Vivek Agnihotri - Urban Naxals: The Making of Buddha in a Traffic Jam

Vande Mataram!

Your book Urban Naxals about the network of Naxalism in urban areas will strike a blow at the roots of the wide-spread Naxal movement in the entire country including Bastar and Chattisgarh. I am one among those thousands of young women and men, who end-up being intimidated by people from Andhra-Telangana, running a reign of terror to consolidate power, to join their gangs. I am certain your writing will help unmask these Naxal leaders, who come from outside and rule over us folk living in the jungle, and their white-collar supporters and enablers. This will be a significant contribution to bring peace to Bastar and other Naxal-affected areas.

Kosi

Surrendered Woman Naxal Commander

For Bastar and its people, oppressed by Naxal terror for four decades, it is great source of joy that, people outside Bastar are now beginning to feel, understand and hear our pain and are stepping forward. Better late than never. In this context, as a filmmaker, scriptwriter and author, you hold a special place. Just as you have approached any subject you have tackled, whether as a scriptwriter or as a director or as a writer, with a serious solution-oriented approach, this same sincerity and boldness shows up in your writing on the Naxal problem. Your book Urban Naxals is evidence of this, where you unmask the white-collar Urban Naxals sitting in the capital Delhi and other major cities of India and their violent ideology.

Subbarao

Founding Member

Action Group for National Integrity (AGNI)

(AGNI is a leading NGO fighting Naxal terror in Bastar)

(Above letters are translated from the originals in Hindi.)

Gripping, newsy account of a filmmaker's encounter with radicalism in urban India

Hindol Sengupta

Editor-at-Large, Fortune India and author of eight books.

Urban Naxals drags you into the hard, brutal and fanatical world thriving beneath the dark shadows of liberalism, free speech and tolerance. Vivek Agnihotri brings the art of storytelling and the craft of filmmaking to breathe life into an ugly phenomenon that has been setting a dangerous national agenda. This is a gripping and disturbing book that constricts your conscience and lingers within long after youve finished reading it.

Gautam Chikermane

Vice President Observer Research Foundation and author, Tunnel of Varanavat

Urban Naxals is a daring, if unconventional, analysis at how the far left has captured our educational institutions to produce a generation of brain-washed nihilists to wage war on the masses.

Urban Naxals is at once irreverent and introspective, moving and hard-hitting. Urban Naxals will leave you shaken and ask you to join the conversation we, as a nation, ought to be having before it is too late.

Mayur Didolkar

Novelist

First published in India 2018

Copyright 2018
Vivek Agnihotri

Hindi passages translated by Sankrant Sanu

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ISBN: 978-1-942426-05-9

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In the loving memory of my father Acharya Prabhudayalu Agnihotri, freedom fighter, Indologist and teacher who introduced me to Kalidasa and the meaning of being an Indian.

To my mother Sharda Devi Agnihotri, freedom fighter who made me understand the value of excellence.

To my wife Pallavi Joshi who did not stop my crusade even after life threats. She helped me make a better version, of this book, and me.

Everyone needs Hari. When I was seeking a new horizon,
Hari found me. And sculpted me.

To the students of India.

,

""

The war still rages on

The attacker alone can't be blamed,

Those who stood aloof

In time, they also will be shamed.

-Ramdhari Singh Dinkar

Foreword

I dont believe in Forewords. A book should stand on its own, speak for itself. But this book is an exception. A Bloody Fascist Brahmin penned it, who was stopped from screening his film, Buddha in a Traffic Jam, at Jadavpur University. His car was gheraoed and damaged. He himself was injured. An angry mob of Leftist students and activists bayed for his blood.

Why such hatred? Why so much intolerance? What was Vivek Agnihotri saying or showing in his film which was so dangerous or destabilising? Why was he such a blatantly marked target of intellectual terrorism? Vivek is right when he says, In India, people fight with all their might to kill an idea.

First they nearly stopped him from making his film. Then they tried to prevent him from screening it. When he took his exquisite and excruciating creation literally to the streets and to the campuses, showing it directly to target audiences, again he was heckled and blocked.

I thought to myself, whether we love or hate the film, we cannot allow this in India. In my own university, JNU, another Leftist bastion, it was blocked by the Dean of the School of Arts & Aesthetics, in whose auditorium it was originally to be screened. Instead, the students arranged an outdoor screening, which was attended by over five thousand. The film had a rousing, almost delirious reception. When I saw it, I was moved, disturbed, provoked.

It was one of the most original and unusual movies I had encountered in a long time. A political thriller, with great acting, music, and a theme of national importance. I loved it. Instantly, I became one of the hundred owners of the film.

What is it, I asked myself, which makes both this book, and the film whose making it recounts, exceptional?

The answer is simple and obvious. This book is a triple triumph. It not only tells the story of how this extraordinary film got to be made, but also how its auteur, Vivek Agnihotri, healed his broken spirit, snatching victory from the very brink of disaster, despair, and depression. This film is making me reinvent myself, he realizes during the shooting, Every day. Every moment. In addition, it is a profound reflection on the condition of India, especially on the Maoist insurgency that is gnawing at the innards of our democratic polity.

* * *

We all fail in our lives. But few of us actually recover to tell the story. Vivek is one of them.

In fact, as he confesses, Vivek had failed four times. Like a manglik girl. In a cut-throat industry, where youre only as good as the money your last film makes, what is the future of a director who wants to tell the truth? This is every creative artists dilemma. There is, besides, a mindset in Bollywood that doesn't let Indic ideas flourish.