Enough Speeches, Mr Modi: Defund the Leftist Institutions You Blame for ‘Dimaagi Naxals’
Prime Minister Narendra Modi used the Red Fort on Independence Day to issue a striking warning. Armed Naxalism, he said, had been pushed to the brink, but another danger remained. He called them “dimaagi Naxals” — ideological Naxals who, according to him, are searching for opportunities to promote violence and anarchy, drag society down the wrong path and mislead India’s youth.
His prescription was equally unambiguous: identify them and isolate them.
Fine, Mr Modi.
But there is an obvious question that follows.
Who exactly do you expect to do this?
The salaried employee paying income tax? The small businessman filing GST returns? The middle-class family paying taxes on practically everything it earns, saves and consumes?
What power does the ordinary Indian possess to dismantle an ideological network inside a Central University?
None.
The common man does not appoint vice-chancellors. He does not decide UGC grants. He does not determine Central University policy. He cannot restructure departments, investigate the use of public money, impose financial conditions on institutions or decide whether organisations operating from taxpayer-funded campuses should continue enjoying those facilities.
Your government can.
And that is precisely where the Prime Minister’s Independence Day warning starts becoming uncomfortable.
Narendra Modi has governed India since May 2014. More than twelve years later, he cannot talk about the growth of hostile ideological movements inside institutions financed by his own government as though he were an opposition leader helplessly watching from the sidelines.
If “dimaagi Naxals” are truly a danger to India, then act.
Otherwise, repeatedly invoking them before the electorate begins to look less like governance and more like a sympathy card.
The Government Is Not Watching From Outside — It Pays the Bills
Let us dispense with the impression that we are talking only about obscure private activist organisations operating beyond the government’s reach.
Consider the universities at the centre of repeated Left-wing student mobilisation: Jawaharlal Nehru University, University of Hyderabad, Pondicherry University, Jamia Millia Islamia, Aligarh Muslim University, English and Foreign Languages University and Maulana Azad National Urdu University.
All seven are Central Universities under the Union higher-education framework.
This distinction matters enormously.
These are not institutions for which Narendra Modi can simply point towards a hostile state government and wash his hands of responsibility.
They belong to the Central University structure.
The Union government provides the funding architecture.
And across several of these campuses, organised Left-wing student movements have not exactly concealed themselves.
That does not mean every professor at JNU is a Leftist. It does not mean every student at Hyderabad University is a communist. It certainly does not establish that every person protesting a government policy is a Naxal.
But that is not the allegation being made here.
The allegation is that taxpayer-funded Central Universities have repeatedly provided the institutional space in which organised Left movements have recruited, mobilised, protested and challenged major decisions of the Indian state — while the same government financing those universities periodically warns the nation about dangerous Left-wing ideological forces.
That contradiction belongs to Narendra Modi.
JNU: How Much More Evidence Does a Government Need?
No institution illustrates the contradiction better than JNU.
For decades, JNU has been one of India’s most visible centres of organised Left student politics. Its student union has repeatedly been controlled by Left organisations, and groups such as AISA, SFI and others have exercised substantial political influence on campus.
Then came February 2016.
An event connected with Afzal Guru — executed after his conviction in the 2001 Parliament attack case — triggered allegations of anti-India sloganeering, arrests, a sedition case and a nationwide debate about nationalism inside JNU.
Whether every allegation made during that episode ultimately survived judicial scrutiny is a separate question. What cannot seriously be disputed is that JNU became the national symbol of a much larger political argument over how far radical campus activism could go.
Then Narendra Modi won another election.
And the funding continued.
Then came Article 370.
And the pattern became impossible to ignore.
Article 370 Should Have Been the Wake-Up Call
On August 5, 2019, the Modi government effectively ended Jammu and Kashmir’s special constitutional status under Article 370.
For the BJP, this was not some routine administrative decision. It was presented as the fulfilment of one of the party’s oldest ideological commitments and a historic step towards the complete constitutional integration of Jammu and Kashmir with India.
Yet inside Central Universities funded by the same Indian government, organised opposition quickly emerged.
