What Is Fridays For Future, One Of The Causes Arrested Activist Disha Ravi Was Associated With

The arrest of Disha Ravi by the Delhi Police in connection with the Greta Thunberg Toolkit case has sent shockwaves among activists and environmentalists.

That is because long before she 'edited two lines of the toolkit', the 21-year-old student from Bengaluru has been an active participant in several environmental causes.

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This includes Fridays For Future India, Save Aareay, Campaign against the EIA 2020, Campaign to save the Mollem forest in Goa and more.

In fact, Disha was one of the founding members of the Fridays For Future India chapter in Bengaluru.

Fridays For Future (FFF) was founded by Greta Thunberg in 2018 in Sweden and has since spread around the world.

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The idea behind the movement is for school students from across the world to skip Friday classes and participate in demonstrations to demand action from political leaders to take action to prevent climate change and for the fossil fuel industry to transition to renewable energy.

"Fridays For Future is a global people's movement for climate justice. We at FFF India are inclusive and egalitarian, non-partisan, autonomous and decentralised movement," this is how the movement describes itself.

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As part of the youth-led global climate strike in 2019, the group had also organized several climate strikes in India, including the largest of its kind in September that year, which saw a huge turnout of youths from across the country.

Regarding the climate strike, FFF's website says "Climate strikes or marches are peaceful, non-violent ways to let our national and state governments know of our demand to address the ongoing climate crisis and ecological breakdown."

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This is not the first time FFF India has found itself embroiled in controversy and at odds with the government.

Last year, in July the Delhi Police had gotten the website of Fridays For Future India, briefly blocked in the country under the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act. The Delhi Police had described the contents of the website as ¡°objectionable¡± and depicting an ¡°unlawful or terrorist act¡± for the blocking.

However, the restrictions were revoked just days later saying that the notice was sent "mistakenly".