India is Criminalizing Protests For Palestine
On the brutal crackdown on activists in Delhi.
With Israel’s genocidal agenda expanding rapidly, it is easy to forget that it was just a week ago that Israel intercepted the Madleen Freedom Flotilla as it searched for a way to deliver urgent aid to Gaza. Activists on the flotilla were detained, abused, and then prepared for deportation. Israel’s attack on the flotilla drew condemnation from across the globe. Protesters emerged on the streets of several countries to express outrage. In some places, like India, these actions were met with intense state violence and repression, showing once more how India is increasingly criminalizing protests for Palestine. Razeen with this dispatch from New Delhi.
On 11 June, activists from across student organizations and civil rights groups gathered in New Delhi to protest against the Israeli military’s interception of the Madleen Freedom Flotilla - the boat with activists carrying essential aid to Gaza.
The flotilla's aim was to draw international attention to the ongoing siege and deliver aid directly to the starving civilian population.
Instead, the boat was intercepted in international waters by Israeli forces.
Several of the activists aboard—doctors, journalists, and human rights defenders such as activist Greta Thunberg, member of European parliament Rima Hassan, amongst others, were detained, interrogated, and deported.
This blatant act of maritime piracy triggered global condemnation and protest.
In Delhi, student activists from groups including the All India Students’ Association (AISA), Students’ Federation of India (SFI), and independent collectives mobilized for a protest outside the Israeli Embassy.
However, even before the protest could begin, Delhi Police—having been tipped off about the planned demonstration—descended on the Khan Market metro station, the designated meeting point for the march, and forcibly removed protesters from the area.
Some were dragged out of auto-rickshaws and detained before they could even reach the embassy.
Eyewitness accounts and videos show Delhi Police using disproportionate force during the arrests.
Several activists sustained injuries during the scuffle, and reports suggest some were held without being told of the grounds for their arrest.
Detainees were later taken to police stations and coerced into signing ‘bound-down’ orders under Section 41A of the Criminal Procedure Code—now reclassified under the new Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita (BNS) as Section 35(3).
They were also threatened with charges under Section 144.
What is Section 144
Section 144 is a colonial-era law that grants sweeping powers to law enforcement to prohibit gatherings of four or more people in a public space.
Though it was originally introduced to prevent communal violence during British rule, its application today reflects a deepening hostility toward dissent.
In practice, Section 144 is often selectively imposed around symbols of state power—such as embassies, ministries, and government buildings—to preempt any display of public opposition.
Its overuse has effectively criminalised the act of assembling in the streets, turning spaces of protest into zones of surveillance and suppression.
The arbitrary and preventive use of this law in Delhi, even before a march began, illustrates how public solidarity is being reframed as a law-and-order problem rather than a moral or political act of conscience.
This crackdown is part of a troubling pattern.
Over the past few years, protests expressing solidarity with Palestine—whether against Israeli airstrikes, settler violence, or the ongoing blockade—have been routinely surveilled, disrupted, and criminalized in India.
Such responses raise deeper questions:
Why is the Indian state so quick to clamp down on public dissent against a foreign state accused of genocide and apartheid?
The heavy-handed response to the peaceful protest in Delhi reveals not only the shrinking democratic space in India but also its geopolitical alignments, as evidenced by India’s refusal to sign on to last week’s UN General Assembly ceasefire resolution.
Delhi was the only BRICS nation not to endorse the resolution and it has still refused to back an arms embargo on Israel.
As the death toll in Gaza mounts, and as starvation and disease spread under siege, public expressions of international solidarity become more urgent.
Yet in India, such solidarity is increasingly framed as a threat.
The protest may have been forced to disband but the message persists: the blockade is illegal, the flotilla was an act of humanitarian courage, and criminalizing those who stand with Gaza is an indictment not of the protesters, but of the state.
Nice to hear some good news!