:05] BJP reel: yeah ...
[01:11:05] Manisha: you know, uh, what,
[01:11:05] Abhinandan: uh, Yes ... hammer. So now, uh, you know, last thoughts from our guests. Let me come to you first, Anurag You know what Manisha was saying that they're trying to go after Naxalism, while Naxalism as a ideological concept for now doesn't seem to have much leverage in Chhattisgarh even.
[01:11:23] Abhinandan: But as human beings and as human beings in power and privilege, which the government is in some aspects, we around this table are in some other aspects We forget that labeling the human nature of wanting to oppose and push back against any injustice, real or perceived, is seeped into our DNA. And from time to time we give it certain ideological titles.
[01:11:49] Abhinandan: True. And that is the mistake that governments make that, "Oh, we've crushed Naxalism, so opposition is finished." No Hmm ... it'll come through the form of CJP.
[01:11:57] BJP reel: Yeah.
[01:11:58] Abhinandan: The human DNA is hardwired into pushing at something that may have been popular earlier but is not anymore. And the mistake we make is that because we have given it a name and we think it's over, it will not come.
[01:12:11] Abhinandan: It will come, it'll just change its name. Mm. But that mindset will be the same on the rock.
[01:12:16] Anurag Verma: But the s- same thing like what, especially in this age of unseriousness, so they are doing it extremely serious, but that thing then translate on the social media in a very unserious way. Like for example, the cockroach- Mm
[01:12:29] Anurag Verma: comment became the basic basis of CJP and, uh, even the Dimagi Naxal Party has been launched- ... on Instagram, which has more than, if I'm not wrong, more than 5 lakh followers in- Wow, okay ... just, uh, four or five days.
[01:12:43] BJP reel: Yeah.
[01:12:44] Anurag Verma: So, so basically in this ironic atmosphere, everything is made fun of just to ... Uh, also just m- let me state a very interesting point, like people think that, uh, Sonam Wangchuk, when he, uh, started his hunger strike, then the India's Gen Z then became very emotional and on Instagram there was a lot of support for Sonam Wangchuk.
[01:13:07] Anurag Verma: Uh, I would say it was not the case in the initial days because as I said, everything which is considered sacred, people have this tendency to make fun of it, especially on Instagram and internet. So in the initial, at least 11 or 12 days of his hunger strike, uh, people were mostly making funny memes, because there was one template which became viral on Instagram in which Sonam Wangchuk is, uh, I think he's photographed at Ladakh.
[01:13:34] Anurag Verma: And then there were comments like the meme text on it, ... ... "Arey yaar
[01:13:43] Anurag Verma: koi Diet Coke hi pila do." Hmm. "Arey
[01:13:48] BJP reel: yaar
[01:13:48] Anurag Verma: koi IPL hi khila do." So like they were initially making fun of Sonam Wangchuk's seriousness- Mm ... which was also very counter to the kind of seriousness we have seen during the Anna moment where the Anna figure became very sacred and- Mm ... you know, uh, it was not allowed to make fun of it.
[01:14:05] Anurag Verma: But, uh, during at least initial days, everybody was like s- like most of the meme pages who are not really right, but they are more aligned to the humor. They were making fun of it, and the, the engagement was rising.
[01:14:18] Abhinandan: Mm.
[01:14:19] Anurag Verma: But somehow it changed when things got very serious. Then this, you know, non-serious people also realized that, yeah- When lives are at stake
[01:14:25] Anurag Verma: things are getting serious and we have to-
[01:14:27] Abhinandan: When
[01:14:27] Anurag Verma: lives are at stake 15th day when- Mm ... you know, uh, it became, then, then it, it became like, "Oh, oh, these men can also die." Mm. So then they became very serious, that human instinct came. But the initial urge or initial instinct on the Instagram is to make fun of everything.
[01:14:43] Anurag Verma: So right now, if they are putting these serious things, serious comment, and serious, you know, uh, uh, ideological, uh, this, uh, distinction, then they ... it will be made fun of. So n- now that would be the crisis for BJP to how to deal it, uh, this whole situation, and how to, uh, you know, diffuse it with the humor, which they are not very pro at
[01:15:07] Abhinandan: Yes.
[01:15:07] Abhinandan: Closing thoughts, Beyond?
[01:15:09] Biyon : Uh, to take a slight detour and talk about Naxalism in general, I think, uh, the, the emphasis is now on has Maoism disappeared, uh, has Naxalism ended? But, uh, I don't think a lot of people talk enough about what happens after an insurgency declines, uh, the aftermath of things. And, um, I think we need to discuss about what happens when Maoism as an ideology, uh, disappears, or what happens when the organizational vehicle itself is weakened, and, uh, does the state consolidate itself through participative governance or through development, et cetera, et cetera.
