At the outset of monsoon in 1929, inside the damp walls of Lahore Central Prison, Hindustan Socialist Republican Association (HSRA) comrades Bhagat Singh, Jatin Das, B. K. Dutt and many others, began a historic hunger strike. On the 63rd day of the strike, Jatin Das’s health deteriorated severely. When British officials attempted to force-feed him milk, it burst his lungs and he attained martyrdom. Even after his death, Bhagat Singh and the other HSRA revolutionaries continued the strike until the first week of October, fasting for nearly 116 days.
The demand of this strike was to improve the conditions of political prisoners. The letter titled “Hunger-Strikers’ Demands” written jointly by Bhagat Singh and B. K. Dutt defined political prisoners as those convicted of offences against the British Raj that crushed any form of struggle towards liberation, subjecting them to brutal trials, and turning the entire judicial process into punishment.
In 1951, the ongoing Telangana movement and the impact of Tebhaga and Punnapra–Vayalar revolts shook the feudal core of Indian society. Under the heat of the rising revolutionary struggles the Nehru government brought in the Preventive Detention Act (PDA), which echoed colonial legislations such as the Rowlatt Act (1919) and the Defence of India Act (1939), both of which Nehru himself had opposed during the British rule. Through this Act, the idea of ‘detention without trial’ was once again institutionalised in the name of internal security. In the decades that followed, successive governments, irrespective of ruling party, enacted draconian laws, such as MISA (1971), NSA (1980), TADA (1987), and POTA (2002). Later, after India signed several agreements with the European Union, this trajectory culminated in the notorious UAPA of today. With the government adopting neoliberal policies in the 1990s, there was a significant rise in corporate land grabs and mass displacement across India. This led to a rise in people’s uprisings and movements against displacement. One of the primary tools that the state uses to suppress these movements has been the UAPA.
A year ago in Karnataka, six surrendered Maoist rebels demanded abolition of Kudremukh National Park, a ban on tourism in the Western Ghats, and the recognition of Adivasi rights over forest land from the Congress government as conditions. However, within days of their surrender, they were sent to jail under the UAPA. This starkly echoes the case of Knayakumari, a Maoist rebel who had surrendered in 2017 but is still languishing in jail. Not only Maoists, but the government has also incarcerated numerous human rights activists, trade unionists, and scholars who have been waging struggles against displacement through entirely constitutional means. Many of them have been charged under the UAPA on suspected links with Maoists, yet to be proven.
In the Bhima Koregaon conspiracy case (BK-16), sixteen prominent activists and intellectuals were arrested and spent years in prison, with Stan Swamy dying in custody due to harsh prison conditions. Except people’s lawyer Surendra Gadling, others have been released on bail. It is also worth noting that when Gadling was fighting against G. N. Saibaba’s incarceration under UAPA, police warned him that he would be the next target. Even as public outrage over the BK-16 case continued, the government has initiated the Delhi riots case (2020) against activists fighting for the repeal of NRC-CAA and the new Lucknow conspiracy case (2023) in which democratic activists fighting displacement are being targeted. In all these cases, no trial has started.
The UAPA has been disproportionately used against Adivasis. The incarceration of Adivasi activists from organizations such as Moolwasi Bachao Manch in Chhattisgarh, Niyam Surakhya Samiti in Odisha, and Adivasi-Moolvasi Adhikar Manch in Jharkhand demonstrates how easily Adivasis can be framed as having links with Maoists. Similarly, Muslim activists were targeted during the 1980s and 1990s under TADA. Research conducted by the School of Oriental and African Studies and the independent legal news platform Article 14 has pointed to systemic bias in the application of such laws. One study notes that of 925 individuals accused under UAPA between 2005 and 2025, 84.6% were Muslims.
The rapid growth of fascist Hindutva ideology, and its increasing influence within the Indian state since the late 1980s gave legitimacy to easily brand Muslims as terrorists and unlawfully arrest them. This trend peaked with the BJP coming to power in 2014, as now even students can be arrested as terrorists just because they are Muslims. As is the case with student activists Sharjeel Imam and Umar Khalid, who continue to languish in jail for more than five years under allegations of inciting the Delhi riots.
Several decades have passed since the British formally left India, however the oppressive conditions that led to the rise of revolutionaries like Bhagat Singh still exist. Democratic activists continue to emerge in big numbers, and thus brutal colonial methods also continue to persist in crushing all possible forms of dissent.
