Why It Sets Alarm Bells Ringing

Newsreel Asia Insight #25
Oct. 26, 2023

When the Uttar Pradesh state police recently arrested 10 activists, mostly Dalits, the alarm bells didn’t just ring for them. They echoed through the entire fabric of Indian society. Their supposed crime? A peaceful protest for land rights in Gorakhpur. They had a simple demand—an acre of land for marginalised communities.

The police listened. No overt violence was reported. Yet, activists like Sarwan Ram Darapuri, a police officer turned human rights defender, were later slapped with charges as grave as attempt to murder, the media outlet Article 14 said, noting that newspapers had nothing to report on violence, but the charges were added nonetheless.

Where does this leave us, the ordinary citizens?

Soon after, local media floated unverified reports about foreign funding and Leftist conspiracies. The storyline shifted from demands for land to sowing seeds of disaffection. Even a French scholar, who was in India to research poverty, was arrested. The police remained tight-lipped.

We must ask, if a peaceful demonstration is met with such backlash, what message is the government sending? The answer should concern us all. Today it’s the activists in Gorakhpur. Tomorrow it could be anyone asking for their rights to be respected.

Darapuri and others are not the first to face such oppression. The state has a history of cracking down on activism. It’s an onslaught on civil society, which doesn’t stop at activists but trickles down to every home and impacts our democratic ethos.

A.J.M. Shravan Kumar Nirala, the organiser of the protest on Oct. 10, brings another vital point to light. Distributing land to landless Dalits, Other Backward Classes and Muslims can challenge the economic inequality in our society. “Some people own more than 1,000 acres of land while we poor people do not even have a decimal of land,” Nirala was quoted as saying.

When such voices are stifled, we all lose. We lose the possibility of a fairer society, one that listens and adapts. We lose a piece of our democracy and freedom, eroded by each unjust arrest and each unverified report.

The crackdown in Gorakhpur is not an isolated event but a symptom of a deeper malaise that impacts us all. Whether you’re an activist or a bystander, the restrictions on peaceful protest touch you. They signal what could become a norm, where your voice, too, may be stifled.

Imagine you’re part of a family, and you’re all sitting at the dinner table. You have some rules, set by the parents, that everyone is supposed to follow. One night, you notice the rules aren’t fair; they benefit one sibling over the others. You decide to speak up, asking for a more equitable distribution of chores or maybe even a better curfew time.

Now, if your parents listen and adjust the rules, you’d feel heard and valued. But what if, instead, you were banished to your room, or worse, kicked out of the house? You’d feel shocked, disrespected and unloved, wouldn’t you?

Mahatma Gandhi once said, “Non-cooperation with evil is as much a duty as is cooperation with good.” He was reprimanded by the British for his non-cooperation, but that was colonial rule. What happens when it’s your own family—or in this case, the elected government of an independent nation—that punishes you for asking for fairness? That’s not just a little surprising; it’s utterly unjustifiable.

Let’s acknowledge the alarm bells.

It’s like what a 1946 poem says:

First they came for the Communists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Communist
Then they came for the Socialists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Socialist
Then they came for the trade unionists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a trade unionist
Then they came for the Jews
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Jew
Then they came for me
And there was no one left
To speak out for me