What’s common to the social media accounts of ‘Dimagi Naxal Party’ – started over the weekend in response to PM’s reference in his I-Day speech – and CJP protests is a high dose of Gen Z humour.One Insta post states, “When someone says Dimaagi Naxal, all I hear is intellectual baddie!’Its X handle @DNJP_India has amassed 14,000 followers, while a handful of X accounts have also added ‘dimagi Naxal’ as a prefix to their names as an act of solidarity. There’s also a website with a manifesto and an anthem – which links to a YouTube clip from the 2006 Hindi film ‘Rang De Basanti’ featuring the actors reciting the revolutionary poem ‘Sarfaroshi Ki Tamanna’.Following PM’s remarks, Congress’ P Chidambaram called himself a ‘proud dimagi Naxal’ in a post on X, while actor Prakash Raj posted a reel urging people to become ‘dimaagi’ and not ‘bewakoof’. Union minister Kiren Rijiju clarified that the term was not directed at opposition, and even came out with a three-point definition of who qualifies as a dimagi Naxal: those who support Maoists and reject Constitution, those who stand with separatists and support Article 370, and those who want to cut the chicken neck to separate the Northeast from India.While the identity of its founder (who is simply going by the name ‘a dimagi Indian’ online) has not yet been publicly disclosed, DNJP calls CJP a sibling party on its website. Its first tweet Sunday, “What if all dimagi naxals come together?” was also a hat tip to CJP’s origin, which began with Abhijeet Dipke’s now-iconic May 16 tweet, “What if all the cockroaches come together?”
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Unlike CJP, however, DNJP’s ‘manifesto’ states that there will be no flag, no font, or founder doing press, and the only criteria for joining the party is a “functioning brain and a willingness to ask ‘wait, why though’ out loud”. It is also clear about one thing: the deployment of terms such as ‘dimagi Naxals’ and ‘anti-nationals’ crosses party lines and is often used to shut down criticism.“Every side of Indian politics has, at some point, called the other side ‘anti-national’ for disagreeing,” the website says. “DNJP’s bet: the people who actually think for themselves are scattered across every one of those parties – and a label meant to isolate them is exactly what could bring them back together.”
