Etymology
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From Hindi घेराव (gherāv, “encirclement”).
Pronunciation
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gherao (plural gheraos or gheraoes)
- (India) A protest in which a group of people surrounds a politician, building, etc. until demands are met.
2002, Bharti Kirchner, Darjeeling[1], St. Martin's Press, →ISBN, page 26:They had done a gherao and trapped the manager in his office for a whole day.
2007, Ramachandra Guha, India After Gandhi: The History of the World's Largest Democracy[2], Macmillan, →ISBN, page 425: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.
2011, Arun Sinha, Nitish Kumar and the Rise of Bihar[3], Viking, →ISBN, page 40: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 […]
gherao (third-person singular simple present gheraos, present participle gheraoing, simple past and past participle gheraoed)
- (India, transitive) To surround for this purpose.
1996, Kavery Nambisan, The Scent of Pepper[4], Penguin, published 2010, →ISBN, page 215: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.
2006, Shakuntala Devi, Employment of Labour and Rural Development[5], Sarup & Sons, →ISBN, page 53:In reply, the cultivators, apparently now protesting under the banner of the BKU gheraoed the power station.
2010, B. G. Verghese, First Draft: Witness to the Making of Modern India[6], Tranquebar Press, →ISBN: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, […]