New Delhi — A businessman told me he had stopped going online to buy books that the government might frown upon because he was afraid officials would track his purchases.

There’s good reason for such fears, another businessman said: “You go to a party where there are a dozen people you’ve known for years. Someone says something mildly critical of the government, and then you learn that person’s office was paid a visit the next day by the income-tax authorities.”

These were not reflections on life in some police state. These were conversations I had this month during a visit to India, a country I’ve been visiting for nearly 60 years.

It’s no secret that attacks on freedom of expression have accelerated since the election of Prime Minister Narendra Modi in May 2014. Yet, nothing prepared me for the pervasive anxieties I encountered on this trip. While freedom of speech has never been an absolute right in India, I always thought that this raucous democracy would ultimately overcome any blanket effort to quash dissent, as it did when Prime Minister Indira Gandhi declared a state of emergency and clamped down on the news media in 1975.