[01:15:46] Biyon : And if the government has to do something proactively, if the government has to actually do something positively, it has to look at the political and social conditions which fueled the rise of insurgency in the first place. And without addressing those issues, the core issues, uh, I, I think the discussion is very incomplete.
[01:16:05] Biyon : Uh, the question is always about the deadlines or the, the number of people who have surrendered- Mm ... but the underlying issues remain, and without addressing those issues, I think the discussion is still very incomplete.
[01:16:16] BJP reel: Mm.
[01:16:17] Abhinandan: Yeah. Mm, very true. Great, thank you so much Beyond, uh, for put- shedding light and in- informing us on that.
[01:16:24] Abhinandan: I think we should have a longer discussion on this aspect with a bunch of China experts. But before you go, can we please request both our guests to give us a recommendation that could enrich the lives of our listeners? It could be a film, a series, a book, an article, an activity, or a meme. Uh, Beyond, you wanna go first?
[01:16:44] Biyon : Uh, yeah. On, on this topic, um, I think there is a professor who works at O- the University of Oxford, Alpa Shah. She's an anthropologist and has worked brilliantly on Naxalism. I think she has written a book called Night March-
[01:16:59] BJP reel: Mm ...
[01:17:00] Biyon : uh, which I think, uh, won a lot of awards as well. And there is, uh, another scholar named Sumanta Banerjee, who has also worked, uh, extensively on revolutionary communism in India.
[01:17:12] Biyon : And, uh, I think there is a mainstream movie as well. I haven't watched it, but I've heard of it. Uh, Chakravyuh, I think it came out in the 2010s.
[01:17:20] BJP reel: Mm-hmm.
[01:17:20] Biyon : Uh, starring, uh, I think Manoj Bajpayee, Arjun Rampal. It, it's about the, the Naxal movement and how someone can feel sympathetic towards it and the consequences that happen after that.
[01:17:33] Abhinandan: Thanks so much, Bjorn. Uh, appreciate your time. Have a good weekend.
[01:17:38] Biyon : Yeah. Thank you. Thank you so much for having me.
[01:17:39] Abhinandan: Yeah. Anurag, sir, what would be your recommendation?
[01:17:42] Anurag Verma: There's a new book, uh, called, uh, Spec- Spectacle State by Brahma Prakash. So I think that could be a very interesting book to understand the current Hindutva, and it is written by my teacher who, uh, I mean, I studied under him at the School of Art and Aesthetics, so he's a very, uh, great thinker and intellectual, and this book is also very good to understand the contemporary reality, the Spectacle State by Brahma Prakash.
[01:18:07] Manisha: Hmm. Sounds
[01:18:07] Anurag Verma: interesting. And the second book is this, that I have with me. Have you read
[01:18:12] Manisha: it?
[01:18:13] Abhinandan: What is it
[01:18:13] Manisha: called? Letters to Self, Narendra
[01:18:15] Anurag Verma: Modi. Letters to Self, a poet- poetry collection by Narendra Modi. Yeah. Written, uh, translated in G- from Gujarati by Bhavna Somaya.
[01:18:22] Manisha: Please read one out for us.
[01:18:23] Abhinandan: Yeah, please, can you read one out?
[01:18:26] Anurag Verma: I don't have the in- inner thing with me
[01:18:31] Manisha: Okay. "Ye kya baat hui?"
[01:18:33] Abhinandan: That has got to be the best recommendation ever. That is a golden moment on Hafta.
[01:18:42] Anurag Verma: So, yeah. So let
[01:18:46] Manisha: me- "Ye kitaab pade aur andar
[01:18:47] Anurag Verma: ka nahi padha." Maine baar baar, baar baar se padhi hai. Maine baar baar se book padhta hoon. Upar upar se.
[01:18:54] Abhinandan: Oh, dear
[01:18:54] Anurag Verma: God.
[01:18:54] Anurag Verma: So yeah, if you are into poetry, then this
[01:18:59] Abhinandan: is the, this you should read. Well, thank you so much, Anurag, for joining us. Thank you. Thank you. We appreciate it, and have a good weekend, man. Thanks.
[01:19:03] Anurag Verma: Thank you, you too.
[01:19:04] Abhinandan: Right. With that, I wanna once again plug the two things we've plugged. One is Project Vande Mataram.
