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Webinar: The Bhima-Koregaon case of imprisoned activists and India’s autocratic turn

Webinar: The Bhima-Koregaon case of imprisoned activists and India’s autocratic turn

By InSAF India

Ideas Behind Bars – The Bhima-Koregaon case of imprisoned activists and India’s autocratic turn
The webinar is part of InSAF India’s campaign demanding the release of all jailed scholars, students and civic activists in India.
24 April 2021
USA: 10:30am EDT / 9:30am CDT / 7:30am PDT
UK: 3:30pm BST / Europe: 4:30pm CEST / India: 8pm IST
REGISTER TO JOIN THE ZOOM WEBINAR HERE

Our panellists
+ Jed Crandall Associate Professor, Biodesign Center for Biocomputation, Security and Society and School of Computing, Informatics, and Decision Systems Engineering, Arizona State University, USA
+ Suchitra Vijayan Author of Midnight’s Borders: A People’s History of Modern India and Founder and Executive Director of The Polis Project
+ Tarunabh Khaitan Professor of Public Law and Legal Theory, and Vice Dean, Faculty of Law, Oxford University, UK
Moderated discussion to be followed by Q&A with the audience.

​This webinar aims to shed light on alarming authoritarian developments in India that have scarcely received adequate international attention. …

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India’s Hindu Nationalist Project Relies on Brutal Repression

India’s Hindu Nationalist Project Relies on Brutal Repression

Jacobinmag / by RB Moore

The Indian state under Prime Minister Narendra Modi is meting out vicious repression against dissenters to his right-wing Hindu nationalist vision. Yet that constant need to crack down on protests also reveals something: his far-right project is undeniably brittle.
… An event called the Elgar Parishad, organized on December 31, 2017 in the city of Pune, Maharashtra, was an attempt to bring together the opposition movements that had emerged during Modi’s first term. Convened by two retired judges with a history of anti-caste and anti-Hindutva activism, the event drew participation from roughly 250 anti-caste, progressive, and left organizations and featured fiery speeches, musical performances, and cultural programs.
The event was set for the day before an anti-caste commemoration in the nearby town of Bhima Koregaon, which celebrated the military defeat of the notorious casteist Peshwa rulers on January 1, 1818 at the hands of the British.
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Why Indian Scholars Must Be Protected Against ‘Content Seizure’

Why Indian Scholars Must Be Protected Against ‘Content Seizure’

The Quint/ by Arghya Bhaskar

A petition claims that, when seized, academic work becomes vulnerable to tampering, plagiarism, damage, destruction.
In the last week of March 2021, the Supreme Court of India heard a plea seeking the protection of ‘academic freedom’ from raids and seizures of police and investigative agencies.
Senior Advocate Nitya Ramakrishnan and Advocate Prassanna is representing the petitioners. The petition was filed in light of recent news events where allegations of ‘evidence planting’ have been made in the case of arrested intellectuals in the Bhima Koregaon incident. The Supreme Court has sought a reply from the Centre within four weeks in the matter.
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Why isn’t the government looking for the source of ‘Modi assassination’ malware on Wilson’s PC?

Why isn’t the government looking for the source of ‘Modi assassination’ malware on Wilson’s PC?

Scroll.in / by N Venugopal

It wants to trace the originator of unlawful messages on apps like WhatsApp, but isn’t doing the same in the Bhima Koregaon case.
On February 25, the Union government notified the Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules, 2021. Unlike the IT Rules of 2011, the new regulations include video streaming platforms and online news portals within their ambit.
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Laws Around Electronic Evidence Compromise India’s Criminal Justice System

Laws Around Electronic Evidence Compromise India’s Criminal Justice System

article14 / by Mani Chander

Police and investigative agencies currently claim unfettered access to your WhatsApp, private emails or chats with your doctor, lawyer or psychologist. Can they force you to unlock your phone and disclose passwords? In the absence of clear laws, they do what they wish.
…
Seize All You Can? The Bhima-Koregaon Case
Recent cases indicate that investigating agencies often search and seize records without demonstrating probable cause, necessity or proportionality.
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Video: Bhima Koregaon accused continue to wait for bail

Video: Bhima Koregaon accused continue to wait for bail

InOldNews / by InOldNews

Vira Sathidar, a poet, writer, activist, and also one of the editors of a radical Anti-Caste Marathi Magazine ‘Vidrohi’ talks about incarceration of Sudhir Dhawale, founder of Vidrohi. Sudhir Dhawale along with two other activists- Surendra Gadhling and Prof. Shoma Sen were arrested by Police from Nagpur and are still in jail. These were among the first few arrests of Human rights activists by Modi Government under charges of being involved in Bhima Koregaon Violence and in a plot to assassinate PM Modi. The magazine stopped its publication due to various reasons, one being the constant threat of police surveillance.
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The Targeted Silencing of Thinker, Student, Reporter / Criminalisation of Anti-Cast Research

The Targeted Silencing of Thinker, Student, Reporter / Criminalisation of Anti-Cast Research

The Targeted Silencing of the Trinity of Thinker, Student, Reporter

28/03/2021

The Wire / by Pamela Philipose

Academia and journalism are intertwined. Both create and question knowledge, both demand a critical engagement with society, and both have a distinct interface with the public.
What is more, journalism and academia routinely draw from – and contribute – to the other. In a conversation carried by The Wire (‘Watch | The State of India’s Academic Freedom’, March 25), reference was made to the elements that constitute academic freedom…
Courageous individuals who stood up and spoke out felt the full force of a vengeful state machinery. If we are to consider the Bhima Koregaon arrests, four of the 16 people put behind bars were formally attached to universities. Anand Teltumbe, a former IIT professor, was a management professor at the Goa Institute of Management; Shoma Sen, the head of the English Literature department, Nagpur University; Sudha Bharadwaj, was visiting professor at the National Law School, Delhi; Hany Babu, was professor of language and linguistics at Delhi University.
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Criminalisation of Anti-Cast Research

27/02/2021

By International Solidarity for Academic Freedom in India (InSAF)

27 March
8pm IST
Register here: http://shorturl.at/hzHM5

Anti-caste academic research and activism in India are increasingly threatened with criminalisation and surveillance from the state: from the arrests of academics and students to the militarisation of campuses, from the banning of books, plays and film screenings to the censorship of activities deemed as detrimental to the reputation of the government. The persecution of academic-activists in connection with the Bhima-Koregaon violence is a case in point. …

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Is Ignoring Criticism of Human Rights Abuse Affecting India’s Image?

Is Ignoring Criticism of Human Rights Abuse Affecting India’s Image?

The Leaflet / by Arun Srivastava

The government’s intolerance of criticism by foreign institutions’ of its failure to listen to the global concern of the sharp rise in the violation of human rights and its persistent unwillingness to take action against the violators leading to the erosion of the democratic values in the country, has motivated lawmakers of western countries to push a bill in their respective parliaments decrying the claim of the Modi government of India being a democratic country.
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