Banojyotsna Lahiri and Gautam Bhatia

In September 2020, Umar Khalid, a historian and leftwing activist from a Muslim background, was arrested for allegedly conspiring in religious riots that occured earlier that year in New Delhi. That Khalid could be put in jail for a pogrom perpetrated by Hindu mobs and whose 53 victims were largely for Muslim is the kind of irony that no longer raises eyebrows in Narendra Modi’s India.

Khalid has remained in prison since then, without ever being brought to trial. The Indian government has good reasons to fear his presence. A courageous and popular student leader, Khalid became one of the faces of nationwide protests that errupted in late 2019, in response to a proposed Citizenship Amendment Act – a thinly veiled legislation intended to facilitate the mass disenfranchisment of Muslims.

Three Essays Collective, a New Delhi publishing house, has recently released Umar Khalid and his World, an anthology of writings by and about its subject. This online event will feature two contributors to that volume: Khalid’s partner, the researcher Banojyotsna Lahiri, and the legal scholar Gautam Bhatia. Lahiri and Bhatia will discuss the signifiance of Khalid’s ongoing persecution – and what it reveals about the broader sitution of political prisoners in Modi’s India.

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