[01:19:11] Abhinandan: Rather than it become a political song for point scoring, let's reclaim Vande Mataram. It's a song about our natural resources, the forests, the trees. Scan this QR code. We'd like to commission a series of at least five, and depending on how much you collect, maybe it can go up to seven, reports on rivers, forests, Earth, air So that our Pujya Mata can truly be clean, like this song envisaged.
[01:19:43] Abhinandan: And the second thing I'd like to pitch is you can get Amar Bari Tomar Naxal Bari, the entire history of the Naxal movement in India, or this cup mug, which has, which Naxal are you? Turban, Bourbon, Suburban or Urban. We'll have to add a segment which is Dimagi. So you can scan this QR code, and if you take a subscription more than six months, uh, or gift a subscription to someone, we will ship one of these to you for free.
[01:20:08] Abhinandan: You'll have to tell us which one it is. With that, let's go to the emails. We welcome the emails of subscribers. You can mail us at podcasts@newslaundry.com. I repeat, podcasts@newslaundry.com. The link is in the show notes below. Uh, and please keep them below 150 words so that we can include as many as possible.
[01:20:26] Abhinandan: Otherwise, it just becomes very hard to include the so many mails we get. And whatever is left, we will address each and every one in our subscriber stake, which we will either record in the last week of August or the first week of September, 'cause we have a lot of emails that have piled up. So let me start.
[01:20:42] Abhinandan: Letters for the week. This is by someone called Negative Gradient. "Hello everyone, I'm writing the mail as concerned subscriber after having read about the recent allegations against NLI realize there is always a possibility of coordinated attack against independent media organizations. But given the trust placed in you, I hope there'll be a transparent discussion forthcoming at some point and it doesn't end up being he said, she said scenario.
[01:21:03] Abhinandan: Looking forward to your response. Thanks." Yes, Negative Gradient, we will be discussing all those, but just there are certain things which are legally one cannot discuss. Uh, but one thing I would like to thank our subscribers for is the amount of mails we've got of expertise saying that this is what one can fix, this is what I'm an expert on.
[01:21:25] Abhinandan: I'd just like to quote one, and I think we've got in touch with you. "I have over 25 years of experience in building success teams, including driving cultural transformation during times of change. I've extensive experience in managing, counseling, and mentoring broader team with diverse backgrounds and experiences.
[01:21:40] Abhinandan: Uh, recently returned to India on a sabbatical, and you have offered your service as a consultant." There was one more email that I received who is a master in friction management and conflict resolutions in large workplaces. Um, we have amazing subscribers, so we are gonna be putting together a team to help us navigate and create a better, bigger and more coordinated, uh, workspace.
[01:22:07] Abhinandan: But thank you so much for those of you who've written. So Negative Gradient, yes, all that will be addressed. Whatever is in front of camera. In front of camera, whatever is not possible, we'll be fixing all that. Then Meghra says, "The name of the last village is Thang. I live in Tur- Turtuk and have interviewed Mr.
[01:22:24] Abhinandan: Hussein for my website. I'm here till December and will be happy to put him in touch with him." You had mentioned him, so-
[01:22:28] Rinchen: Yeah, I mentioned him. I, I don't know if his name is, uh, Mr. Actually, there's a lot of people in that area-
[01:22:33] Abhinandan: With the same
[01:22:33] Rinchen: profile ... with a, with a similar profile, so probably is another I'll reach out to.
[01:22:38] Abhinandan: Right. Then Anonymous says, "Hey, guys, just one thing. Can we stop putting Ji in Modi Ji? He's Narendra Modi, let's keep it at that. Maybe call him Mr. Modi. But a Ji is used for someone who is worthy of respect. We're maybe handing out Ji's a little too liberally."
[01:22:53] BJP reel: Mm.
[01:22:53] Manisha: I always call him Modi Ji. Like a nuisance, not on hafta.
[01:22:56] BJP reel: Mm.
[01:22:57] Manisha: It's just-
[01:22:57] Abhinandan: I think it's one of those Indianisms. Mm. Sonia Ji, Atal Ji. Uh, it's just something that when you're a little awkward of how you address someone, you just add a Ji. And a lot of people actually get irritated. I n- I had, uh, I was on a panel. Uh, I was moderating a panel, and I forget who. She was a scholar, and I...
[01:23:17] Abhinandan: You know, she was maybe 10, 12, 15 years older than me, so I did not just wanna call her Manisha or Rinshen.
[01:23:22] Song: Mm.
[01:23:23] Abhinandan: Uh, and I thought, you know, Dr. Pandey would be too formal. Mm. So I just gave a first name and added Ji. She says like, "What is this Bollywood hab- Amit Ji?" You know? But it's just something we kind of throw in-
[01:23:35] Rinchen: Yeah, yeah
[01:23:36] Abhinandan: to kind of deal with any awkwardness.
