Ever since the arrest of revolutionary writer Varavara Rao and other intellectuals and activists, there has been a new "dirty word" in India: “Urban Naxal”. While the Communist Party of India (Maoist) is officially banned and its members and sympathizers ("Naxalites") are openly prosecuted as "terrorists" or "left-wing extremists", "Urban Naxal" has so far mainly been a battle concept of psychological warfare of the old Indian state.
"Urban Naxalites" are "urban intellectuals, influencers or activists of importance" who in some way have a problem with the old Indian state. What the Indian government is currently doing is trying to connect those intellectuals in public directly with the comrades who lead the People's War in India, to be able to act as harshly as possible against any opponent in the cities. Because – until now - for the public, the Maoists were so far people who moved and have unfolded their work exclusively in the countryside, in tribal villages. But with the progress of work, which is now developing at universities and cities, the old state must urgently find new ways to denounce the glorious People's War, to spread the term “Urban Naxal” is therefore an important step. This is also reflected in the numerous arrests that have already taken place this year, under the pretext of cleverly staging an alleged murder plot against Prime Minister Modi. The most recent case is certainly the arrest of Varavara Rao and other activists and intellectuals at the end of August, who are all still under house arrest. What the old state wants to achieve is that everyone is afraid to raise their voices. "Urban Naxal" shall become an expression that stands for terrorism and if you are an "Urban Naxal", then you end up in jail. Meanwhile, richer families even flee from India because they are afraid of the prime minister's tyranny of persecution. The supposed blow against the "terrorist" intellectuals was therefore a cut into the own flesh, because now a lot of tax money slips through their greedy fingers.
It is not the first time that the Indian state has attempted, through the use of certain words, to influence the public image of justified struggles. Also, the public image of the advancing struggle of the Dalit, one of India's most oppressed populations, the old Indian state has been trying to modify. In TV reports, the Dalits - a strong, militant word among which 200 million Indians are to be counted - should rather be called "scheduled caste", a term used in the Indian caste system to refer to the lowest social class.
But the voices against the old Indian state are growing and they’re getting louder, in the countryside and in the cities. In the Social networks massive solidarity campaigns with the recently arrested "Urban Naxalites", such as Varavara Rao, have been launched. Through various organizations, including student and alumni groups, the denunciation campaign of the old Indian state is unmasked in front of the people. With every action against those who uphold the justified struggle and stand up for it, the old Indian state creates even more of its own enemies, incites the people more and more against the reactionary forces and ensures that they join the only struggle that will in the end free the masses from exploitation and oppression completely, the People's War.