At JNU, the confrontation became particularly stark.
When Union Minister Jitendra Singh came to the university in October 2019 for a seminar titled “Abrogation of Article 370: Peace, Stability and Development in Jammu, Kashmir and Ladakh,” activists associated with the Left-wing AISA protested against him and demanded restoration of Jammu and Kashmir’s special status.
The Left-dominated JNUSU also condemned the government’s approach.
Read that again.
The Union government changed Article 370.
A Union minister entered a Central University to defend the decision.
An organised Left student movement inside that taxpayer-funded institution demonstrated against him and demanded restoration of the previous arrangement.
Yet years later Narendra Modi stands at the Red Fort warning the population about “dimaagi Naxals”.
Mr Modi, what exactly did you think was happening all these years?
Hyderabad: The Left Was Not Hiding
The University of Hyderabad provides another revealing example.
Following the Article 370 decision, political activity concerning Kashmir became contentious on campus. Students attempted to hold discussions and protests, while the university administration restricted some of those activities. A planned panel discussion on Article 370 had its permission withdrawn and was subsequently conducted outside the auditorium.
Again, nobody had to conduct a forensic investigation to discover that Left politics existed on these campuses.
The ideological organisations were public.
The mobilisation was public.
The political objectives were public.
And the institution was publicly funded.
If Narendra Modi believes there is a distinction between legitimate democratic Left-wing politics and the “dimaagi Naxals” he says are attempting to lead young Indians towards destructive paths, then it is his responsibility to tell the country where that line lies and who has crossed it.
Do not leave the definition deliberately vague and then ask 1.4 billion Indians to identify the enemy.
You are the government.
Identify them.
Pondicherry University: SFI Took the Fight Directly to Article 370
Pondicherry University makes the argument still harder to dismiss as speculation.
In August 2019, the Students’ Federation of India organised a protest against the Union government’s Article 370 decision at Pondicherry University. Contemporary reporting documented the SFI protest and an ensuing confrontation with ABVP members.
Again, the significance is not that opposing Article 370 automatically makes somebody a Naxal.
It does not.
The significance is that an explicitly Left organisation was able to organise politically against one of the Modi government’s defining decisions from inside a Central University.
The Prime Minister is now telling India that Left-wing ideological forces capable of misleading young people must be isolated.
Then the obvious response is:
Start with the institutions you fund.
Jamia and AMU: Article 370 Was Not an Isolated Episode
At Jamia Millia Islamia, Kashmiri students publicly refused an official lunch invitation in August 2019 as a protest against the removal of Article 370.
At Aligarh Muslim University, four Kashmiri students were issued show-cause notices after a protest connected to Kashmir and Article 370.
Then came the Citizenship Amendment Act.
Jamia and AMU became two of the most prominent university centres of the anti-CAA agitation in December 2019. The protests, police action and ensuing confrontation turned both campuses into national political flashpoints.
The point is not that protesting CAA constitutes anti-national activity.
The point is the recurring political pattern.
Article 370.
CAA.
NRC.
Kashmir.
Campus screenings.
Student strikes.
Ideological organisations.
Repeated confrontations over some of the Modi government’s most important policies.
At what stage does the Union government stop behaving as though these institutions exist in a different country over which it has no influence?
Stop Asking the Common Man to Solve a Government Problem
This is where Modi’s Independence Day argument collapses under its own weight.
Suppose the Prime Minister is entirely correct.
Suppose there really is an organised “dimaagi Naxal” phenomenon.
Suppose people are attempting to capture young minds, promote revolutionary ideology, encourage disorder and create political movements hostile to the Indian state.
What exactly should an ordinary Indian do tomorrow morning?
He cannot stop a university grant.
He cannot restructure JNU.
He cannot investigate a publicly funded centre.
He cannot audit a student organisation.
He cannot change UGC regulations.
He cannot impose conditions on Central funding.
He cannot initiate institutional reform.
He cannot remove an administrator who repeatedly permits public infrastructure to become an ideological battlefield.
Narendra Modi can.