[01:23:38] Rinchen: For me, it's, uh, I, I say Modi Ji because it's, it's as- Ironically ... as
[01:23:42] Abhinandan: ironical as one
[01:23:42] Rinchen: says. It's
[01:23:43] Manisha: ironical, yeah,
[01:23:44] Rinchen: Modi Ji. So it's Because
[01:23:46] Manisha: anchors are Modi Ji, Modi Ji.
[01:23:47] Rinchen: Modi, exactly, right. So.
[01:23:49] Abhinandan: Right. Uh, so Charlie's, um, word count is a little longer, but I will, uh, read this. "I'm really disappointed," this is Charlie.
[01:23:58] Abhinandan: Uh, she says, "I'm disappointed with the unpopular opinions episode. As a trans woman, I would appreciate if people could stop using the Exhibit A every time discussion on wokeism and cancel culture." I guess she means that this is the discussion that is used as
[01:24:12] Song: a example
[01:24:12] Abhinandan: of wokeism. "The last demographic I want to hear from on bodily autonomy healthcare and rights is cis men.
[01:24:19] Abhinandan: Maharaj brought up transgender ideology, which is for most part moral panic about what trans rights activists want. He was talking about social conventions around gender. Social conventions also prohibit premarital sex in several communities."
[01:24:32] BJP reel: Yeah. Mm. "
[01:24:32] Abhinandan: The way Abhinandan flippantly said person with a penis for pre-op, non-op trans people while arguing for nuance was a bit rich and crass.
[01:24:41] Abhinandan: I'm tired of trans people being framed as this unreasonably angry monolith, even as our rights keep getting legislated away in India." Um, so hear you, Charlie, but just want to say that I wasn't meaning that flippantly. It is because on the sports angle, and this I get, if someone wants to be identified as a woman- I'm not s- and I'm okay not referring to that person as a man or a he.
[01:25:08] Abhinandan: So what I was told, in fact, this was, uh, a term I think also used in the gonads, that if someone does not identify as a man but is biologically a man There are, these are the ways that you can address it. Possibilities. So I was just saying that I could not say that he, because that is not how that person wants to be identified.
[01:25:27] Abhinandan: So when it comes to... Which, which is why I don't want to classify as it men competing in women's sports, because that person is not identifying as a man. So, so that's what I mean. It's, it's, it's a very difficult conversation to kind of navigate around because what is the, what is the definition of X, how you call Y is...
[01:25:48] Abhinandan: And, and not everybody who's, you know, articulating this is unreasonable. I don't think, for example, Charlie's position unreasonable because in Brazil you see how trans people are treated. In our own country, in America- Mm ... some of the laws that are completely against them. It's a completely reasonable position.
[01:26:03] Abhinandan: But I think someone like Martina's position is also reasonable. She says, "I don't want someone who is not," what she defines as competing in women's tennis, 'cause we have fought long and hard to be at par with men's tennis. So I just think there is a ro- lot of reasonable positions, not because one position is, you know, reasonable doesn't mean the other is unreasonable.
[01:26:26] Abhinandan: I think there can be two reasonable positions, but we just need to navigate around it, and th- that's what kind of I meant.
[01:26:34] Manisha: This is the unpopular opinion episode.
[01:26:35] Abhinandan: Episode. Yeah. Where, uh, where, uh, halfway through the episode, Jayashree changed her position from saying travel is overrated, then she gave a little qualifier.
[01:26:44] Abhinandan: Traveling for tourism is overrated, for education it's fine.
[01:26:47] Rinchen: Yeah, but I think with the trans thing, uh, with the whole trans issue, I think it's also a ques- uh, it's also an issue of agency, uh, in the sense that, uh, a lot of these discussions that happen around trans issues don't happen with trans people.
[01:27:01] BJP reel: Mm.
[01:27:02] Anurag Verma: Mm.
[01:27:02] Rinchen: And that, I think, bothers a lot, uh, bothers a lot, at least I've, whatever conversations I've had with the community. Uh, that's, that's what I think also bothers them, that they're not involved in these conversations. It's just bunch of cis men, women, whatever, having- Yeah ... intellectual discussions on this.
[01:27:18] Rinchen: Which is fine, which is okay. It's, there's nothing wrong with that. But I think on issues like this, for example, I think it would be a good idea to have a panel, uh-
[01:27:26] Abhinandan: But we have had.
[01:27:27] Rinchen: Yeah.
[01:27:27] Abhinandan: But what I'm
[01:27:28] Manisha: saying is- But a panel involving trans people.
