A toolkit for democracy to resist state vigilantism

Let me tell you what the Delhi Police knows. And I do not mean the abstract entity called Delhi Police. I mean every single IPS officer and every constable involved in carrying out the “toolkit investigation”.

They know that 22-year-old environmental activist Disha Ravi is not the prime mover along with the relatively recently formed Canada-based Poetic Justice Foundation (set up in March, 2020) , in a plot to overthrow the Indian government. They know this because the IPS officers at least, can read English and a simple search would show them that the term “toolkit” in this context is basically used by organisers of street protests against autocracies the world over, for peacefully expressing mass dissent.

Here is one such article from 2013 called The Dissident’s Toolkit, in the context of the Arab Spring. The author Erica Chenoweth (soon to be honoured with an arrest warrant) explains:

“Research shows, in fact, that demonstrations are just one of many tools…

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