The Ministry of Education can.
The UGC can.
Parliament can.
The Union government can.
This is therefore not primarily the common man’s problem to solve.
It is yours, Mr Modi.
The Taxpayer Is Already Paying — Thousands of Crores
And now we arrive at the part that makes the rhetoric considerably more difficult to defend.
The government’s own numbers tell the story.
In a December 2024 reply in the Rajya Sabha, the Ministry of Education disclosed how much the UGC had released to Central Universities under the Ministry’s purview during five financial years.
2019-20: ₹8,098.73 crore
2020-21: ₹8,735.58 crore
2021-22: ₹9,045.45 crore
2022-23: ₹11,379.86 crore
2023-24: ₹12,661.19 crore
Total: ₹49,920.81 crore in five years.
Government support for Central Universities therefore did not disappear while these ideological battles were taking place.
It increased substantially.
And the same parliamentary answer gives us institution-level numbers for four universities particularly relevant to this debate.
Between 2019-20 and 2023-24, the Centre sanctioned:
Jawaharlal Nehru University — ₹2,310.03 crore
Jamia Millia Islamia — ₹2,394.20 crore
Aligarh Muslim University — ₹7,074.50 crore
University of Hyderabad — ₹1,706.64 crore
Combined, that is ₹13,485.37 crore sanctioned to four universities in just five financial years.
And this was not some historical Nehruvian expenditure Narendra Modi inherited and could do nothing about.
Look at 2023-24 alone:
JNU was sanctioned ₹594.50 crore.
Jamia received ₹564.16 crore.
AMU received ₹1,575.48 crore.
University of Hyderabad received ₹357.15 crore.
Those are the Modi government’s numbers.
Those are taxpayer rupees.
So this article asks a perfectly straightforward question:
If these institutions repeatedly provide fertile ground for precisely the kind of organised Left politics that Modi now warns can mislead India’s youth, why has his government continued financing them without fundamentally restructuring the problem?
Mr Modi cannot stand outside the gates pretending to be powerless.
His government is paying the bill.
₹13,485 Crore Later, Where Is the Accountability?
The ₹13,485 crore figure deserves to sink in.
Nobody is arguing that libraries should close.
Nobody is arguing that laboratories should stop functioning.
Nobody is arguing that chemistry students, language scholars, engineers, economists or scientists should lose their education because somebody else organised a political rally.
That would miss the point completely.
The question is why public funding should continue without hard ideological and institutional accountability where taxpayer-funded infrastructure becomes a permanent base for organised political movements.
Where are the audits?
Where are the conditions?
Where is the examination of public facilities provided to political organisations?
Where is the scrutiny of university departments, centres, programmes and bodies where ideological activism repeatedly overwhelms academic purpose?
Where an organisation can be shown to glorify violent extremism, sympathise with banned organisations or facilitate unlawful activity, why should it receive one rupee of taxpayer support or access to taxpayer-funded infrastructure?
And where nothing unlawful is happening but a university has simply become institutionally dominated by one political ideology, why has the government failed to reform governance sufficiently to restore ideological balance?
These are government responsibilities.
Not WhatsApp responsibilities.
Not television-debate responsibilities.
Not voter responsibilities.
Opposition Is Legal. That Does Not Make Taxpayer Funding Sacred
The inevitable defence will be that universities must permit dissent.
Of course they must.
Indian democracy does not require students to support Narendra Modi.
Opposing Article 370 was not itself a crime.
Opposing CAA was not itself proof of Naxalism.
Being a Marxist is not illegal.
Neither is belonging to a lawful Left student organisation.
But that defence does not rescue Modi from his own statement.
He introduced the category of “dimaagi Naxals”.
He said they seek opportunities to create violence and anarchy.
He said they attempt to drag society onto the wrong path.
He said they must be identified.
He said they must be isolated.
Very well.
Identify them.
Name the organisations.
Show the evidence.
Trace the funding.
Audit the institutions.
Separate democratic dissent from ideological extremism.
And once the government establishes that a particular organisation, programme or institutional structure is facilitating the ideology Modi describes, stop financing it.