[01:27:29] Rinchen: In, in panel involving trans people.
[01:27:31] Abhinandan: Which is what we have had.
[01:27:32] Abhinandan: In fact, let's talk about trans rights. Mm. That was, you know, involving trans people. Mm. But I think the reluctance- Maybe led by
[01:27:37] Manisha: it, not
[01:27:37] Abhinandan: involving also
[01:27:37] Manisha: is the wrong word. Yeah, exactly. I think it ha- these conversations have to be led by the community also. But then that,
[01:27:42] Abhinandan: that has to be led by someone. Like, one cannot create one for them, 'cause then you are again taking away agency.
[01:27:47] Abhinandan: Yeah. So see, one can, again, this goes into
[01:27:49] Manisha: the- No, no, I'm saying not- ... purity test ... not Hafta, but I'm saying in general the discourse- In general ... has to be led. Because you'll find there's such a diversity of views within the trans community in India also. Yeah. It's not the same battles. We are always also responding to, I think, the American culture wars.
[01:28:03] Manisha: Mm.
[01:28:03] Abhinandan: Exactly. Yeah.
[01:28:04] Manisha: That because- In India it's kind of different.
[01:28:06] Abhinandan: I- and in fact, the, uh, Modi chalisa that was recited in the Press Club- Yeah ... was by a trans organization- Yes ... who said that Modi is But
[01:28:12] Manisha: they didn't know apparently. They've put out a explanation that we had no clue about this guy. Yeah,
[01:28:16] Abhinandan: Press Club didn't know, but what I'm saying-
[01:28:17] Manisha: Even they didn't know the- people, the trans group that-
[01:28:20] Abhinandan: Oh, that booked
[01:28:20] Manisha: it?
[01:28:20] Manisha: Yeah. Okay. Because there's a story in Queer Beat-
[01:28:23] Abhinandan: Hmm ...
[01:28:24] Manisha: which has kind of clarified this, that the press member club who helped book the hall, that they mi- they thought it was only for a press conference about a Modi temple.
[01:28:32] Abhinandan: I see.
[01:28:32] Manisha: So, yeah.
[01:28:34] Abhinandan: Rafa says, "Hello, Anil. On this 15th August, I attended Independence Day celebration at school, which was attended by a few defense officers as well.
[01:28:41] Abhinandan: Vande Mataram was sung by children during the flag hoisting. We sang along for the first few stanzas. Thereafter, we were all lost. It remind me of Mr. Bean in church episode where Mr. Bean, while singing a hymn, keeps mumbling and singing only the Hallelujah portion loudly. It was hilarious and also disrespectful.
[01:28:57] Abhinandan: I'm not sure why this change to singing all the stanzas was done. While there are so many pressing issues to handle in this country, it would be interesting to find out how many of the ministers can actually sing all six stanzas. I promise it'd be the best stand-up comedy. Let's see if anyone on the panel can.
[01:29:11] Abhinandan: With best wishes, Rafa." Can you?
[01:29:13] Rinchen: Uh, I don't, I can't. I can't sing all six stanzas. But what was, uh... One particular debate, uh, there was this, uh, the RJD ka spokesperson, Priyanka Bharti, I think her name is. Hmm. So, I think one of, one of the Hindi channel debates, I forget which channel.
[01:29:27] Abhinandan: Hmm.
[01:29:28] Rinchen: Um, they were talking about whole Vande Mataram stuff, and, uh, she basically said, "Can anyone, can any of you sing all six stanza?"
[01:29:35] Rinchen: And the BJP spokesperson just ran away. He just left. He just
[01:29:39] Abhinandan: got up
[01:29:39] Rinchen: and left. He just got up and left. So yeah, just to sort of- How many
[01:29:44] Abhinandan: stanzas can you sing?
[01:29:45] Rinchen: One, two, maybe.
[01:29:47] Abhinandan: Manisha?
[01:29:47] Manisha: Just the first line. But you know, actually, I think it was during the Ram Nath Goenka Award where they played the full song.
[01:29:55] Manisha: Hmm. Remember when we went for Vasan's? Yeah. Um, and it was quite long because they started it- It is ... and they ended with it because the president was there. Yeah. Hmm. Hmm. Or the, uh- The vice president ... the vice president was there. Hmm. It's actually very beautiful. I mean, when I was hearing the song, it's, it's a really moving song.
[01:30:09] Manisha: It's really tragic that the discourse around it is like this. Hmm. But it's a very long song to be standing. I think everyone in that ceremony also was like, "Okay."
[01:30:19] Rinchen: I think the two stanzas thing is-
[01:30:20] Manisha: Two stanzas is fine ...
