Vivek Agnihotri, a Bollywood filmmaker who made films such as Dhan Dhana Dhan Goal, Hate Story and Buddha In A Traffic Jam, is receiving flak on social media for launching a campaign to help the central government curb dissent. On August 28, after five activists were arrested by the Pune Police in connection with the Bhima Koregaon violence in January this year, Agnihotri urged ‘young bright minds’ on Twitter to make a ‘list’ of those who were defending ‘Urban Naxals’, a group he refers to as ‘invisible enemies of India’.
I want some bright young people to make a list of all those who are defending #UrbanNaxals Let’s see where it leads. If you want to volunteer with commitment, pl DM me. @squintneon would you like to take the lead?
— Vivek Agnihotri (@vivekagnihotri) August 28, 2018
10 yrs of selfless service, research, sacrifice, struggle, hardship and general ridicule by #UrbanNaxals did not stop these young people to expose India’s biggest internal security threat, specially when #UrbanNaxals control everything.
— Vivek Agnihotri (@vivekagnihotri) August 30, 2018
Agnihotri coined the term ‘Urban Naxals’ through his 2017 book of the same title. In his essay series on Swarajya Magazine, he calls Urban Naxals the “invisible enemies of India, some of them have been caught or those who are under the police radar on the charge of spreading insurgency against the Indian state.” The word is now used by some mainstream media outlets to refer to intellectuals, students, activists, writers and lawyers who are actively involved in social issues, and openly express their dissent with the policies of the ruling party and its subsidiaries.
The Supreme Court, on the same day of the arrest, told Pune police that the five arrested – poet and Maoist ideologue Varavara Rao, activists Sudha Bharadwaj, Arun Fereira, Gautam Navlakha and Vernon Gonsalves – be kept under house arrest till the next hearing, and turned down the prosecution’s demand to leave them in police custody. “Dissent is the safety valve of democracy. If you don’t allow the safety valve pressure cooker will burst,” said the five-judge bench led by the Chief Justice of India Dipak Misra, while issuing a notice to the Maharashtra government and other parties on the arrest of the activists, and sought their replies by September 6.
On Twitter, many were shocked and outraged by Agnihotri’s tweet:
Still trying to wrap my head around this tweet. This is dark stuff. ‘Let’s see where it leads’ are the five worst words I’ve heard. https://t.co/aOF3sibJyN
— Vikramaditya Motwane (@VikramMotwane) August 29, 2018
Meanwhile, Agnihotri’s call for identifying and enlisting names of dissenters gathered momentum, and people started making and circulating lists as this:
Anti India Gang. pic.twitter.com/FAjQpEYDHc
— योगीwithTrident (@RishiTri76) August 29, 2018
Countering Agnihotri’s attempt, Pratik Sinha, the founder of Alt News, a website designed to bust fake news, started a hashtag trend #MeTooUrbanNaxal.
Hey @vivekagnihotri, I volunteer to be on your list. Let’s tag @vivekagnihotri with the hashtag #MeTooUrbanNaxal and help him build his list. We should all help this man in his noble endeavour. https://t.co/zY1Azarv8l
— Pratik Sinha (@free_thinker) August 29, 2018
After thousands of people started tweeting on the hashtag, Agnihotri reacted:
Hey @squintneon you and your team of committed youth may not have to do any work as people are volunteering to be a part of the list on their own. If nothing else, you will have a list of stupid liberals by the end of the day. https://t.co/TP5o7G7WuA
— Vivek Agnihotri (@vivekagnihotri) August 29, 2018
On the same day, News Laundry website’s Abhinandan Sekhri interviewed Agnihotri on the concept of urban naxals, on his claim that an overwhelmingly high percentage of India is overrun by Maoists, and about JNU. In the interview teaser, Sekhri is also seen grilling him on the statistics he used to explain the idea of urban naxals.
Watch the teaser here:
