Dimagi Naxal: Why is Chidambaram so uncomfortable?

That episode should never be reduced to a political talking point. Seventy-six security personnel were not statistics. They were Indians sent into one of the country's most dangerous theatres of internal conflict. Their deaths exposed serious operational and intelligence failures. Chidambaram acknowledged the gravity of the failure himself.

And yet, the same former Home Minister now wears the description “dimagi Naxal” as a badge of pride.
There is something profoundly disturbing about that political posture. Chidambaram may argue that “dimagi Naxal” refers only to intellectual dissent and not to support for violence. But the Maoist movement is not simply an academic proposition. Its ideological foundation has historically been linked to armed revolutionary violence and the rejection of India's constitutional democratic system. Thousands of security personnel and civilians have paid with their lives.

Indeed, during Chidambaram's own tenure, the government was struggling to contain precisely this threat. In May 2010, following another deadly Maoist attack in Dantewada, Chidambaram offered talks if the Maoists suspended violence for 72 hours, saying that security operations would also be halted during that period. Dialogue in a democracy is legitimate. But when dealing with an armed organisation committed to violence, the first responsibility of the Home Minister is to protect the state, its citizens and its security personnel. The record of that period was hardly one of decisive victory. Major Maoist attacks continued, including the killing of 76 CRPF personnel.

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Chidambaram, therefore, needs to answer a simple question. Does he take pride in the ideology that the country spent decades fighting, or is he merely playing word games at the expense of the memory of those killed by Maoist violence? His political response becomes even more difficult to defend because former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh had himself described Naxalism as the country's “biggest internal security threat” in 2006. The Congress position today cannot simultaneously treat Maoism as a grave national-security threat and celebrate identification with the intellectual category associated with it.

There is another uncomfortable chapter in his record. The 2011 Mumbai bombings occurred during his tenure as Home Minister, despite the extensive security restructuring undertaken after 26/11. Questions were subsequently raised over intelligence coordination and security preparedness. And 26/11 itself remains an important part of the Chidambaram legacy not because he was Home Minister when the attack occurred, but because he took charge immediately afterwards. Years later, his own remarks about the UPA government's decision not to retaliate militarily against Pakistan reignited questions about the strategic choices made after the Mumbai attacks.

The larger irony is difficult to miss. A man who occupied India's most important internal-security office during one of the most violent phases of the Maoist insurgency now appears eager to appropriate the very label that the Prime Minister uses to describe the ideological ecosystem sustaining such extremism. This is not intellectual courage. Chidambaram and his Congress party demonstrate their ideology, where national unity and integrity has no space.

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There is nothing heroic about romanticising an ideology whose violent expression destroyed villages, targeted elected representatives, killed policemen and paralysed development in some of India's poorest regions. Intellectual dissent is a constitutional right. Maoist violence is not. And dressing up an extremist ideology in the language of intellectual sophistication does not make it democratic.
Chidambaram should therefore stop congratulating himself for being a “dimagi Naxal” and answer the harder questions.

What did his government achieve against Maoist violence? Why did the Dantewada disaster happen under his watch? Why did he accept responsibility for it? Why did his government continue to face devastating Maoist attacks despite its counter-insurgency strategy? Most importantly, what does he actually mean by being “proud” of the label? The armed Naxal is being pushed out of the jungle. That is precisely why the ideological Naxal is becoming politically uncomfortable. The gun is losing its battle. The argument is shifting to the mind. And Chidambaram has voluntarily announced which side of that argument he wants to stand on. That may have been intended as a witty political comeback. Instead, it has become an invitation to examine his own record. If being a “dimagi Naxal” is something to be proud of, Chidambaram owes the nation an explanation not a slogan.