[01:30:21] Rinchen: is fine. Like-
[01:30:22] Manisha: Yeah ...
[01:30:22] Rinchen: beyond that, there's al- there are all these other issues also.
[01:30:25] Manisha: And you can enjoy the song otherwise, yeah.
[01:30:28] Manisha: Yeah. It doesn't have to be, like, thrust down you.
[01:30:31] Abhinandan: I mean, I can sing, I think the first four with the f- with the full- Hmm ... translation also
[01:30:36] Manisha: Yes, you've demonstrated this capacity
[01:30:38] Abhinandan: many times ... and I, just so that you know, I can recite the full Hanuman Chalisa from beginning to end
[01:30:44] Manisha: I just rattled that Bhoot Pichaas Nikat Nahi Aave Mahavir because I was scared- Naa Aawe Because I was
[01:30:47] Abhinandan: scared of
[01:30:48] Manisha: the, because you're scared of ghosts- Yeah
[01:30:51] Manisha: so you just learn that as a kid. That if you're s- feeling scared, you just say, "Bhoot Pichaas Nikat Nahi Aave Mahavir Jin Naam
[01:30:58] Abhinandan: Saune." Yeah. So but again, these are things that you learn even that because of every havan, Arya Samaj havan-
[01:31:04] BJP reel: Mm.
[01:31:05] Abhinandan: You know, "Dasse
[01:31:09] Abhinandan: vere, dasse vere, devere dhaya cha sman prajaya pashu-" I don't know what you said "... ma vachase na na." Yeah, when you do that-
[01:31:13] BJP reel: Yeah ... y-
[01:31:14] Abhinandan: you have- I also saw- My grandmother has made me sit from age one-
[01:31:17] Rinchen: Mm ...
[01:31:19] Abhinandan: to the time I was 16 or 17, after which I said, "I am not sitting." But even then no one listened. I was still made to sit.
[01:31:24] Abhinandan: Just by sitting there you-
[01:31:26] Rinchen: Pick it up
[01:31:27] Abhinandan: and learn ... it just gets stuck in your head. Yeah. But means nothing in my view. Vikas Kataria says, 495 words, Vikas. Um, I'll read the key parts. "Dear Abhinandan, I'm writing as one of News Laundry's earliest subscribers, someone who has supported the organization since its inception.
[01:31:43] Abhinandan: The current backlash over News Laundry's work culture is difficult to ignore, especially in the women employees context. My concern is not with hard work itself, but with how consistently your position seems to defend a particular idea of work should demand from people. You have argued today's generation is less willing to work as hard as previous generation.
[01:32:03] Abhinandan: Ambition and commitment matter, but there's a difference between valuing hard work and normalizing excessive hours, exhaustion, and personal sacrifices." And then you've gone on to say that the entire working harder is historically shaped by male privilege, so hard work is not the same for everybody. And also, I think, uh, you also spoke about, uh, Narayan Murthy and Shekhar Gupta.
[01:32:26] Abhinandan: In fact, I had said Narayan Murthy's position is a bit that you have to work 12, 14 hours. I said some people may want to, some people may not want to, and the outcomes are in that zone. But, uh, I have read your full mail. I hope News Laundry applies the same scrutiny to employ- employee power that applies to other entrenched power.
[01:32:43] Abhinandan: Hard work deserves respect, but so does the worker. Thank you for that, Vikas Kataria. And all these are being discussed by wonderful people like you and experts on HR and making workplaces more productive. Experts like you have written in. So if you are an expert on this subject, abhinandansakhi@gmail.com, write in.
[01:33:05] Abhinandan: We would like to get your lists 'cause the earlier subscriber who has great experience in this 25 years and has worked with many companies across the world- Would hopefully have some fantastic ideas. So if you are also an expert in the subject, do write in to us. The rest of the me-mails we'll take in the subscribers take and, uh, there was one about Zuhair Mamdani by the way.
[01:33:27] Abhinandan: I just wanna talk about that. I don't know if you guys are keeping a tab on American politics, but you should because there's a rise to prominence of a lot of Democratic socialist candidate. The name Abdul El-Sayed might be the next big thing after Zuhair Mamdani. Why is it that American political discourse always revolves around polls, which could include favorably ratings that even get sliced to different demographics?
[01:33:48] Abhinandan: Lack of trust or the institutions aren't allowed to prosper. I think it is because there's a huge market for polls here. If you are doing a poll on anything, you know, people will kind of take you more seriously. I mean, they have polls, like, every week on favorable rating of president, of-
[01:34:04] Rinchen: Yeah, uh,
[01:34:05] Abhinandan: very- On, like, everything.
