gherao

plural gheraos · plural gheraoes

1. IndiaA protest in which a group of people surrounds a politician, building, etc. until demands are met.

   They had done a gherao and trapped the manager in his office for a whole day.

   2002, Bharti Kirchner, Darjeeling, St. Martin's Press, →ISBN, page 26

   2 more examples

   This was an invitation to strike: according to one estimate, there were more than 1,200 gheraos in the first six months of the first UF-LF government.

   2007, Ramachandra Guha, India After Gandhi: The History of the World's Largest Democracy, Macmillan, →ISBN, page 425

   They led us in a mob to the administrative office of the Patna University, blockaded the main entrance and besieged the vice chancellor's office in a gherao […]

   2011, Arun Sinha, Nitish Kumar and the Rise of Bihar, Viking, →ISBN, page 40

present singular third person gheraos · participle present gheraoing · participle past gheraoed · past gheraoed

1. IndiatransitiveTo surround for this purpose.

   In reply, the cultivators, apparently now protesting under the banner of the BKU gheraoed the power station.

   2006, Shakuntala Devi, Employment of Labour and Rural Development, Sarup & Sons, →ISBN, page 53

   2 more examples

   One day the city magistrate asked the army for help to curb a protest march by women Congress workers who had threatened to gherao the officials in the divisional office.

   1996, Kavery Nambisan, The Scent of Pepper, Penguin, published 2010, →ISBN, page 215

   Further incensed by the findings of two Citizen's Inquiry Committees that he had set up to probe the earlier police firings in Gaya and Patna, JP now announced a programme that involved picketing the Assembly, gheraoing the residences of MLAs, […]

   2010, B. G. Verghese, First Draft: Witness to the Making of Modern India, Tranquebar Press, →ISBN