This excerpt is from a testimony recalled by an eyewitness, who claimed to have seen four Naxalites being killed in an ‘encounter’ by the police in the southern Indian state of Andhra Pradesh. It appears in the interim report of the Civil Rights Committee (an unofficial, voluntary committee set up to investigate several ‘encounter’ killings of Naxalite prisoners) released in 1977. The committee was comprised of prominent civil society figures, lawyers, activists and journalists. The report claimed that the police ‘encounters’ they investigated were, in fact, extra-judicial killings. This claim anticipated what is today widely recognised in the public sphere, namely, that ‘encounters’ by the police or armed forces are often staged. The report was submitted to the prime minister of India and released to the press. The opposition raised questions in parliament regarding the claims of the report and a judicial commission of inquiry under Justice V. Bhargava was set up by the Andhra Pradesh government to conduct public hearings on the alleged encounters of Naxalites during and after the Emergency.

The report was a result of a fact-finding investigation. Fact-finding investigations are the predominant mode of activism for civil liberties groups in India. In a typical fact-finding investigation, an inquiry team is established on a one-off basis. The team visits the scene or site of the case, ascertains facts, identifies those who are culpable and makes demands or recommendations.

The excerpts mentioned above are part of a debate, which took place in 1984–1985, on the arguable failure of political parties and the emergence of groups referred to as non-party political formations. Defending the emergence of these groups, Sethi argues that the formation of such groups was necessitated because political parties had been ‘side-tracking the issues of direct concern to the people’. In contrast, Karat, on behalf of the Communist Party of India (Marxist) (CPI[M]), argued that non-party groups played into an ‘imperialist strategy’ and were anti-left.

In the winter of 1984, large-scale and targeted violence against Sikhs engulfed New Delhi's suburbs such as Sultanpuri, Mangolpuri and Trilokpuri. The country witnessed a massacre that left an indelible scar on its history. Between 3,000 and 17,000 Sikhs were killed, and over 50,000 forced to flee their homes. Amid all this violence and curfew-bound streets, a group of like-minded people—university professors, government officials, doctors, lawyers, students and members of civil society groups—took to the streets carrying nothing more than notepads and pens. They had first gathered at a friend's place, and divided themselves into two teams. One was led by the People's Union for Democratic Rights (PUDR) and the other by the People's Union for Civil Liberties (PUCL), both of which were civil liberties groups that had been set up about a decade ago in the early 1970s.

Both teams navigated the violence-prone neighbourhoods, documenting testimonies of the survivors, destruction of gurudwaras and people's allegations against Congress leaders for having orchestrated the carnage. They interviewed victims, police officers, neighbours, army personnel and political leaders. They collected perpetrators’ information, car numbers and locations which had been targeted during the riots. The testimonies they recorded revealed that mobs had precise information on Sikh households across the city and were armed with kerosene and sulphur powder to set fire to those. Instances of complicity by officials were also recorded, including the names of those who looked the other way. This systematic documentation and its release in the form of a report exposed the chilling coordination behind the violence and revealed how massacres often unfold with calculated precision.

These two responses to essentially the same question, that is, what factors led to the emergence of civil liberties activism, represent the contrasting motivations and political contexts behind the setting up of civil liberties groups in India. Simon sees their first appearance as a pressure group to lobby for the release of Naxalite political prisoners in the early 1970s.

The introduction sets up the context for the book by exploring the tensions and intersections between localism and globalism, nativism and exoticism, parochialism and cosmopolitanism. While outlining the diversity of the Polish Lithuanian Commonwealth and its location in between worlds, the introductory chapter advocates a transcultural approach to the study of Polish Lithuanian material and visual culture, against the conventional framing of Poland Lithuania’s cultural history along nationalist lines. This new approach zeroes in on the people and artefacts on the move, giving rise to unexpected convergences, reorientations, and interconnections.