THE INCARCERATIONS
Shortlisted for the Moore Human Rights Prize 2025
Finalist Orwell Prize for Political Writing 2024
A Financial Times ‘What to Read in 2024’
Listed as one of the ‘Five of the best books about Indian politics’ in the Guardian
ABOUT
The world’s largest democracy is facing the greatest challenge since the end of British colonial rule in 1947.
The Incarcerations pulls back the curtain on Indian democracy to tell the remarkable and chilling story of the Bhima Koregaon case, in which 16 human rights defenders (the BK-16) – professors, lawyers, journalists, poets – have been imprisoned, without credible evidence and without trial, as Maoist terrorists.
Alpa Shah unravels how these alleged terrorists were charged with inciting violence at a year’s day commemoration in 2018, accused of waging a war against the Indian state, and plotting to kill the Indian Prime Minister, Narendra Modi. Expertly leading us through the case, Shah exposes some of the world’s most shocking revelations of cyber warfare research, which show not only hacking of emails and mobile phones of the BK-16, but also implantation of the electronic evidence that was used to incarcerate them. Through the life histories of the BK-16, Shah dives deep into the issues they fought for and tells the story of India’s three main minorities – Adivasi, Dalits and Muslims – and what the search for democracy entails for them.
Essential and urgent, The Incarcerations reveals how this case is a bellwether for the collapse of democracy in India, as for the first time in the nation’s history there is a multi-pronged, coordinated attack on key defenders of various pillars of democracy. In so doing, Shah shows that democracy today must be not only about protecting freedom of expression and democratic institutions, but also about supporting and safeguarding the social movements that question our global inequalities.
PRAISE
NAOMI KLEIN, award-winning author of Doppleganger and The Shock Doctrine
“A sinister, fascistic wind is blowing across our divided planet; in today’s India, it has reached gale force velocity. Shah has written a gripping and rigorous crime story about the murder of a once thriving democracy, exposing an arsenal of lethal weapons, some wielded on the streets, others in the courts and press. As importantly, The Incarcerations is the story of an extraordinary group of political prisoners – principled individuals who have lost their freedom, but not their belief in a radically better world."
ARUNDHATI ROY, political activist and Booker Prize-Winning Novelist of The God of Small Things.
“This is a chilling, meticulously documented account of the arrest and ongoing trial of some of India’s most exceptional citizens. The Incarcerations shows us that the Bhima Koregaon 16 pose a danger to the current Hindu Nationalist regime not for what they have done, but for daring to have a different dream about what kind of country India should be. Alpa Shah’s book is about the criminalization and incarceration of dissent itself. It does us a great service. This is not an endorsement so much as it is an expression of gratitude.”
PANKAJ MISHRA, award-winning essayist, novelist and author of From the Ruins of Empire
“The Incarcerations shows, in eye-opening and gripping detail, how a compliant media as well as a brutal state crack down on dissent in India today. No finer account has been written yet about the collapse of the world’s largest democracy.”
AMY GOODMAN, Host, Democracy Now!
“Alpa Shah’s The Incarcerations offers a riveting account of India’s slide towards fascism, told through a deep dive into the case of the BK-16, political prisoners targeted for demanding equality and daring to question authority. This book, detailing how the seeds of resistance can survive the mechanics of modern oppression, is a must-read to understand the scale of the assault on democracy, not only in India, but around the world.”
YANIS VAROUFAKIS, best-selling author and former Finance Minister of Greece.
“Alpa Shah’s, The Incarcerations, is essential reading for anyone who wants to know what is truly happening in India now – and why we have a duty to support those who are sacrificing everything to keep democracy possible across that great country.”
BARONESS SHAMI CHAKRABARTI, human rights activist and politician, former director of Liberty and author of Human Rights: The Case for the Defence:
“This human rights defender and daughter of the diaspora hears a timely wake-up-call in the clarity of The Incarcerations. Alpa Shah has done the ‘free world’ an invaluable service with a meticulous and engaging work charting an Indian tragedy with ominous parallels and wider lessons. Even the most populous constitutional democracies are vulnerable to demagogues of the populist right. It’s no conspiracy when it happens in plain sight.”
PROFESSOR PRETI TANEJA, prize winning writer of We That Are Young.
“The Incarcerations is a profoundly important and urgent book for our times. Deeply researched and powerfully readable; bringing first hand testimony and long histories of activism and violence into focus, The Incarcerations should be read, shared, and cited by everyone who cares in even the smallest way about democracy and its abusers; about minority rights to land, dignity, and freedom of speech; about justice and the manipulation of law; about the unfair detention of thousands, and about India's future. Alpa Shah's awe-inspiring book inspires with its commitment to justice even as it enrages with the incarceration of the Bhima Koregaon 16 and with the details she painstakingly uncovers about terrifying state harms against minorities which she uses the case to bring to light. Ultimately, this book is a call to learn from grassroots movements, and to keep resisting in all ways at our disposal the strategies from prison expansion to tech manipulation that fascism deploys to silence activists, lawyers, writers, and allies. With national elections around the world from India to the UK about to take place, The Incarcerations is probably the most devastating, vital and awakening book you'll read this year.”
