On September 5 the same day as the Supreme Court said criticism of the government isn’t sedition, a figure on a white board in a village on the distant southern tip of the country was changed — to Day 1,846.

The Supreme Court ruling was on just one case, won by S P Udayakumar of Idinthakarai, but there are 140 more such cases against people in the village. In India’s sedition map, Idinthakarai is ground zero. In the protests against the Kudankulam Nuclear Power Plant (KNPP) that have been on in this village and adjacent Kudankulam village since 2011, led by Udayakumar, 8,956 people have been slapped with 21 cases of sedition — the maximum such number charged in the country.