Outrage has erupted in India after a Muslim professor was arrested over a social media post which praised India's military operations against Pakistan while criticising attacks on Indian Muslims.

Ali Khan Mahmudabad, 42, is a British-educated associate professor of political science at Ashoka University. He studied at Winchester College, a boarding school in England, and earned a PhD from the University of Cambridge in 2014.

Mahmudabad was arrested on Sunday in New Delhi after a complaint was filed against him by a youth leader of India's ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).

Rights groups and prominent commentators have erupted in outrage. Aakar Patel, the chair of Amnesty International India, said: "Mahmudabad is in jail not because of what he wrote but because he's Muslim."