The trap closes every day more on the Indian civil society which defends freedoms in the country of subcontinent and criticizes the evolution of Narendra Modi’s regime. Teesta Setalvad, one of India’s best-known activists, and Mohammed Zubair, a famous journalist, co-founder ofAltNews, an information verification site created in 2017 to fight against “fake news”, in particular those propagated by the ruling party, were stopped a few days apart. The two cases are completely separate, but both relate to freedom of expression. They intervene in an increasingly repressive context with regard to intellectuals, activists, journalists and religious minorities in India.
Mohammed Zubair, 39, Muslim, was taken into custody on Monday, June 27, by police specializing in cybercrime. She blames him for having disturbed “religious harmony”by a tweet posted, four years ago, in 2018. The police call it a “highly provocative”, even if the message seems harmless enough: a photo of the sign of a hotel named Honeymoon Hotel (“honeymoon hotel”) and renamed with the name of a Hindu god: “Hanuman hotel”. It was a screenshot from a 1983 Bollywood comedy by director Hrishikesh Mukherjee, which never sparked any controversy.
Police say they received a complaint filed in June by Twitter account holder Hanuman Bhakt, “worshipper of the monkey god Hanuman”, considering himself insulted as a Hindu by the journalist. Curiously, the account was created in October 2021 and only had three followers before Mohammed Zubair’s arrest, according to the news site. Scroll. The police did not release the name of its holder.
“A new and frightening precedent”
The journalist has been in the crosshairs of Hindu nationalists since revealing the offensive remarks made by Nupur Sharma, the spokeswoman of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), about the Prophet Muhammad during a televised debate. The case caused a diplomatic storm, forcing the ruling party to suspend Nupur Sharma.
His police custody comes as Narendra Modi, guest of the G7 in Germany, pledged on Tuesday, June 28, alongside other countries, to “to protect the freedom, independence and diversity of civil society actors (…), freedom of expression and opinion online and offline”. “It reminds the world that with this regime you have to watch what it does and not be fooled by what it says”writes political scientist Pratap Bhanu Mehta, in the daily Indian Express. All opposition parties defended the work of Mohammed Zubair and criticized the government’s hypocrisy.
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