Indian Democracy Is Fighting Back

CHENNAI—For nearly three weeks now, India has quaked with protest: crowds that have increased by the day, milling in the avenues and parks and on the university campuses of the cities, nursing a seismic fury but keeping largely peaceful despite it. The sprees of violence have come . In Delhi, where Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s home minister controls law and order, and in other states ruled by his party, the police have displayed an old, familiar brutality. They’ve hit marchers with heavy wooden staves. They’ve tear-gassed a university library. They’ve detained people—even minors—in a police station and then refused to allow lawyers in to represent them. In Uttar Pradesh, a state of more than 200 million people, a blanket ban on public assembly was imposed,, the government reasoned, as if public demonstrations were a product of the 21st century.