An anthology of essays on Umar Khalid by eminent people such as academics Romila Thapar and Anand Teltumbde, Congress MLA Jignesh Mevani and actor Prakash Raj is set to come out later this year.
The editors of the book, Umar Khalid and His World, released its cover on Saturday to mark five years of Umar’s imprisonment, pending trial, in the Delhi riots conspiracy case.
Eleven others are in jail with Umar on charges of terrorism under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act, and six co-accused are out on bail. The chargesheet is yet to be admitted by a court.
Umar is accused inciting communal riots in Delhi by delivering a speech in Maharashtra, asking people to protest against the new citizenship law, in the run-up to an India visit by then US President Donald Trump.
Saib Bilaval, associate editor with the publisher, Three Essays Collective, told The Telegraph that the volume would contain published and unpublished works on Umar, as well as his own writings from the past decade when he came into the limelight as a student activist.
“Besides essays, there is also poetry and other creative content, as well as two unpublished letters of Umar in response to the proposal to publish the anthology,” he said.
The editors include Umar’s close friends Banojyotsna Lahiri and Anirban Bhattacharya — who he had studied with at Jawaharlal Nehru University — and artist Shuddhabrata Sengupta.
Lahiri told this newspaper: “This book emerges from conversations with Umar Khalid, and from those we could never have, cut short across the greased glass of Tihar’s mulaqat room. Five years since his arrest, it bears testimony to both the unbearable agony and the fragile hope.
“This book reminds us why Umar Khalid and others remain imprisoned for five years. They dared to challenge an authoritarian, xenophobic project that shrinks democracy and forecloses dialogue. It embodies the spirit of Shaheen Bagh (the most prominent site of agitation against the new citizenship matrix).”
“The prolonged arrests are an indication of tacit concurrence of the judiciary in what is clearly a bid by the ruling establishment to crush the voices of idealism and dissent, particularly if they are youthful and Muslim,” social activist Harsh Mander told this newspaper.