PROFESSOR CHRISTOPHE JAFFRELOT, political scientist and author of Modi’s India:
“An in depth, poignant biography of the Bhima Koregaon accused, Alpa Shah’s book uses this entry point to make us understand what post-democracy India is becoming; and how those who resist, suffer – be they in jail or out. Shah demonstrates, once again, the meaning of committed scholarship – intellectually as well as ethically.”
HARSH MANDER, writer, human rights activist and peace worker and Director of Centre for Equity Studies.
“Alpa Shah prises opens a terrifying window into the shadowy world of the crumbling of India’s democracy. She does this through her careful documentation of the notorious BK-16 case in which an array of intellectuals, writers, teachers, lawyers, trade unionists, scholars and cultural activists were incarcerated for years without the trial even commencing.
The book evokes shock about how evidence was falsely implanted and justice repeatedly failed, and simultaneously inspiration and hope by its luminous accounts of heroic women and men willing to lay down their lives fighting for justice for India’s most oppressed people. Her report is necessary, brave, meticulous, harrowing and immensely humane.”
PROFESSOR ROMILA THAPAR, Indian historian
‘A comprehensive and accessible coverage of the Bhima-Koregaon case.’
ECE TEMELKURAN, award-winning journalist and author of How to Lose a Country: The 7 Steps from Democracy to Dictatorship:
“Alpa Shah tells the stories of the BK-16 with razor-sharp analysis and the genuine compassion of a good storyteller.”
PROFESSOR ÉTIENNE BALIBAR, philosopher and author of Equaliberty
“Alpa Shah’s bold and illuminating book, The Incarcerations, gives hope for democracy, not only in India, but worldwide, despite her account of the brutality faced by the oppressed minorities - Dalits, Adivasis and Muslims – and those who courageously defend their struggles.”
REVIEWS
‘[A] compulsively readable story…The Incarcerations is an unsettling indictment of Modi’s India, and alleges grave miscarriages of justice…Shah has a gift for non-fiction narrative, and the book, enlivened by photos and maps of the Indian states where the action unfolds, is almost cinematic. The fact that the author (who previously wrote a study of the Naxalite insurgency, 2018’s Nightmarch), knows many of the dramatis personae no doubt helps.’ John Reed, The Financial Times
‘Shah, a professor of anthropology at LSE, tells with literary aplomb the Kafkaesque story of these 16 intellectuals and activists falsely accused of conspiring to kill Modi… a gripping and uplifting book’. Pratinav Anil, The Times UK
‘Shah draws on reporting that has been done over the years by the few independent news outlets that still survive in India, as well as conversations with some of the prisoners and their families (seven of the BK 16 are now out on bail)… The high point of Shah’s book comes halfway through when she talks to a couple of internet security researchers who say that the email accounts of Wilson and Swamy were also hacked into and, what’s more, that the recovery address and phone number added to these hacked accounts belonged to a police officer investigating the Bhima Koregaon case. She suggests that the hackers – and, arguably, the Indian police – didn’t even bother to cover their tracks.’ Abhrajyoti Chakraborty, The Guardian/The Observer
‘Shah’s brisk narrative presents vividly etched portraits of the BK-16. Concurrently the book pieces together the murky story of how the Indian “deep state” ensnared recalcitrant citizens…Alpa Shah concludes that the Modi government is “an Indian form of fascism”. Christophe Jaffrelot prefers to use the term “national populism”. Either way, both of these books powerfully illustrate the perils for a democracy when authoritarian state power is yoked to a brute majoritarianism intent on bullying into submission minorities and dissenters. As India confronts the prospect of another five years of BJP rule, with the final election results to be declared on June 4, these works are urgent tracts for our times.’ Prashant Kidambi, Times Literary Supplement
‘deeply researched and frequently shocking’ Andrew Robinson, Nature
‘the publication of this book is of paramount consequence not merely for those still incarcerated in this case, but also in a bid to save democracy everywhere’ Mekhala Saran, The Quint
‘Alpa’s book is a must-read for all students of contemporary Indian politics.’ Julio Ribeiro, The Tribune
‘at once scary and inspiring’ Manoj Mitta, Live Mint
‘My all-time favourite is an academic who can write movingly without losing the rigour. Scholar-storyteller Alpa Shah has that rare quality.’ Vipul Mudgal, The Business Standard
‘It is the best book I’ve read about the full scale assault on democracy in India, and with the general elections scheduled to conclude in June, it’s essential reading for understanding what’s happening to the country right now.’ Gavin Jacobson, The New Statesman