The Updated List of India s Anti-Nationals (According to the Modi Government)
Anyone pointing out the Centreâs shortfalls â farmers, lawyers, journalists, comedians, activists, students â is branded not anti-government but anti-national.
Demonstrators shout slogans behind police barricades during a protest demanding the release of social activists who, according to them, were arrested by the police for supporting farmers protest against farm laws, in New Delhi, India, February 15, 2021. Photo: Reuters/Danish Siddiqui
Rights19/Feb/2021
Mumbai: It was anybodyâs guess that the Narendra Modi-led government would be intolerant of critical voices. Anyone pointing to the governmentâs shortfalls ought to have been branded anti-government. But the past years saw a decided shift from the âanti- governmentâ perspective to one where anyone critiquing the government was called âanti-nationalâ. And it is not just the usual activists or rational
Between 2016 and 2019, the number of cases filed under Section 124-A (sedition) of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) increased by 160% while the rate of conviction dropped to 3.3% in 2019 from 33.3% in 2016, according to the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB).
A demonstration in Bangalore to demand freedom for jailed environmental activist Disha Ravi. | Manjunath Kiran/AFP
Let me tell you what the Delhi Police knows. And I do not mean the abstract entity called Delhi Police. I mean every single IPS officer and every constable involved in carrying out the “toolkit investigation”.
They know that 22-year-old environmental activist Disha Ravi is not the prime mover along with the relatively recently formed Canada-based Poetic Justice Foundation (set up in March, 2020) , in a plot to overthrow the Indian government. They know this because the IPS officers at least, can read English and a simple search would show them that the term “toolkit” in this context is basically used by organisers of street protests against autocracies the world over, for peacefully expressing mass dissent.