What is unacceptable is keeping the definition conveniently nebulous during speeches while the government’s chequebook remains wide open.
Twelve Years in Power Means the Excuses Have Expired
Narendra Modi became Prime Minister in 2014.
This is August 2026.
At some point, blaming decades of Congress rule stops being an explanation for what continues under your own government.
Congress does not run the Union Ministry of Education.
The UPA does not control the UGC.
Manmohan Singh does not sanction Central University expenditure.
Narendra Modi’s government does.
That government has had more than twelve years to reform the institutional architecture it inherited.
If JNU genuinely contains ideological structures that the BJP believes are dangerous, why are they still there?
If Central Universities are being ideologically captured, why has structural reform not happened?
If taxpayer money is indirectly sustaining organisations that the government believes damage India’s national interest, why has the money not been stopped?
And if none of this can be established with evidence, then stop using phrases such as “dimaagi Naxal” as an amorphous political weapon.
There cannot be a third option in which the government simultaneously claims an existential ideological threat, does little structurally about the institutions in which it says that threat flourishes, and then asks voters to admire its courage for identifying the danger.
That is precisely where the charge of hypocrisy arises.
Dismantle the Leftist Strongholds — Not Education
The answer is not to destroy universities.
It is to destroy political monopolies inside universities.
Academic funding should follow academic work.
Research funding should finance research.
Scholarships should educate students.
Laboratories should conduct science.
Libraries should contain books.
Taxpayer-funded universities should not become permanent political factories for any ideology — Left, Right or otherwise.
But where certain institutions have developed decades-old reputations as organised Left strongholds, Modi’s government cannot simply shrug and continue writing cheques.
Restructure them.
Audit them.
Make institutional funding conditional on transparency.
Examine how facilities are allocated to political organisations.
Demand accountability from administrations.
Prevent university resources from being appropriated by partisan movements.
Act decisively wherever support for violence or prohibited organisations is actually established.
And if an institution systematically refuses reform while public resources continue sustaining political radicalisation, put its discretionary funding on the table.
The taxpayer does not owe any ideology a subsidy.
Condemn Them From the Red Fort, Finance Them From Delhi
That is the contradiction at the heart of Modi’s speech.
From the Red Fort:
Beware the “dimaagi Naxals”.
From Delhi:
Central University grants continue.
From the Red Fort:
Identify them.
From Delhi:
Thousands of crores continue flowing through the system.
From the Red Fort:
Isolate them.
From Delhi:
The same universities remain recurring centres of organised political mobilisation.
You cannot indefinitely be both the warrior fighting an ideological establishment and the government financing the institutions in which that establishment thrives.
Eventually the public is entitled to ask whether the enemy is being defeated — or merely preserved as a convenient political villain.
Enough Speeches, Mr Modi
Prime Minister, Indians elected you to govern.
They did not elect you to provide commentary on problems over which your own government possesses enormous authority.
If “dimaagi Naxals” genuinely threaten India’s future, identify them.
If organisations promote violent extremism, act against them.
If public money reaches structures that facilitate such ideology, stop it.
If Central Universities have become ideological fortresses, reform them.
If institutional administrations refuse to act, hold them accountable.
And if necessary, make their funding conditional on reform.
But do not ask the common Indian to fight an ideological battle while his taxes finance the battlefield.
Do not condemn radical Left politics from the Red Fort while your own government continues sanctioning thousands of crores to institutions where organised Left movements repeatedly operate.
Do not play the victim of an establishment after more than twelve years controlling the government capable of confronting it.
The numbers are now part of the argument.
₹49,920.81 crore released to Central Universities in five years.
₹13,485.37 crore sanctioned to JNU, Jamia, AMU and Hyderabad University alone during that period.
And still, in 2026, Narendra Modi is asking Indians to identify the “dimaagi Naxals”.
No, Prime Minister.
You identify them.
You isolate them.
You stop funding the institutions and structures that allow the ideology you condemn to thrive.
That is what governments are elected to do.
Enough speeches, Mr Modi. Act.
