From the ramparts of the Red Fort on Independence Day, Prime Minister Narendra Modi made a distinction that deserves attention. India, he said, had succeeded in eliminating armed Naxalism, but warned of “dimaagi Naxals”, people who continue to carry the Maoist mindset even after the gun has been defeated.
I listened with particular interest. On February 9 this year, a day after Home Minister Amit Shah said Naxalism had reached the verge of its end, I wrote an article titled Naxalism on the Verge of End? I Beg to Differ, Mr Home Minister.
My argument was simple: “Naxalism is not merely a 303 gun. It is a method, it is an ideology which is not dead. It is changing forms and shapes.”
I added: “By this definition, Naxalism has not vanished; it has evolved.”
Six months later, the Prime Minister has, in different words, raised essentially the same question. Can an ideology be declared dead merely because its armed organisation has been defeated?
The Government deserves full credit for its success against armed Maoism. For decades, parts of central and eastern India lived under guns, landmines, extortion and parallel authority. Security personnel, tribal communities and ordinary citizens paid a terrible price. In May, Amit Shah declared that India had become Naxal-free, marking the collapse of the organised armed challenge.
But the defeat of an insurgency is not necessarily the defeat of the thinking that sustained it.
Traditional Naxalism was easy to identify: the red flag, the gun, the underground cadre, the forest hideout and the language of revolution. Its new variants need not resemble that picture.
The rifle can be replaced by the smartphone. The pamphlet can become a viral reel. The jungle meeting can become a podcast, a campus platform or a digital campaign. As I wrote in February, “Gun shoots one, a YouTube podcast, a reel hits thousands.”
The objective too can evolve. It may no longer be the physical overthrow of the state. Permanent distrust of institutions, romanticising disruption, blocking development as a reflex and converting every grievance into confrontation can also hollow out governance. Anarchy need not always arrive with an armed squad. It can also be created by making normal governance, investment and public life permanently impossible.
This is where a very important caution is necessary.
Criticism of government is not Naxalism. Protest is not Naxalism. A farmer demanding a better price, a student questioning authority, a journalist exposing wrongdoing or an opposition party challenging the government is exercising a democratic right. If “dimaagi Naxal” becomes a convenient label for every dissenter, it will damage democracy and ultimately strengthen extremist narratives.
The distinction must therefore be between dissent and deliberate destabilisation, degradation of the government, defaming the nation.
Punjab makes this distinction especially important.
In my February article, I argued that Punjab did not face forest-based insurgency but was vulnerable to a subtler politics of permanent agitation, where social media, campuses, toll plazas, protest sites and development projects could become the new battlefield.
The red flag need not always remain red. It can turn green. The mutation from red to green is something to keep a watch on.
That does not mean the green flag of a farmer organisation is Naxalite. I come from the farmers’ movement myself and know its democratic history. But ideological groups can appropriate genuine causes. The danger begins when the farmer becomes a shield for forces whose real objective is not agricultural reform but permanent confrontation with institutions, investment and development and objective of anarchy.
Punjab cannot afford a culture in which every project (industry) becomes suspect, every investor an exploiter (a thief), every road a protest site and every government (state or central) decision a conspiracy. A society cannot live permanently at a dharna. Nor can a state seeking jobs for its youth treat disruption as a substitute for policy.
Interestingly, Amit Shah himself had earlier acknowledged this distinction. In September 2025, he said the fight would not end until society understood those providing ideological, legal and financial support to Naxalism. The Government therefore appears increasingly to distinguish between armed Maoism and the ecosystem of ideas that can survive it.
Modi’s phrase “dimaagi Naxals” brings that distinction sharply into public debate.
The armed battle may have been won. The battle of ideas has not. It has mutated.
And that battle cannot be won by police action alone. Ideas must be defeated by better ideas, better communication, better social media out reach. False narratives require facts and aggressively countered. Genuine grievances require solutions. Development must be fair, and democratic institutions must remain open enough that extremists cannot monopolise public anger.
The Naxalite carrying the gun may be disappearing.
The method can survive without one.
The jungle may have been cleared. The battle of the mind has only begun.