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On August 15, 2026, addressing the nation from the ramparts of the Red Fort on India’s 80th Independence Day, Prime Minister Narendra Modi delivered what began as a familiar note of triumphalism. His 75-minute speech revolved around self-reliance, technological power, manufacturing, energy security, defence, youth and the new “Sapta Dhara” strategy. The most striking feature was his repeated invocation of Atmanirbharta, despite its glaring contradiction: his government’s deepening India’s integration into the US-led economic and strategic order. In February 2026, he agreed to intend to purchase $500 billion of US goods over five years – energy, aircraft, technology and other products. The speech also treated self-reliance as a matter of will. But technological and economic autonomy requires institutions, human capital, research, education, labour rights, domestic demand, technological ecosystems and bargaining power – not empty exhortation.

Equally striking was the avalanche of statistics: electronic manufacturing ‘up seven-fold,’ rail coach output ‘up 21 times’ — that carefully avoided the less flattering aggregate: manufacturing’s share of India’s GDP has fallen to around 13%, its lowest point in over 60 years of data, even as the government marked its 13th consecutive Independence Day address with a newly unveiled ‘Shakti Ki Saptadhara’, his penchant for such illusive sanskari phrases.

Yet, a report card of outputs is not an assessment of the nation. The speech scarcely asked who gained or lost, what remained unfinished, or how India fares on employment, wages, agrarian distress, inequality, education, malnutrition, caste discrimination, communal polarisation, institutional erosion, civil liberties or press freedom, which is all time low today. And finally, his repeated invocation of “Viksit Bharat by 2047” conveniently pushes accountability beyond his political horizon. The people have given him a five-year mandate, not a 21-one-year exemption from accountability. The speech offered grandiose horizons where the present demanded answers.

Among the full blown rhetoric about the performance, one thing stuck out: Naxalism, he said, had once “drenched the earth in blood,” holding a large part of the country hostage “at the barrel of a gun” for four decades. He announced, not for the first time, that his government had all but finished the job: “we have been able to curb and free the country from ‘hathiyariya naxal’ (armed naxal).” It was the sentence that followed which turned an anniversary speech into a national controversy. “But the ‘dimagi naxal’ (people with naxal thinking) are looking for an opportunity, looking to see ways of violence, and trying to drag the country to a wrong path,” the prime minister said, calling for such people to be “identified and isolated.”

He added, by way of explanation, that for years “individuals harbouring Maoist ideologies had entrenched themselves within the corridors of power… through their roles as advisors on government committees,” and that this “Maoist mindset” had shaped policymaking across institutions. Within hours, the phrase “dimagi naxal” was the most argued-over two words in Indian politics.

The BJP’s obsession with the term “Naxal” has deeper ideological roots in the RSS worldview articulated by M.S. Golwalkar in Bunch of Thoughts, which identified three supposed internal enemies of the nation: Muslims, Christians and communists. The first two have a long history of political exploitation, with Muslims in particular serving during the past 12 years as a potent instrument of communal polarisation and political consolidation. The third has been invoked through the spectre of Maoist violence, made particularly convenient by the earlier official description of Naxalism as the “biggest internal security threat” to India. None of this justifies violence. But the principle cannot be applied selectively to those resisting state power. When the state itself uses violence to suppress legitimate demands, dispossess people and devastate their lives in order to transfer natural resources to corporations, it becomes a principal generator of the........

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