(George Orwell)
“The other is hell,” said Albert Camus. It was quite an existential statement. But in the hands of Edward Said, the “Other” became the one who is forced into hell. For the survival of any ideology, there has to be an “Other”—someone against whom we define ourselves. It makes us believe that our survival depends on comparison. We other, therefore we are.
Yesterday, when the Prime Minister spoke to the nation on the occasion of the 80th Independence anniversary from the ramparts of the historic Red Fort, he once again created another “Other”: the Dimagee Naxal, or the “mentally Naxal.”
The Prime Minister, however, did not pinpoint who these Dimagee Naxals are. Nor, unlike an earlier infamous political remark, did he suggest that they could be identified by their clothes.
Dimagee Naxal is the latest contestable term to enter our political vocabulary. The Prime Minister could have meant several things by it. Perhaps he meant “Urban Naxals”—the so-called Naxals who live in cities. But these are not the gun-wielding, emaciated young men and women in the forests of Bastar or Dandakaranya who have taken Maoism as their political faith and way of life.
Urban Naxals, in the contemporary political imagination, are more likely to be intellectuals, academics, students, writers and citizens who think differently from the dominant ideology—in our case, the dominant right-wing Hindutva ideology. They have previously been described as “anti-nationals,” members of “tukde-tukde gangs,” and by many other labels.
In the immediate political context, however, Dimagee Naxal could mean something else altogether. It could refer to the educated, jobless and frustrated youth of India—the very people who can be easily identified because they think, speak sense and assert their logic.
They want democracy. They want fraternity. Their primary demand is remarkably ordinary: decent jobs that allow them to fulfil their dreams and take care of their families. The government has offered plenty of promises, but very little that addresses this immediate anxiety. And, interestingly, this particular goalpost cannot simply be pushed twenty years into the future, to 2047.
Ever since the BJP-led NDA government came to power at the Centre in 2014, its political rhetoric has relied heavily on hyper-nationalism. To maintain that rhetoric at the same intensity, it has required a constant production of “Others.”
First, it was Pakistan. Then Indian Muslims—an established “Other” in Indian majoritarian politics since the late nineteenth century. Then China and Chinese products. Then students raising slogans of “Azadi.” Then beef eaters. Then those who did not consider the cow their mother. Later came Maoists and “Urban Naxals.” Then anyone who appeared too sensible, too educated or too questioning.
The list went on.
But now the process of “othering” appears exhausted. There are only so many Others one can manufacture.
Pakistan does not seem interested in constantly providing the enemy image that Indian political rhetoric requires. China plays its own strategic game, intelligently combining military pressure, trade and diplomacy. Indian Muslims have been forced to negotiate with a political reality that has repeatedly diminished their sense of security and belonging. Intellectuals and professors have been intimidated. Beef politics has transformed what people eat into a political question. Urban Naxals continue to write autobiographies, essays and books to record their experiences.
So the ruling party needs a new category.
And like Hollywood, which periodically needs to invent an alien threat when terrestrial enemies become insufficient, our political imagination seems to have arrived at something even more abstract:
The Dimagee Naxal.
The term needs some qualification. “Dimagee” suggests someone with a brain—someone who thinks, questions and acts. “Naxal” suggests the perpetual disruptor, the person who asks uncomfortable questions about justice, equality and rights.
But how does one identify a Dimagee?
A man with a beard, or a woman with kohl-lined eyes and unconventional clothes, might be taken for an intellectual. But appearance does not make an intellectual. A thinking person could look completely ordinary, without sending out any visible signal that says: I am brainy.
And therein lies the problem.
If the “Dimagee Naxal” is defined by thought rather than appearance, then virtually anyone can become one.
Our governments have historically been uncomfortable with education and independent thinking because education teaches people to ask questions. And where there are questions, there is the possibility of dissent, resistance and, eventually, political change.
The old feudal order, codified through texts such as the Manusmriti, placed severe restrictions on who could access knowledge. In contemporary India, one can see echoes of this anxiety in the systematic politicisation, weakening and restructuring of schooling and higher education.
The Dimagee Naxal also resonates disturbingly with George Orwell’s idea of the Thought Police.
In 1984, Orwell imagined a totalitarian state in which the government does not merely police actions or words—it polices thought itself. Surveillance becomes permanent. Movements are monitored. Words are scrutinised. Rooms are bugged. Telephones are tapped. People are watched. And eventually, even an unexpressed thought can become evidence of a crime.
We seem to have arrived, rather smoothly, at the threshold of that Orwellian condition.
Perhaps the Dimagee Naxal is the final stage in the politics of “othering”: when there are no more convincing external enemies left, the enemy becomes thought itself.
Anybody can now potentially be accused of a thought crime.
Be ready for it.
What is the next stop? I do not know.
But history tells us that regimes built entirely on the production of enemies eventually begin to consume themselves. The politics of permanent othering ultimately turns inward; the regime starts devouring the very society it claims to protect.
So, beyond all the expected calamities, perhaps there is a small silver lining around the clouds.
The final Other may eventually become the regime itself.
JohnyML
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