"I do not find any palpable reason for keeping a 22-year-old in custody"

As we covered in the last issue of the newsletter, the Indian government continues to be displeased with the international attention that the ongoing farmers’ protest– currently in its sixth month – has garnered in response to the government’s demands that Twitter block 250 accounts from being viewed in India. The environmental activist Greta Thunberg, leader of the Canadian centre-left New Democratic Party Jagmeet Singh, artists such as Rihanna and Mia Khalifa, and other high profile names helped to amplify the cause of the farmers via social media and international news, in response to the temporary Twitter block.

The government has since then leaned heavily on Twitter to continue blocking these and other accounts, even holding the threat of potential prison sentences to Twitter’s employees in India over the American tech company’s head. To the company’s credit, albeit belatedly, Twitter took a stance against acquiescing to continued blocks, asserting in a statement that:

We will continue to advocate for the right of free expression on behalf of the people we serve. We are exploring options under Indian law — both for Twitter and for the accounts that have been impacted. We remain committed to safeguarding the health of the conversation occurring on Twitter, and strongly believe that the Tweets should flow.

This is a move that could have consequences, as it reflects very real concerns that tech companies take on as they move into markets where freedom of expression rights may come up against different social and political contexts. As Salil Tripathi writes for Rest of World, “companies want sustained engagement. Removing contentious content would reduce traffic, diminishing the companies’ ability to monetize the users’ attention.” Mathew Ingram pointed out in Columbia Journalism Review on February 16th:

In India, Twitter has to figure out how to walk a similar tightrope. It obviously wants to continue to do business in a massive market, and it has to be concerned about potential reprisals against both the company and its employees, including fines, prison terms, and other forms of official harassment. But at the same time, it wants to be seen as a platform that supports free speech, and doesn’t just cave in to every order from totalitarian states.

Indian Climate Activist charged with sedition over “Toolkit”

The arrest earlier this month of a 22 year old climate activist from Bangalore, Disha Ravi, is an example of government clampdown on digital dissent. Ravi, who according to the Guardian co-founded the Bangalore chapter of Greta Thunberg’s Fridays for Future movement, had her family home raided by police who flew her to Delhi, where she was later remanded into police custody.

According to the government and Delhi police, Ravi had been charged with sedition, claiming that she worked “to spread disaffection with the Indian state” via a digital toolkit that Greta Thunberg tweeted out earlier in February. According to Deutsche Welle,

The "toolkit" document shared by Thunberg encourages people to sign a petition which condemns the "state violence" against the protesters. It also urges the Indian government to listen to the protestors rather than mock them. The toolkit also mentions different hashtags to use on Twitter to support the farmers' protests. Additionally, it asks for people worldwide to organize protests near Indian embassies or local government offices on the 13th and 14th February.

Ravi was flown to Delhi and remanded in the custody of Delhi police, over allegations she was a “key conspirator” in the toolkit tweeted by Thunberg. Delhi police said she had started a WhatsApp group and “collaborated to make the Toolkit Doc … to spread disaffection with the Indian state” and had then directly shared it with Thunberg. The young activist was accused of editing the digital toolkit “many times more than the 2 lines editing that she claims” by the police, who had also requested more time from the court to “unearth her connections with the Sikhs for Justice”.

On the 23rd of this month Disha Ravi was granted bail by an Indian court, wherein the presiding judge, Dharmender Rana, said that, according to Deutsche Welle,

Considering the scanty and sketchy evidence on record, I do not find any palpable reason for keeping a 22-year-old in custody.

Her lawyer had, according to the article by Deutsche Welle, also argued that the Toolkit was a "resource document" of the sort used by activists to campaign and coordinate.

That a young climate change activist was seized upon and treated like a potential enemy of the state speaks to a troubling trend in South and South-East Asia. The mention in the February 15th report by the Guardian on Ravi’s case that,

Earlier this month, police said the campaign material was aimed at waging a cultural war against the government and creating divisions among various groups in Indian society

echoes language that is taken up by governments that turn towards the right and far right, whether one speaks about India, Hungary, Russia, the UK, Pakistan or elsewhere - that of local activists working with foreign ‘elements’ to cause unrest, disharmony etc within society. Whether it is threatening local employees of tech companies with jail and/or fines, the jailing of activists such as Ravi or Nodeep Kaur - the young Dalit activist who had been imprisoned since mid-January for supporting the farmers’ protests, and who was given bail just yesterday - or the use of pro-government trolls to instigate disinformation campaigns, what we see is an amping up of totalitarian measures, rather than respect for the right to freedom of expression.

The government of Narendra Modi, whose rise and fortunes has been fuelled by social media platforms such as Twitter, Facebook and WhatsApp (as Tripathi’s article also points out), has had his government examine and promote native-grown platforms that could be more beholden to India’s laws governing freedom of expression and censorship, and less so of other countries or governing bodies. This policy of what the Indian government calls atmanirbhar (“self-reliance”) has lead to the promotion of digital solutions that have been developed within India, including an alternative to Twitter - Koo, a social media platform that allows Indians to converse in any one of the country’s 20 languages.

In the wake of the ongoing farmers’ protests, Koo has experience something of an explosion of users and support from far right and right-leaning Indian politicians, actors, athletes and musicians - much like the boost that Signal received in January of this year. The apparent right-wing bent of many of the millions that have signed up with Koo - has earned it comparisons with Parler, the “free speech” platform popular with the US and UK far right, even as Koo’s founder, Aprameya Radhakrishna, claims that its “apolitical”.

Just as China has developed a Great Firewall and successfully created a personalised internet that it can control, it is possible that Modi may look towards encouraging additional social media platforms that could make shutdowns of unwanted content, and the silencing of more Disha Ravis and Nodeep Kaurs, that much easier.