A prominent critic of the Indian government was in court Tuesday after being arrested for posting two tweets that the country’s Supreme Court has called a “calculated attack on the very foundation of the institution of the judiciary.” The tweets belonged to Prashant Bhushan, a public interest lawyer and activist who has built a career on challenging recent Indian governments and who has emerged as one of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s fiercest critics.
The tweets in question took aim at India’s Supreme Court, which Bhushan claims has been turned into a political tool for Modi’s government. Last year, the court settled a decades-old dispute when it allowed Hindus to build a temple at the site of a mosque demolished by a Hindu mob in 1992, fulfilling one of Modi’s key campaign promises. In one tweet, Bhushan fired straight at the court, claiming that its recent activity showed “how democracy has been destroyed in India.”