[01:34:08] Rinchen: This stats-obsessed country.
[01:34:10] Manisha: But how- Which
[01:34:11] Abhinandan: in a, which in a sense is
[01:34:12] Rinchen: not a bad thing. It's good, yeah. It's not a bad thing. It's not a bad thing, actually. Like, it's ... And it sort of derives a lot from the sports culture as well, like the whole obsession with stats, numbers, um, and then of ... And a lot of the polling that they do, favorability ratings, uh, you know, and f- and, like, this...
[01:34:28] Rinchen: And it's regularly put out all the time. Um, but especially when during issues, when the, when the Iran thing was happening, favorability, what is... And it also, it's a good barometer to keep in terms of where the country is standing on these issues, where people are standing on these issues. So I...
[01:34:46] Rinchen: Stats-obsessed, I mean, uh, I sort of, I, I c- I know how it, it can be construed as something, you know. Yeah. But, uh, I-
[01:34:55] Abhinandan: It is, it is an imperfect k- kind of characterization, but- Yeah ... but g- generally, yes, I think it's accurate.
[01:35:02] Rinchen: Yeah.
[01:35:03] Abhinandan: Right. Let's get the recommendations of the week. Manisha, what are yours?
[01:35:06] Manisha: I have to recommend Atul's interview with Arundhati Roy.
[01:35:09] Manisha: Hmm.
[01:35:09] Abhinandan: Yeah.
[01:35:10] Manisha: Finally watched it. I think it's so lovely, and it's Arundhati in a way that you haven't seen her. Um, it's in Hindi, A. I think this is her first Hindi interview, and, uh, she's very endearing in Hindi. Like... And, and it's, it's very nostalgic. She's talking about growing up in an India which was very different from what it is today.
[01:35:27] Manisha: So it's really seeing her in a new light, and I'm really glad a Hindi audience will discover her, because I think all the Hindi audience gets to know about her is «Woi Naxal.»
[01:35:35] Rinchen: Mm.
[01:35:36] Manisha: ISI. Dimaagi naxal. Yeah. Ha. So you really see her, whatever you think of her politics, I think it's good to know the person, and I think Atul's done a fabulous job of the interview, so do check that out.
[01:35:46] Rinchen: My recommendation is, uh, the... Since we were discussing Mao and China- Mm ... uh, there is, uh, uh, em- the Empire series podcast, William Dalrymple's- Yeah ... uh, this thing, Anita Anand. Uh, the, the series, the, uh, of course there are almost hundreds of episodes now, but-
[01:36:04] BJP reel: Mm ...
[01:36:04] Rinchen: this set of episodes, uh, covering Chairman Mao- Mm
[01:36:07] Rinchen: uh, with the historian Rana Mitter, uh, who's, uh,
[01:36:08] BJP reel: I think he's a professor in Harvard- Mm
[01:36:14] Rinchen: Harvard Kennedy School. Um, it's an excellent, uh, sort of- deep dive, uh, discussion into, uh, Mao. I mean, from, from the, from the time, I mean, they do, and but what I would specifically recommend is the episode on the Cultural Revolution. I think that is a very, uh, for those who don't know much about the subject, I think it's a, it's a really cool subject to, uh, get into.
[01:36:39] Rinchen: And the second recommendation is, uh, Raghu Kannan's, so Sonia Gandhi's, uh-
[01:36:45] Manisha: Book's coming,
[01:36:46] Rinchen: yeah ... book is coming in October, November, I think.
[01:36:49] Manisha: Belonging. Uh,
[01:36:50] Rinchen: Belonging. Um, and, uh, but I was reading a piece by Raghu Kannan yesterday on The Atlantic that he wrote in 2017. Uh, short, not a profile, but a short piece on Sonia Gandhi, and it's, it's beautifully written.
[01:37:04] Rinchen: Uh- Mm ... I think I, I recommend that as well. I'll
[01:37:07] Manisha: check that out.
[01:37:07] Rinchen: Yeah.
[01:37:08] Abhinandan: So my recommendation is a podcast on Planet Money, which I was really fascinated how the same thing, you know, after years can be viewed differently. This is You Bet Your Life Insurance. It is a podcast on how there is a market, a legal market, for life insurance such as that if you have a insurance policy for, let's say, 100,000 rupees, and there'll be some bank or financial institution that can buy it from you today at 50,000, pay the rest of your premiums-
[01:37:43] BJP reel: Mm
[01:37:43] Abhinandan: and when you die, it comes to them.
[01:37:45] BJP reel: Mm.
