NEW DELHI (AP) – For her friends, Disha Ravi, a 22-year-old Indian climate activist, was more concerned about her future in a world of rising temperatures. She was attracted to veganism, enjoyed watching Netflix and spent time on social media.
But her life changed last month when she became a household name in India, dominating the headlines after the police accused her of sedition, a colonial-era law that leads to life imprisonment.
His alleged crime: sharing an online manual with the aim of increasing support for farmers’ protests for months on Twitter.
“If highlighting the protest of farmers around the world is sedition, I am better (off) in prison,” she said in court two weeks ago.
She was released after 10 days in custody. Her mother told reporters in Ravi’s hometown of Bengaluru that the case “reinforced our faith in the system” and called her daughter strong and courageous.
Chasing activists is nothing new in India, but the Ravi saga has fueled fear and anxiety. Observers say that what happened to Ravi – a young urban middle-class woman – hit the home of many Indians, who suddenly feared being arrested for sharing something on social media. Criminal lawyers also point to a worrying frequency in the way that sedition is invoked. Many say that the checks and balances employed by the lower courts, often overloaded with cases, are disappearing.
The incident raised questions about India’s democracy, with critics condemning it as the latest attempt by Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Hindu nationalist government to silence dissent and criminalize it.
“They were targeting someone who used to not be the Hindu right – a young woman from southern India, who does not have a Muslim name and is not linked to left student policy,” said prominent historian Ramachandra Guha. “The message they wanted to send is that they can go after anyone.”
In early February, Ravi, part of the Indian wing of Fridays for Future, a global climate change movement founded by Greta Thunberg, was accused of sedition for allegedly compiling and editing a Google document that explains how to run a social media campaign. The aim was to help farmers, who have been camped out of New Delhi since November, to amplify the protests that have convulsed India, representing one of Modi’s biggest challenges.
Farmers, most of whom are from the northern states of Punjab and Haryana, want the repeal of laws passed last year that they said would favor large corporate farms and devastate their revenues. The government says the laws are necessary to modernize Indian agriculture.
Many of the protesters are from India’s Sikh religious minority – but their complaints are rooted in economic, not religious, issues.
Police said the document shared by Ravi spread misinformation, “tarnished the image of India” and may have prompted farmers to become violent on January 26, when clashes with police left hundreds injured and a protester dead.
Modi’s government has increasingly brandished sedition against critics, intellectuals, activists, filmmakers, students and journalists, with the police arguing that dissident words or actions make them a threat to national security. Even though convictions remain rare, the police do not need an arrest warrant, which makes it an easy law to invoke, said Chitranshul Sinha, a lawyer who wrote a book on the history of the sedition law.
Often, an accused person is in custody until the case is taken to a higher court, since many lower courts have no power to close such cases, he said.
The case left a frightening effect on activists, with some highlighting a culture of intimidation that is profound, sometimes even before an arrest is made.
Mukund Gowda, a 25-year-old public works activist and young leader of the opposition party Aam Aadmi in Bengaluru, was interrogated by the local police for almost an entire day last year after writing a letter to the prime minister’s office to call the attention to a defective road in your neighborhood and called your local representatives for not taking action. He shared the letter on his social media, which quickly went viral and took him to a police station, he said.
“They (the police) tried to scare me by saying that they could accuse me of sedition,” said Gowda.
He was dismissed. The police said his actions were “politically motivated”, but denied having threatened him. The experience made him and his family anxious. He stopped posting on social media and took a step back from activism for a few months.
Another activist, Tara Krishnaswamy, said that peaceful protesters are sometimes questioned by the police, even when they participate in small-scale civic protests in Bengaluru.
“Intimidation comes in many forms. The data on arrested activists does not show the full picture – they are much more comprehensive, ”she said.
Washington-based Freedom House last week downgraded India from “free” to “partially free” in its annual democracy survey. The fall reflects “a multi-year pattern in which the Hindu nationalist government and its allies have presided over the rise in violence and discriminatory policies that affect the Muslim population and have pursued demonstrations of dissent from the media, academics, civil society groups and protesters” , said in a report.
The report also highlighted how colonial-era laws are continually being invoked to punish criticism from ordinary citizens.
The government classified the report as “misleading, incorrect and misplaced”.
The use of sedition is the responsibility of state governments and their authorities in an attempt to preserve “public order”, he said. The government “attaches great importance to the safety and protection of all residents of the country, including journalists”.
According to Guha, the historian, Indian democracy has been at its worst since the emergence of the 1970s, when then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi suspended elections, restricted civil rights, arrested political opponents and censored the press.
He said that previous governments have also tried to control independent institutions, but that “a recovery, even if partial” has always taken place.
“I fear that, this time, our democratic traditions will not be able to recover from this attack,” said Guha.