India, Oct. 17 -- We started with the premise that the book needed to include insight into the cutting-edge research on policing and violence in India that has emerged over the past decade or so, and reveal the work that human-rights lawyers, activists and others have been doing, and to bring these into dialogue. However, when we started getting chapter drafts and doing interviews for the book, it became apparent that we were all skilled at talking to our own particular audiences but less so to a general public, since we all had our own language and approach to the issues that we explore. It took time and effort on everyone's part to get us all speaking the same language, and making that language as accessible as possible. There is a long tradition of human-rights groups in India, that have brought out insightful fact-finding reports, and lawyers, who have done incredible litigation that doesn't always connect with the academic or popular realm. A number of former detainees have written powerful memoirs and prison diaries, and so have some police officers who have attempted models of democratic accountability. The attempt in our book was to connect all these efforts in a unique format with essays as well as shorter discussion pieces and interviews. Post-Independence India, as in the case of India under British rule, has relied heavily on pre-emptive criminalisation, colonial-era statutes such as sedition laws, and heavy-handed force to suppress dissent, in addition to sharing the fundamental objective of protecting state power and socio-political hierarchies from popular challenge. However, significant differences mark the post-colonial era, not least that police crackdowns have come to operate under the framework of a democratic constitution, which forces the state to rhetorically justify its actions through the lens of national security, public order, and sovereignty. Furthermore, contemporary crackdowns increasingly leverage modern technologies, such as facial recognition, digital surveillance and telecommunications shutdowns, that far exceed the technological capacities of the colonial state. Efforts towards police reform in India - championed largely by civil-rights lawyers, activists, and grassroots organisations - include pushing for judicial compliance with landmark Supreme Court directives such as mandatory CCTV installations in police stations and strict arrest procedures. However, systemic impunity remains a formidable barrier, particularly when addressing custodial violence targeting vulnerable groups such as Dalits, Muslims, and LGBTQ+ individuals. Legal infrastructure and bureaucratic hurdles often work to shield perpetrators rather than deliver justice, which makes institutional reform an ongoing, uphill battle. One of the ironies of police reform in India has been that landmark cases such as the 2006 Prakash Singh vs Union of India one have been initiated by the police themselves. The focus here is more on ensuring autonomy of the police from political interference, which is definitely a challenge. However, that has also meant that accountability for police violence has remained even more elusive than usual. We approach such a question as a historian and a political scientist respectively. When it comes to history, it's valuable to think about how contemporary technologies, such as facial recognition, represent an evolution of the technological authoritarianism rooted in colonial surveillance and penal apparatuses. It is fascinating that technology also comes with its claims of modernity and scientific progress and sometimes as more "humane" than other methods. Yet, as we know, in addition to questions of the validity and reliability of these claims, facial recognition technology raises serious concerns regarding legal ethics and privacy. Viewing contemporary campus crackdowns alongside our own work underscores how Western liberal democracies have come to deploy authoritarian policing tactics when student movements challenge institutional endowments, financial investments, and corporate ties. While US institutions have frequently opted for spectacular, militarised police raids and mass arrests, UK universities have relied more on a quieter mix of administrative surveillance, private security, and punitive academic measures. Such developments demonstrate that the impulse to crush student dissent is not an isolated anomaly, but part of an architecture of state and institutional control....