 "New Delhi: People from various organisations stage a protest against police raids at the premises of activists and their subsequent arrests, in New Delhi on Wednesday, Aug. 29, 2018. Photo : PTI")
Indian liberals are reeling from a shocking set of arrests this week: Synchronized police raids targeted some of the country’s best-known civil-liberties activists. Authorities have been vague about why they were arrested; many are being held under a draconian national security law that permits detention for six months without formal charges. But, judging by what police officials have leaked to the media -- and what members of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party have told news channels -- the accused are all supposedly “Naxalites.”
For many Indians, this sounds like an accusation from the distant past. Back in the 1970s, a
