“That day I learnt that in the big fat world of Bollywood, the problem isn’t whether the pyramid should be inverted or not. The problem is there isn’t any pyramid.”Vivek Agnihotri Urban Naxals (2018)
“There may not be a place for the alternate narrative in Naxal-infested jungles, campuses, media and minds but in the world of real, rational and sane people, there is always a place for truth – the only narrative one needs to know. Satyameva Jayate.”Vivek Agnihotri Urban Naxals (2018)
“Both the worlds are so polarized. So different and contradictory. Yet, they have some things in common. Complexity, chaos, and conflict. And there is no place for any other narrative.”Vivek Agnihotri Urban Naxals (2018)
“The intellectual hierarchy has been demolished. It’s a sad commentary that in the world’s largest democracy, writers’ protest has become a subject of jokes. The power-hungry artists, writers, academics, and media-persons in India waste a huge amount of time making political statements to hide behind their lack of intellectual stands. Michel Houellebecq wrote Submission, a strong political statement; he didn’t get press coverage for returning some award. The lustre is gone from our intellectual discourse. Secularism has lost its ideological currency. Artists, writers, activists are all suspect. Media czars have lost their access to the corridors of power and to people’s hearts. It’s the overclass’ space that has been taken over by the underclass. Their discomfort is with the new order where the others are also heard. Hence, the feeling of shrinking space. They are intolerant of this new phenomenon – the emergence of the underclass. They try to devalue this new, empowered underclass by associating it with Modi and, therefore, Hindutva, and that’s a grave mistake. The universe that was full of their voice has expanded to accommodate this new voice. This is what they call an attack on FoE and growing intolerance.”Vivek Agnihotri Urban Naxals (2018)