India’s government is cracking down on scholars, reporters and private businesses regarded as critical of its recent military action against Pakistan, arresting one professor who had rebuked Indians “baying for war.”
During Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s decade in power, his government has routinely punished critics with criminal charges, legal investigations and travel bans. The latest crackdown on dissent shows Indian leaders’ sensitivity to the political fallout from a four-day conflict that ended under outside mediation with no clear victor.
The scholar arrested, Ali Khan Mahmudabad, had applauded his nation’s military forces in the armed standoff, as had millions of other Indians. But he was also critical of “those who are mindlessly calling for a war.”
India targeted Pakistan after a massacre of 26 individuals, the vast majority of them Hindu tourists, on April 22 in the Indian-held side of the Kashmir territory. On Facebook and on Instagram, Mr. Mahmudabad stated that as India longed to avenge the deaths of the Hindu tourists, it must not overlook the intensifying persecution of the nation’s minority Muslim community.
Three days later, Mr. Mahmudabad, an Ashoka University professor of political science and member of Indian Muslim nobility, posted again, berating “the blind bloodlust for war” even after a cease-fire the night before.
Professor Jailed for Peace Posts
Around 6:30 a.m. on Sunday, police detained 42-year-old Mr. Mahmudabad from his house in Delhi on charges of threatening India’s sovereignty. A Haryana resident, from the state neighboring Ashoka University, had filed a formal complaint against the professor the night before, according to his lawyer, Mohammed Nizamuddin Pasha.
Modi’s party, the Bhartiya Janata Party, is in power in Haryana. Mr. Mahmudabad, whose legal name is Mohammad Ali Ahmad Khan, faces three years to life in prison.
Mr. Pasha explained that the complaint contained errors and abnormalities that had confused the posts on Instagram and Facebook with those on X.
As India’s government has moved to restrict what can be said about the confrontation with Pakistan, a welter of Indians have come under pressure.
