The Incarcerations tells the remarkable and chilling story of the unravelling of Indian democracy through the Bhima Koregaon case, in which 16 people (the BK-16) – scholars, lawyers, democratic rights activists, artists and poets – have been imprisoned, without credible evidence and without trial, for waging war against the Indian state as Maoist terrorists. Alpa Shah expertly leads us through the case, telling how the alleged terrorists were charged with inciting violence at a 2018 commemoration, where none of them were present, and then accused of plotting to kill the Indian prime minister. 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.