By Adnan Ali
Dewas, Madhya Pradesh: In the tribal hamlet of Shukrawasa, in central India’s Dewas district, a quiet social experiment to improve lives through education, health access, and self-reliance has run aground—following a now familiar national pattern of violence by a mob of Hindutva extremists and the police filing criminal charges against the victims.
An eight-ten-member self-funded youth collective, How We Ought to Live (HOWL), is now scattered and in disarray, following mob violence, smear campaigns, and what its members call a fabricated religious conversion case.
On 24 July 2025, HOWL’s founder, 46-year-old founder, former journalist Sourav Banerjee, was picked up by police from Indore, 200 km to the West of Bhopal , and held without formal arrest. He has now been in jail for 18 days.
His lawyer, Jayant Vipat, said police invoked section 57 of the newly enforced Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita (BNSS)—an arrest without warrant. Banerjee is accused of “hurting religious sentiments”, under section 299 of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita (BNS), promulgated on July 1, 2024. The punishment is a maximum 3 years with fine or both.
“The ingredients (of the case) relate to religious conversion,” Dewas superintendent of police Puneet Gehlot told Article 14. “If such an angle emerges during the investigation, it will be taken into account.”
Vipat disputed that line of inquiry, pointing to the names of HOWL’s members—all Hindu.
“If they are accused of conversion, are they converting Hindus into Hindus?” he said. “How is that conversion? No one’s religion is being changed.”
On the day of his arrest, Banerjee and fellow members of HOWL had gone to speak to the press about escalating threats to their work with the Bhil Adivasi community.
This story was originally published in article-14.com. Read the full story here.