OIn the streets of Bangalore the protesters gather, residents stand defiantly with students and activists. Their posters had slogans such as ‘standing up for farmers is not sedition’ and ‘when injustice becomes law, resistance becomes duty’ and most detained a photo of a smiling young woman: 22-year-old Disha Ravi. .
Ravi has been well-known in Bangalore’s vibrant environmental circles for the past three years, but over the weekend she became the face of the Indian government’s heavy-handed fight against discord.
On Saturday, she was arrested at her home, which she shares with her mother in Bangalore, who was flown to Delhi, placed without a lawyer in the custody of the Delhi police and charged with insurrection and criminal conspiracy.
“This government of India is attacking environmental activists and Disha’s arrest shows that there is a clear, deep concern pattern,” said Leo Saldhana, an environmental activist in Bangalore. “The point here is to destabilize all disagreement and then eradicate it.”
Ravi’s alleged crimes are linked to a ‘toolkit’ document linked to India’s ongoing farming protests, which police say is evidence of a coordinated international conspiracy against India.
Since November, hundreds of thousands of farmers have been camping in Delhi demanding that three new controversial farm laws be repealed because they will leave their livelihoods to private enterprises. Ravi, the granddaughter of farmers, passionately threw her support behind their cause.
She is no stranger to activism. Inspired by Swedish environmental activist Greta Thunberg in 2019, whose global climate protest movement Fridays for the Future (FFF) saw millions of the world’s schoolchildren strike against the failure to tackle global warming, Ravi co-founded India’s branch of the FFF network and began organizing strikes across the country.
She has felt all the effects of climate change on her life. The townhouse she lived in with her mother, who raised her as a single parent, would flood every time it rained, getting worse every year and her hometown of Bangalore would be without water within a few years. Her grandparents who were farmers struggled with drought, crop failure and floods due to global warming.
“My motivation for joining climate activism comes from the fact that I, my grandparents, who are farmers, are struggling with the effects of the climate crisis,” Ravi said in a 2019 interview. ‘Then I was not aware of what they were experiencing was the climate crisis because climate education does not exist where I come from. ”
Whether it was coordinating environmental attacks, participating in lake cleaning, tree planting exercises or the climate action workshops, Ravi was always there, and she was known for her deep knowledge of the issues. She was also the sole breadwinner of the family and, along with her activism, produced at a company with a company that produces plant foods.
‘Disha was known for being incredibly hardworking, completely committed to environmental issues to the point where she would burn herself out because she was so deeply committed. I was sometimes worried about her sacrificing her well-being for her activism, ” a co-activist in Bangalore said to remain anonymous for fear of the authorities.
In international press discussing the global phenomenon of the FFF movement, it was Ravi who was frequently interviewed and he was very critical of the policies of the government led by the Prime Minister, Narendra Modi.
“We are not only fighting for our future, we are also fighting for our present,” she told the Guardian in 2020. ‘We, the people of most people, are going to turn the conversation into climate negotiations and lead a fair recovery plan that benefits people and not the pockets of our government. ”
Fridays for future India were already on the radar of the Delhi police. In July 2020, after the group launched an online campaign against a proposed law that would dilute the environmental regulations, the group’s website was temporarily removed by the Delhi Cybercrime Unit.
Since September, through her personal family connection, Ravi has thrown her passion behind the cause of India’s farmers. Some fellow environmental activists said they had warned her against it. To stand up for the farmers runs the risk of attracting unwanted attention from the authorities and the government, who in recent weeks have taken an increasingly draconian approach to those who took part in the protests, talked or even reported on it. did.
Riots have already been leveled at journalists, activists and politicians, and police have erected concrete barriers, barbed wire and nails around the farmers’ protest camps. Farmers accused of inciting violence during a march were charged under terrorism laws and denied bail for six months.
The trouble for Ravi came to light over the toolkit document, which was tweeted by environmentalist Thunberg as part of her message that she ‘stood with the farmers’. The google doc was a compilation of information, hashtags, suggested actions, ideas and contacts for those who wanted to help support the farmers – a common tool of organized protest movements.
Thunberg’s tweet angered many in India who saw it as outside interference as images of her face were burned by protesters. Police subsequently seized your document shared by Thunberg 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 encouraged Thunberg to tweet it to her millions of followers.
Ravi told the court on Sunday that she had only changed two lines of the toolkit, which she said had no riotous motive behind it. “I only supported the farmers. I supported the farmers because this is our future and we must all eat, ‘she said, breaking down in the courtroom before being detained for five days.
In the aftermath of her arrest, a ripple of fear runs through environmental circles. Fellow activists were too scared to speak to the media and many WhatsApp groups used for the organization remained silent.
Ravi’s arrest also sparked an outburst of outrage. Former Environment Minister Jairan Ramesh called her detention “utterly heinous” and “unfounded harassment and intimidation”, while a joint statement by more than 50 academics, artists and activists described the actions of the Delhi police as “illegal in nature”. and described an “overreaction”. of the state ”.
The Delhi Commission for Women, a government body, sent a notice to Delhi police on Tuesday to demand further information on Ravi’s case. The former finance minister, P Chidambaram, was equally sharp. “India is becoming the theater of the absurd,” he said.