Fighting politics with the State’s coercive machinery, as determined by the government, is a classic reaction of authoritarianism. It is tantamount to tyrannising the protesters through the deployment of the means of violence available to the government, like police firing on angry protesters, more usually referred in police and government parlance as a “mob” or “unruly mob”

xOne day before he was arrested and flown out of cool and clean Leh to hot and dusty Jodhpur under the National Security Act, Sonam Wangchuk, the indefatigable warrior for the rights of the people of Ladakh, told the world there was a move afoot by the Union home ministry “to bring me under the Public Safety Act and throw me in jail for two years”. What he then said is a master class add-on: “I am ready for that, but

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