<\/p>\n
Over the past few days,\u00a0Indian<\/a>\u00a0news channels have been in a near-constant state of primetime, breaking news alert. As TV anchors share split-screens with graphics screaming, \u201cBid to Assassinate Prime Minister\u201d and \u201cMaoist Crackdown\u201d, the coverage often jumps to live police press conferences and \u201cmidnight dramas\u201d outside magistrate residences.<\/span><\/p>\n For the pro-government media, the plot has been nothing short of spectacular, a ratings-friendly boost to the spin ahead of next year\u2019s critical general elections. The elements include an alleged plot to assassinate Indian Prime Minister\u00a0Narendra Modi<\/a>, a cabal of \u201curban Maoists\u201d, and a gullible mass of low-caste Dalits ready to destabilise the country.<\/span><\/p>\n But for critics of the right-wing government, the latest developments have been a stark warning that the crackdown on dissent in the world\u2019s largest democracy is reaching unlikely quarters \u2013 from a small, riverside town in western India to academic seminars in Paris.<\/span><\/p>\n The expansion of the plot from a nondescript small town to \u201chuman rights conventions\u201d and \u201cuniversities in Paris\u201d underscores the widening\u00a0assault on free speech<\/a>\u00a0since Modi\u2019s Hindu right-wing BJP (Bharatiya Janata Party) came to power in 2014. A wave of nationalism driven by hardline Hindu groups has seen government critics, including journalists and\u00a0\u201crationalists\u201d who question religious superstitions, killed<\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n History lives \u2013 in festering discrimination<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n The latest \u201curban Naxalites\u201d plot \u2013 as it\u2019s called by the Indian media after a Maoist rural movement that began in the 1960s \u2013 has seen the morphing of two issues, both critical to Modi\u2019s Hindu nationalist government.<\/span><\/p>\n It grabbed the international headlines last week, when five prominent activists \u2013 including one of India\u2019s leading human rights lawyers \u2013 were arrested Tuesday, August 28, in simultaneous, multi-city police raids.<\/span><\/p>\n The activists included Telugu-language poet Varavara Rao in Hyderabad, Vernon Gonzalves and Arun Farreira in Mumbai, Gautam Navalakha and Sudha Bhardwaj in New Delhi and a neighbouring town<\/p>\n The high-profile arrests sent shock waves across the country, sparked international condemnations, and has seen a daily drip of investigative news reports examining the police\u2019s procedural failures, including flouting India\u2019s criminal law.<\/span><\/p>\n The roots of the case however go back to December 2017 and are centred around India\u2019s caste politics, a powder-keg issue in a country where, it\u2019s often said, citizens don\u2019t cast their vote, they vote their caste.<\/span><\/p>\n On December 31, 2017, tens of thousands of people \u2013 primarily members of India\u2019s downtrodden Dalit community \u2013 started gathering in the small town of Bhima Koregaon near the western Indian city of Pune for the annual commemoration of the January 1, 1818 Battle of Koregaon.<\/span><\/p>\n The battle is of legendary importance for the Dalits since it marks the victory of a small group of British East India Company troops consisting of untouchable castes against the numerically superior forces of the local, upper caste Maratha empire ruler.<\/span><\/p>\n Hindu nationalists have embraced the founder of the Maratha empire, Shivaji, as a national figure since he battled the Muslim Mughal empire. Indian authorities are currently financing a multi-million dollar statue of Shivaji in the commercial capital, Mumbai, which they say will be the \u201cworld\u2019s biggest statue\u201d, dwarfing China\u2019s Spring Temple Buddha, the current title-holder.<\/span><\/p>\n Dalits meanwhile are so low on the Hindu social scale, they are not technically part of the Indian caste system and are sometimes called the \u201cuntouchable caste\u201d.<\/span><\/p>\n While Dalit support helped sweep Modi\u2019s BJP into power four years ago, in 2014, anger has been rising within the community against the party that has traditionally drawn its support from the upper castes. India officially outlawed untouchability at independence nearly 70 years ago. But the practice continues and under the BJP, violence between the Dalits and caste Hindu groups that form the party\u2019s base has been rising.<\/span><\/p>\n The annual Koregaon commemorations have passed largely without incident for decades, but the 2018 ceremonies got heavily politicised particularly since it marked the bicentennial anniversary of the battle.<\/span><\/p>\n Dalit activists say Hindu nationalist \u2013 or Hindutva \u2013 groups interrupted the events resulting in riots that led to one death. Hindutva groups on the other hand claim they were attacked by the Dalits.<\/span><\/p>\n The Pune police investigation into the Koregaon caste violence was proceeding for months, largely out of the national media spotlight, until early June, when the investigation suddenly morphed into a terrorist case involving a Maoist conspiracy to assassinate Modi.<\/span><\/p>\n Suspicious letters name the next round of arrests<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n On June 6, the Pune police arrested five Dalit rights activists \u2013 including a lawyer, a university professor and a poet \u2013 for alleged links to the Koregaon caste violence case. Two days later, Indian TV stations ran breaking-news exclusives on \u201cletters\u201d that the Pune police allegedly seized from the laptop of one of the activists. The letters \u2013 which the police provided to the press \u2013 allegedly revealed a \u201csinister\u201d Maoist plot to assassinate Prime Minister Modi.<\/span><\/p>\n