[01:37:46] Abhinandan: So the interest is the earlier the person dies. Now, in the current telling of this entire financial instrument, it is being seen as almost something that is good. It adds to the value of life of people who have very little hope, but have an insurance policy, so they can have a decent life.
[01:38:06] Abhinandan: And it was heavily used for AIDS patients who were dying in the '80s, I think, is when this had become a thing.
[01:38:13] BJP reel: Mm. And
[01:38:13] Abhinandan: I was fascinated that the very same network 20 years ago, in two, 2007, 19 years ago, when the financial crash happened, had termed these things as death bonds, as something that is so evil that large companies were taking out life insurance policies against high-risk Black communities so that as they die, they get a big payout.
[01:38:35] Abhinandan: Now, the same instrument, because that time the world was coming to an end, Lehman had happened, so every financial instrument that was slightly weird was being demonized. Mm. And because 19 years have passed, now that same financial instrument as being seen as something that is benign and actually help communities.
[01:38:55] Abhinandan: Yeah. Which is to say how context can change the same thing so profoundly.
[01:39:01] BJP reel: Yeah.
[01:39:01] Abhinandan: So I would suggest you listen to this one, and do search the one on death bonds earlier and see how the same story is told if it's 19 years apart And the song that I have today is actually something that everybody had missed.
[01:39:16] Abhinandan: So we'll play the song, but I want to tell you the lyrics of it. It is from a film called Gully Boy.
[01:39:22] Manisha: Hmm.
[01:39:22] Abhinandan: The song is Azadi.
[01:39:24] Manisha: How have we missed? We didn't miss this.
[01:39:26] Abhinandan: No, no, as in, in all the telling of what makes a Maoist- Okay ... or what makes Naxal mentality. It should also be if this song is on your playlist.
[01:39:34] Manisha: Okay.
[01:39:34] Abhinandan: Because there is this lines, "Achha khaas, achchi vidhya chahiye hai, achha khaasa maal dena. Nal mein paani chahiye, khade reh le line mein na. Zameen apni par note dikha kar sign lena. Drugs laayein ye phir dhakele denge crime mein na. Akela insaan phir gaadi teri chaar kyun? Ghar mein hai char phir rooms tere aath kyun?
[01:39:56] Abhinandan: Paise se nahi bante kudrat se hum khaas kyun? Teri pidhi ka soche woh kaise lege saans kyun?" And then "Ik tarfa tarazu," then they talk about how, uh, about Netas. "Saara desh doobe inki naiya paar hai na." Hmm. So I was just thinking that-
[01:40:13] Manisha: Javed Akhtar, the Maggi Naxal.
[01:40:15] Abhinandan: This- Yeah ... how was this missed out? Yeah. I want to know.
[01:40:18] Abhinandan: So we shall leave you to consider this profound point with this song, and tell us what other songs should be included if they're on your playlist or the Maggi Naxal. So we'd like to thank our wonderful sound recordist, Anil, our wonderful producer, Amit, and Saurabh. Thank you all. Enjoy your weekend, and thank you panel.
[01:40:35] Song: Haan mera bhai ye toh noto ki sarkar hai na. Note se banate apne beto ko ye star hai na. Kitne bekar kyun ye aapas mein jhangar hai na. Baki pura desh doobe inki naiya paar hai na. Achchi vidhya chahiye, achha khaasa maal dena. Nal mein paani chahiye, khade reh le line mein na. Zameen apni par note dikha kar sign lena.
[01:40:50] Song: Drugs laayein ye phir dhakele denge crime mein na. Akela insaan phir gaadi teri chaar kyun? Ghar mein hai char phir rooms tere aath kyun? Paiso se nahi bante kudrat se hum khaas kyun? Teri pidhi ka soch woh kaise lenge saans kyun?
[01:41:09] Manisha: Thank you for your subscription. You're changing the world by changing the way news is funded. For the smoothest News Laundry experience, download the News Laundry app. It is the best way to listen to our paywall podcasts. And you'll also get access to all free News Laundry shows. Keep us ad-free and subscriber-funded.
[01:41:28] Manisha: Help us grow. Tell people who listen to you to pay to keep news free. Subscribe to News Laundry. Keep journalism independent
Also Read
-
Exclusive: Inside the bulk objections targeting Muslims in Uttarakhand’s SIR
-
TV Newsance 350 | Got a brain? You might be a ‘Dimaagi Naxal’
-
Assam’s ad spend tripled after Himanta became CM. Media group linked to his wife got Rs 20 cr
-
Bills passed in 3 minutes, 9 with no LS MPs speaking: Parliament’s growing scrutiny gap
-
Hafta letters: A concerned subscriber, Modiji and singing Vande Mataram