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Asia Pacific|Modi’s Government Cracks Down on Dissent Over Pakistan Conflict
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/19/world/asia/india-antiwar-dissent-mahmudabad.html
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The arrest of a political science professor shows Indian leaders’ sensitivity to the political fallout from the military flare-up.
May 19, 2025, 2:09 p.m. ET
India’s government is taking legal action against academics, journalists and private companies seen as critical of its recent military campaign against Pakistan, including arresting one professor who had admonished Indians “who are 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 academic who was arrested, Ali Khan Mahmudabad, had cheered on his country’s armed forces during the military face-off, as had millions of other Indians. But he also criticized “those who are mindlessly advocating for a war.”
India struck Pakistan after a massacre of 26 people, all but one of them Hindu tourists, on April 22 in the Indian-controlled side of the Kashmir region. On Instagram and on Facebook, Mr. Mahmudabad said that as India hungered to avenge the Hindu tourists’ deaths, it should not forget the deepening persecution of the country’s minority Muslim population.
Three days after his initial post, Mr. Mahmudabad, a professor of political science at Ashoka University and a scion of Indian Muslim nobility, wrote another one, scolding “the blind bloodlust for war” even after a cease-fire had been declared the evening before.
Around 6:30 a.m. on Sunday, Mr. Mahmudabad, 42, was arrested at his residence in Delhi on charges that included threatening India’s sovereignty. A formal complaint against the professor had been lodged the previous night by a resident of Haryana, the neighboring state where Ashoka University is based, according to his lawyer, Mohammed Nizamuddin Pasha.
