Book: UMAR KHALID AND HIS WORLD: AN ANTHOLOGY
Edited by: Anirban Bhattacharya, Banojyotsna Lahiri and Shuddhabrata Sengupta
Published by: Three Essays Collective
Price: Rs 750
Compiled and edited by the activist researchers, Anirban Bhattacharya and Banojyotsna Lahiri, along with the artist-curator, Shuddhabrata Sengupta, Umar Khalid and His World: An Anthology is a poignant chronicle of the alleged stifling of dissension by the State. Simultaneously, the painstakingly compiled anthology undertakes an effort to dissect the contrived political circumstances that are meant to help execute the ruthless agenda of an autocratic State. With Umar Khalid’s activism and incarceration at the heart of its focus, the assembled contributions in the volume address the vulnerability of political dissention, especially against the present backdrop of bigoted, partisan politics.
The anthology — a miscellany of voices and creative expressions — defies the conventional mode of literary segregation. In spite of the surfeit of autobiographical anecdotes, the compilation falls short of being a proper biography or an amicus curiae brief; nor does it pass muster as a memoir. Yet, this unique volume serves as a remarkable compendium for readers, offering objective insights into complex issues of public interest and contemporary relevance, testifying to a rare moment in the history of the country, a time when political dissent is being increasingly viewed as synonymous with criminal offence.
Umar Khalid and His World gathers a diverse range of resources to validate its cause. The contributions range from Khalid’s epistles, reviews, and excerpts from his prison diaries, his interactions with different persons during internment, selections from his speeches and contemplative reflections along with accounts by prominent historians and analysts like Romila Thapar, Ramachandra Guha, Anand Teltumbde, Mukul Kesavan, Yogendra Yadav, among others. It also includes eloquent cartoons by Ita Mehrotra and verses of anguish by Nabiya Khan, Ufaque Paiker, Kaushik Raj, Aamir Aziz, and Parinitha Shetty.
At the outset, the reader confronts the punitive excesses endured by Khalid during his confinement in Tihar jail since 2020. Despairing accounts of the grim reality saturate his epistles. Writing on July 24, 2024, Khalid records his plight: “… About a month ago, the heat was unbearable. Though the temperatures have come down but it has now given way to a very irritating humidity. And since the rain started, all kinds of insects and slimy creatures enter my cell at night, disturbing my sleep.” Similar notes of despondency permeate Khalid’s “Reflections on Hope, on Despair and Lessons from Captivity” as he contemplates his five years of incarceration: “Five years have passed, almost. Half a decade. That’s time enough for people to complete their PhDs and look for jobs, time enough to falling love, marry and have a baby, time enough for one’s kids to grow beyond recognition, time enough for the world to normalise the genocide in Gaza, time enough for our parents to grow old and feeble. Is it time enough for our release?” These thoughts also provide a fine expression of Khalid’s deeper apprehensions and anguish, especially as regards the “Global collapse of the liberal democratic paradigm” and the rise of “right wing populist and xenophobic forces” throughout the world. Coupled with these anxieties, Khalid also laments the sad decline of liberal thought and the violations of human rights globally. The world, in Khalid’s view, has been gradually transformed into “… an open season for misogyny, xenophobia, jingoism, homophobia and islamophobia”.
Khalid’s views are augmented with invaluable inputs from other academicians, scholars, activists, writers as well those who probe the ramifications of parochial ideologies that have shaped the present crisis. In her essay, “Interpreting the Past, Changing Meanings of Words and the Making of ‘Anti-Nationals’”, Romila Thapar underscores the necessity of a liberal atmosphere in the university to encourage free thinking and liberalism. “It is only in the university and one’s university years that one can claim the liberty to think freely, whether analytically or imaginatively.” Thapar further asserts that “This freedom is essential to the making of creative men and women, the likes of which came out of the JNU.” While Thapar insists on freedom of thought and expression, Ramachandra Guha points at something more disconcerting in the context of the current political scenario: “Have I been able to carry on my research and writing, where he has not, because my first name is Ramachandra and not Umar?” Guha’s worries are also shared by the historian, Sangeeta Dasgupta, who criticises the media trial that had sealed the fate of Khalid: “Here was a victim of media trial, put in the dock because he was Muslim, condemned before his guilt had been proved, denounced as a terrorist for whom there was a hunt…” Anand Teltumbde’s outrage is even more profound as he draws attention to the larger political reality of which Khalid has been a victim: “The point, however, is not the police, whose credibility is an enduring question mark, but the temerity of the assailants to publicly challenge institutions, that reveals the brazen impunity they enjoy under the current dispensation.” The politician, Jignesh Mevani, links such quelling measures of the State to the downward curve of its journey: “Yes, India has been destroyed, and not by the likes of Umar, but by those in power”.
Yet, as the editors insist in the Introduction, “hope” is perhaps the only source of sustenance in such circumstances of despair and frustration: “We hope that soon, Umar, and all his comrades in prisons, walk free, not
just on bail, but acquitted,
of the crimes that they did not commit…” In consonance with the reiteration of the
artist, Shuddhabrata Sengupta, readers too will retain faith in the victim’s resilience against the odds.