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I think I would have been 12 or 13 when I first came across the word Naxal. I doubt if I grasped its meaning although the papers of the late 1960s were full of it. I was aware they were a bunch of people terrorising the good folk of Bengal. But at school in Dehradun – where I would only casually and occasionally read the papers – it felt a long way away.

In the early 70s it became a more meaningful term. The new headmaster’s son, Dilip Simeon, was a Naxalite and underground at the time. Years later when he became a professor at Delhi University, I’m told he was hugely popular because of his past. It made him a hero. A sort of real life Robin Hood.

So last weekend when the prime minister spoke of the threat of “dimaagi naxals” I wasn’t sure what precisely he meant. I understood the words but the phrase felt vague, arbitrary and undefined. Was it a case of Humpty Dumpty telling Alice in Through the Looking-Glass “when I use a word it means just........

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