ELProtesters gathered on the streets of Bangalore, residents posing defiantly alongside students and activists. Their banners carried slogans such as “defending farmers is not a sedition” and “when injustice becomes law, resistance becomes obligation” and most hold the photo of a smiling young woman: Disha Ravi, 22 years.
Ravi has been a familiar figure in Bangalore’s vibrant environmental circles for the past three years, but over the weekend he became the face of the Indian government’s harsh crackdown on dissent.
She was arrested on Saturday at her home, which she shares with her mother in Bangalore, flown to Delhi, placed in the custody of Delhi police without a lawyer and charged with sedition and criminal conspiracy.
“This government in India is attacking environmental activists and the arrest of Disha shows that there is a clear and deeply worrying pattern,” said Leo Saldhana, an environmental activist in Bangalore. “The point here is to destabilize and then erase all dissent.”
Ravi’s alleged crimes are linked to a “toolkit” document related to India’s ongoing agricultural protests, which police say is evidence of a coordinated international conspiracy against India.
Since November, hundreds of thousands of farmers have camped around Delhi, demanding the repeal of three controversial new agricultural laws out of concern that their livelihoods will be at the mercy of private companies. Ravi, the peasants’ granddaughter, had passionately thrown her support behind her cause.
It is no stranger to activism. In 2019, inspired by Swedish environmental activist Greta Thunberg, the global climate protest movement Fridays For Future (FFF) saw millions of schoolchildren around the world face the failure of global warming, Ravi co-founded the Indian branch of the FFF network and began organizing strikes across the country.
He had already felt the impacts of climate change on his life. The town house where she lived with her mother, who raised her as a single father, would be flooded every time it rained, getting worse every year and her hometown, Bangalore, would run out of water in a matter of years. His grandparents who were farmers had struggled with drought, crop failure and flooding as a result of global warming.
“My motivation for joining climate activism was to see my grandparents, who are farmers, fighting the effects of the climate crisis,” Ravi said in an interview in 2019. “At the time, it wasn’t aware of what they were living in. it was the climate crisis because climate education is non-existent where I am from. “
Whether it was coordinating environmental strikes, participating in lake cleaning operations, organizing tree planting exercises, or organizing climate action workshops, Ravi was always there, and was known for her deep knowledge of problems. She was also the only breadwinner in the family and juggled a vegetable food production company alongside her activism.
“Disha was known for being incredibly hardworking, completely dedicated to environmental causes, to the point that she would get burned because she was so committed. Sometimes I worried about her, that she would sacrifice her well-being for her activism, ”said a fellow Bangalore activist who asked to be left nameless for fear of the authorities.
In the international press on the global phenomenon of the FFF movement, Ravi was regularly interviewed and was often very critical of government policies led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
“We are not just fighting for our future, but for our present,” he told The Guardian in 2020. “We, the hardest hit people, will change the conversation in the climate negotiations and lead a fair recovery plan that benefits people and not the pockets of our government ”.
On Fridays for the future of India he was already on the radar of Delhi police. In July 2020, after the group launched an online campaign against a bill diluting environmental regulations, the group’s website was temporarily removed by the Delhi police cybercrime unit.
Since September, attracted by his personal family connection, Ravi has left behind his passion for the cause of Indian farmers. Some fellow environmental activists said they had warned against it. Defending farmers risked attracting unwanted attention from the authorities and the government, which in recent weeks had taken an increasingly draconian approach to those who participated, spoke or even reported protests.
They had already been accused of sedition against journalists, activists and politicians and police had installed concrete barricades, barbed wire and spikes around farmers ’protest camps. Farmers accused of inciting violence in a march had been charged under terrorism laws and denied bail for six months.
The problem for Ravi arose from the toolkit document, which was tweeted by environmentalist Thunberg as part of his message that he was “with the farmers.” The google document was a collection of information, hashtags, suggested actions, ideas and contacts for those who wanted to help support farmers, a common tool of organized protest movements.
Thunberg’s tweet outraged many in India who saw it as outside interference as protesters burned effigies of his face. Police then seized the document shared by Thunberg’s as evidence that there was a coordinated conspiracy “to wage an economic, social, cultural and regional war against India.” Police accused Ravi and two others of conspiring with terrorist organizations to create the document and encouraging Thunberg to tweet it to millions of followers.
Ravi told the court on Sunday that he had only edited two lines of the toolkit, which he said had no seditious motive behind it. “It simply came to our notice then. I supported farmers because they are our future and we all need food, ”she said, breaking down in the room before she was detained for five days.
Following his arrest, a wave of fear swept through environmental circles. Fellow activists were too scared to talk to the media and many WhatsApp groups used to organize were silent.
Ravi’s arrest also sparked outrage. Former Environment Minister Jairan Ramesh described his arrest as “completely atrocious” and “unjustified harassment and intimidation”, while a joint statement from more than 50 academics, artists and activists described the actions of the police. Delhi as “illegal” and “excessive reactions”. of the State ”.
On Tuesday, the Delhi Women’s Commission, a government agency, sent a notice to the Delhi police asking for more information on Ravi’s case. Former Finance Minister P Chidambaram was equally scathing. “” India is becoming the theater of the absurd, “he said.