“Decoding The Modern-Day ‘Dimagi Naxal'”, News18, August 20, 2026.

“Naxalism was never merely a gun in the jungle. For decades, it survived as an ecosystem.

The Maoist with an assault rifle was its visible hardware. But behind that hardware existed a sophisticated ideological software: activists, intellectuals, lawyers and political sympathisers who repeatedly questioned the legitimacy of the Indian State’s response, romanticised revolutionary violence, opposed development projects in conflict zones and often converted the fight against a brutal insurgency into a morality play in which the State was perpetually cast as the villain.

This is the phenomenon Prime Minister Narendra Modi has described as the “Dimagi Naxal.”

The phrase deserves serious examination because the phenomenon is not new. Its vocabulary has evolved, its protagonists have changed and its methods have become more sophisticated. But the underlying instinct remains remarkably consistent: distrust the Indian State, delegitimise its institutions, obstruct development and, whenever confronted with the consequences, shift attention from the violence of the insurgent to the supposed sins of the State……………………”

Read the full article at News18.