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Sometimes I think about what freedom means in this country. It’s not a dramatic thought — just something that crosses my mind when I see news of yet another student, writer, or activist being detained without trial. The word “preventive” sounds oddly harmless, doesn’t it? Like it’s meant to protect, not punish. But in India, preventive detention has long stopped being about protection. It has become political. It has become a way of controlling fear by manufacturing it.

The Constitution of India — the grand, idealistic document we all love to quote — actually allows preventive detention. Article 22, in its cold, bureaucratic language, gives the State the power to detain someone before they commit a crime, merely on suspicion that they might. It was meant to be an emergency provision, an exception, a temporary tool in extraordinary circumstances. But it quietly became the rule.

I think about this a lot — how the framers of our Constitution were fresh out of colonial trauma and still, somehow, kept a colonial law alive. The British used preventive detention against freedom fighters; now we use it against dissenters. History doesn’t repeat; it just learns new vocabulary.

The National Security Act (NSA) of 1980, the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA), and various state-level detention laws have become the modern versions of the same mechanism. Under the NSA, a person can be detained for up to 12 months without charge. The UAPA goes further — it stretches “anti-terror” definitions so far that sometimes, words themselves become weapons. A Facebook post, a slogan, a book reading — anything can be reinterpreted as “intent to disturb public order.”

When I was studying criminal law for the first time, I remember feeling disturbed that the legal system — built supposedly on the presumption of innocence — could so easily justify jailing someone before guilt is even established. Preventive detention laws bypass the core idea of justice. They exist outside the framework of “proof.” It is not about what you did, but what you might do. That’s not law, that’s anxiety made into policy.

And yet, I understand why the State defends it. Law and order, they say. National security. Public safety. Every authoritarian impulse hides behind those phrases. But when you peel them apart, what you see is politics — not protection. The victims of preventive detention are rarely random. They are the ones who make power uncomfortable. Muslims in Uttar Pradesh, Dalit protestors in Maharashtra, student activists from Delhi universities — there’s a pattern to who gets detained. The law isn’t blind; it’s selective.

When I read A.K. Gopalan v. State of Madras (1950), the first major case on preventive detention, I felt a strange irony. The Supreme Court then upheld the law, prioritizing state security over individual liberty. It was only decades later, in Maneka Gandhi v. Union of India (1978), that the Court expanded the meaning of Article 21 — “life and personal liberty” — to include fairness and reasonableness. But the ghost of Gopalan still lingers. Even today, courts hesitate to interfere too much in preventive detention orders. The rhetoric of national security overrides the language of human rights.

The thing about preventive detention is that it leaves no visible wound. There’s no trial, no judgment, no closure. Just the silence of suspended time. Imagine being kept in a cell for months without knowing when you’ll be released or why exactly you’re there. That’s not just legal injustice — it’s psychological violence.

I think of Devangana Kalita, Natasha Narwal, Umar Khalid, and countless unnamed others who’ve been detained under the UAPA. They become news headlines, then case numbers, and eventually, statistics. But every number is a person whose life is paused, whose story is rewritten by the State. Preventive detention doesn’t just punish individuals — it warns the rest of us. It tells us what happens when you question too loudly.

Some people say, “Well, if they’re innocent, they’ll be released.” But that misses the point. Preventive detention doesn’t need a conviction to destroy you. It drains time, reputation, and mental health. The punishment is in the waiting.

I’ve always believed that laws reflect what a society fears most. And preventive detention shows how deeply we fear freedom itself — not chaos, not violence, but freedom. Because freedom, in its truest form, is unpredictable. It means people might speak, protest, or resist. And to an insecure government, that unpredictability is terrifying.

The irony is that these laws are not just used by one regime or another. Every government, regardless of ideology, has used preventive detention. Congress, BJP, regional parties — all of them have found comfort in the convenience of control. The politics of fear is bipartisan.

When I look at the law now, I don’t just see the text. I see the silences around it — the constitutional promise of liberty, muffled by the fine print of national security. I think of Dr. Ambedkar’s warning that “the liberty of the individual must be reconciled with the liberty of the State.” But somewhere along the way, the State’s liberty became absolute, and the individual’s became conditional.

Sometimes, when I read about new detentions, I wonder what it would take to rewrite this balance. To remind the judiciary that “procedure established by law” cannot mean “anything the State decides.” To remind citizens that legality is not the same as justice. To remind myself that the Constitution was meant to protect people, not governments.

Preventive detention is not just a legal issue; it’s a moral one. It forces us to ask — what kind of democracy are we if our fears justify the erasure of rights? The right to dissent is the beating heart of a democracy. When that heart is restrained under the pretext of security, the whole body of the nation begins to decay from within.

I suppose what I’m saying is this: every time someone is detained without trial, our collective freedom shrinks a little. Every signature on a detention order carries the quiet weight of our silence. And maybe, one day, when we talk about liberty again, we’ll remember that it wasn’t stolen — we just signed it away, one preventive detention at a time.

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