Thread by @FriedrichPieter

"For the past several years, India’s government has steadily chipped away at the edifice of its free press and, over the past week, once again gone too far. This was the week my government attacked my home." — @VidyaKrishnan

theatlantic.com/international/…

"Home for me is in a multistory building in the center of New Delhi, on the edge of a sprawling park, a short walk from the markets of Karol Bagh and the upscale shops of Connaught Place.... This is where you can find the offices of @thecaravanindia."

"The Caravan is a small magazine — it has a staff of just a few dozen people — and its readership pales in comparison with other members of India’s English-language printed press. Yet its diminutive size masks its power: The publication is...

... read by government ministers and opposition leaders, and larger outlets regularly follow up on its stories.... It is a place where reporters and editors uniformly believe in the power of the written word, where speaking truth to power is a minimum expectation."

"Over the past week, multiple state police forces have opened investigations into the editors of The Caravan, as well as a host of other journalists and writers, for covering protests by farmers opposed to agricultural reforms being promoted by PM Narendra Modi’s government."

"Today, that a majority of Indians are Hindu is not a demographic fact, but a governing premise; whereas liberty of thought was once prized, journalists are now arrested; and what was once a union of states, united in their diversity, is a society divided, where Muslims are...

... not welcome, where farmers are beaten for defending their rights.

"To blame all of this on Modi would be overly simplistic. It is true that since his reelection less than two years ago, the prime minister has revoked...

... the constitutional autonomy of Jammu and Kashmir, India’s sole Muslim-majority state; established a religious test for citizenship that excludes Muslims; and promoted reforms that triggered civil unrest from farmers’ groups."

"This is to say nothing of the doctors who protest his government’s decision to allow Ayurveda practitioners to perform medical surgeries, the students who protest attacks on...

... intellectuals, the women who speak up against India’s rape culture, and the Dalits who fight caste oppression.

"The erosion of democracy in India did not happen in a single moment, or because of a single man. It came as a court directive to moviegoers, making it...

... mandatory to stand for the national anthem. It came in the form of police officers forcing wounded Muslim men to sing that anthem while filming it, without fear of being punished. It came as Bollywood championed police brutality and vigilante justice."