This Bill is very problematic, even by the standards of a dwindling democracy, for three reasons.

The argument that we are in the process of decolonizing laws is a bogus one and it reveals our hypocrisies more than anything else.

Culling out a thinker because he “played a crucial role in the division of India” and shifting another because of political discomfort is not a pedagogical exercise but a political move. At its root lies a conceit – that history can be produced by politics.

A defining feature of a federal democracy is division of power. It is this principle that makes the exercise of power a remit of an elected head and not of nominal heads like presidents, governors and lieutenant governors.

If you look back at your school life, college life, street life, and community life, perhaps you’d find a story similar to mine from a time when nationalism flowed quietly and steadfastly.

While addressing the Constituent Assembly in 1949, Jagat Narain Lal, one of the makers of the Indian Constitution noted, "...at this stage and in this century, it is becoming for us, as an advanced country, to guarantee full freedom of speech and expression."

'Trial by process' is the political and organisational logic of the UAPA.

Three questions in the aftermath of India's brutal crisis.

Defamation laws as different from ‘ordinary’ attacks on free speech. They aim to shut down critical speech by intimidating critics and undermining their active public engagement.

With the passing of the CAA, that peg on which we hung our imperfect-but-thriving secular democracy was removed – and we officially adopted religion as an adjudicating principle of Indian citizenship.

This party is telling us that beyond the hollowed out trope of rashtra, beyond the hate-filled invective, beyond the violent brink to which its rhetoric pushes us again and again, there is nothing more that it can offer now.

In his defence of the CAA, he missed facts, history and law, and he missed their connections. But above all he missed what he beseeches us all to have – compassion. Perhaps that's why the PM has endorsed what he said.

Nurtured by the majoritarian ethic, for every internal enemy located there are thousands of vigilantes willing to combat and, for every enemy subjugated, there are millions of spectators willing to cheer or look the other way.

It is scandalous that the fate of a million people can rest on the abdication of responsibility and a deliberate act of omission by the government.

The deployment of UAPA, and other exceptional laws is meant to signal the reach of the Indian state and meant to teach those who use their democratic rights to speak out, just how fragile the edifice of their entitlements is.

The goal of the case may not necessarily be to win, but to drag critics to court and bury them under a pile of litigation costs, harassment and embarrassment until they wear down and withdraw.

It is between the raids, threats, arrests and the “law taking its course” that the actual game of persecution and subversion of law is played.

The arrest of five activists in the Bhima Koregaon case and the charges filed against them under the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act should worry us deeply.

National pride has now become interlinked with a deep, visceral hatred for people identified as anti-nationals – secularists, liberals, beef-eaters, Muslims, immigrants and critics of the government.