The violent clashes that took place in internationally acclaimed Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) in the Capital of India on January 5, was a part of the chain of well-planned events. A few weeks ago, similar violence was unleashed by groups of students asking rollback of the Citizenship Amendment Act in Jamia Millia Islamia University in Delhi. The Aligarh Muslim University (AMU) has also witnessed similar incidents.

The reason for this backlash is simple. The Left and the Islamic fundamentalists have been marginalised electorally, politically and institutionally in India. This started with Narendra Modi-led government coming to power in 2014. Modi government ensured that the Left and the Islamic fundamentalists should stop feeding on state’s resources, so they gradually made to move them out of the government’s institutions where they had been well entrenched for decades.

The resounding victory of Modi and Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in 2019 general elections sounded a final death knell for the ecosystem built by the radical elements through government resources. University campuses are the only space where the Left and the Islamic fundamentalists still remain entrenched. Thus the violence which we are witnessing in the university campuses is actually a manifestation of the push back from this nexus of radical elements against the present establishment.

To understand the grand design or the big picture of these radical elements, one needs to go through a strategy blueprint titled ‘Urban Perspective’. Prepared in 2004, by CPI (Maoist), the banned ultra-left outfit in India, this document gives threadbare details of the plan to use urban spaces, especially university campuses to create a strong base for ‘Urban Naxals’. The ultimate aim is to create chaos so that the Naxals can take over the Indian state. This document came into light in 2018 when Pune Police arrested a group of ‘Urban Naxals’ from five different cities.

The new strategy of this nexus focuses on a six-stage approach called SAARRC – survey, awareness, agitation, recruitment, resistance and control. The first stage of this strategy was completed by identifying the target groups, potential areas of discontent and flash-points in urban areas.

The second and third stage is currently under progress. That is why we are witnessing violent incidents in the University campuses. In a detailed article in Mainstream Weekly titled ’Metastasis of Naxal Network in Urban India’ author Sudhansu Bhandari details Naxal urban strategy. He writes:

“This is achieved through the creation of the following types of frontal organisations":

(1) Secret revolutionary mass organisations, (2) Open and semi-open revolutionary mass organisations, and (3) Open legal mass organisations, which are not directly linked to the party. Urban work within the third type of organisations can further be subdivided into three broad categories: (a) fractional work, (b) partly-formed cover organisations, and (c) legal democratic organisations.”

To understand further, one needs to look at the historical context also. As an ideology wherever Left has been influential, there has been unabated violence. ‘The Balck Book of Communism: Crime, Terror, Repression’ provides a detailed account of the macabre tactics of the left:

“Many archives and witnesses prove conclusively that terror has always been one of the basic ingredients of modern Communism. Let us abandon once and for all the idea that the execution of hostages by firing squads, the slaughter of rebellious workers, and the forced starvation of the peasantry were only short-term “accidents” peculiar to a specific country or era. Our approach will encompass all geographic areas and focus on crime as a defining characteristic of the Communist system throughout its existence”

It further gives details of the number of people killed by the Communist regimes globally.

“The following rough approximation, based on unofficial estimates, gives some sense of the scale and gravity of these crimes":



USSR: 20 million deaths

China: 65 million deaths

Vietnam: 1 million deaths

North Korea: 2 million deaths

Cambodia: 2 million deaths

Eastern Europe: 1 million deaths

Latin America: 150,000 deaths

Africa: 1.7 million deaths

Afghanistan: 1.5 million deaths

The international Communist movement and Communist parties not in power: about 10,000 deaths

The total approaches 100 million people killed.”



One look at the above numbers reveals the reason behind violence on campuses unleashed by the Left. It has become even more lethal than ever before because now they have a nexus with the Islamic fundamentalists also. Together they are unleashing violence on campuses of Indian universities. The sooner this nexus is broken, the better it would be for Indian universities as well as society.



(Views expressed above are the personal views of the author and do not reflect the views of ZMCL)





