MeTooUrbanNaxal: Twitterati protest arrests of activists

New Delhi, Aug 29: As civil society at large expresses widespread condemnation at the arrests of intellectuals the #MeTooUrbanNaxal is currently trending on Twitter.

The term was first coined by filmmaker Vivek Agnihotri, who has written a book with the name- Urban Naxals: The making of Budha in a traffic jam.

Vivek Agnihotri on Tuesday tweeted, "I want some bright young people to make a list of all those who are defending #UrbanNaxals Let's see where it leads."

In response to his tweet, which many users accused of being a "hitlist", many users responded to Agnihotri with #MeTooUrbanNaxal. Not surprisingly, Agnihotri picked up spats with several such handles.

I want some bright young people to make a list of all those who are defending #UrbanNaxals Let’s see where it leads. If you want to volunteer with commitment, pl DM me. @squintneon would you like to take the lead?

— Vivek Agnihotri (@vivekagnihotri) August 28, 2018

#MeTooUrbanNaxal trending at number 1 on Twitter now. pic.twitter.com/pVg74OVmNQ

— Pratik Sinha (@free_thinker) August 29, 2018

#UrbanNaxal is the new Anti-National

The word "Anti-national" became a big joke and lost its actual meaning after ministers & trolls started using it for anyone and everyone mindlessly.

Same thing is happening with Urban Naxal. That's why #MeTooUrbanNaxal

— Dhruv Rathee (@dhruv_rathee) August 29, 2018

On Tuesday, the Pune Police carried out raids in Mumbai, Ranchi, Hyderabad, Faridabad, Delhi, and Thane, with informed sources telling ANI that Varavara Rao, Arun Ferreira, Gautam Navlakha, Gonsalves and Sudha Bhardwaj were the five activists arrested in connection with the violence which broke out in January.

The Bhima Koregaon violence erupted across Maharashtra while observing the 200th anniversary of the Bhima-Koregaon battle in January. A youth died and several others, including 10 policemen, were injured in the violence.