New Delhi: August 11 marked Umar Khalid’s 39th birthday, which is taking place nearly six years into his incarceration. On the same day, speakers including renowned academics, writers, and journalists gathered at the Press Club of India in New Delhi to discuss his book, Fractured Communities: Adivasi Histories and the Politics of Power, originally submitted by Khalid as his PhD thesis to Jawaharlal Nehru University’s Centre for Historical Studies in 2018. His work is based on his research into the history of Adivasi communities in Singhbhum, Jharkhand. Khalid was arrested in September 2020 under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA) in connection with the controversial Delhi riots’ alleged larger conspiracy case, and has remained in custody since. His incarceration formed part of the broader context of the discussion, as speakers reflected on his scholarship, the book’s historical arguments, and the circumstances surrounding its publication. The book discussion was moderated by journalist and author Neha Dixit. She opened the discussion by reading out a message by Khalid, containing lines by Urdu poet Faiz Ahmed Faiz: “Nisaar main teri galiyon ke ae watan, ki jahan; chali hai rasm ki koi na sar utha ke chale (in your lanes, homeland, I would lay down my life, where the custom now is that no one walks with their head held high).” Khalid ended his message to Dixit and the audience with another line: “No one is free until everyone is free.”Sabiha Khanum: Understanding Umar through the bookSpeaking at the Press Club discussion, Sabiha Khanum, Khalid’s mother, said the book offered an opportunity for people to understand her son beyond the public narratives surrounding him. “People who have known Umar closely support him and defend him. Obviously, not everyone can know Umar that closely. But this is an opportunity, through this book, to get to know him, to understand his thoughts and what he stood for. We will see that he speaks about Adivasis, about the marginalised and oppressed sections of society, about minorities, and about those who are being suppressed. And that has become his greatest crime.”Khanum also spoke about the media attention surrounding Khalid since 2016. “The person who wrote this book is today behind bars. When we received this book and began reading it, the first thing that came to my mind was the situation in 2016, when there was such a huge uproar against Umar. The way the media raised the issue and kept talking about his arrest, it often seemed as though there was no other issue in the entire country. Again and again, it was Umar Khalid, Umar Khalid.”Speaking on the length of Khalid’s incarceration, Khanum said, “Six years is a very long time. I remember when Umar was arrested, someone had said that he might be in prison for two years, and it came as a shock, two years! At the time, it felt like two years were an extremely long period. But today, we are seeing that six long years have passed, and there is still no ray of hope in sight. We have faith in the courts, but the conduct of the courts is also before us.”‘Repression beyond Umar’s case’ Siddharth Varadarajan, founding editor of The Wire, placed Khalid’s incarceration within what he described as a wider climate of pressure on students, academics, and journalists. “If you imprison your most brilliant minds in this manner, preventing them from conducting research and doing their work, and then distort their words and present them in court when they have spoken about peace and harmony, you create a situation where scholarship itself comes under threat.” Reflecting on Khalid’s prolonged incarceration without trial, Varadarajan said, “Six years is a very long period. Just think about any six-year period in your own life and what you did during those six years. It has been a very long time. And here, Umar Khalid has spent six years behind bars, and his release date has still not been determined.”‘The contradictions at the heart of the book’Historian Prabhu Mohapatra, who was one of Khalid’s PhD examiners, focused on the historical method underpinning Fractured Communities. “What holds the book together, or what is central to the book’s argument, is that particular series of contradictions. He is not trying to resolve the contradictions; he is not trying to expose one view against the other. What he is doing in this book is to look at a series of contradictions and hold them together on the same page”Mohapatra said one of the central tensions explored in the book was between class formation within the Ho community and the continued existence of the community itself. “The point is, even with the rise of internal elites within the community through the administrative structure, the community persists. So it is the tension between class formation from inside and the existence of the community that animates the book. That is the one central tension of the book.” Mohapatra also spoke about the book not imposing a single political message, but rather allowing the reader enough imaginative space to draw its political meaning. Academic freedom and shrinking space for critical inquiryDelhi University professor Apoorvanand emphasised on the role of professors and universities in the lives of students. “We do not teach anyone to become an ‘-ist’; teaching is not propaganda. This distinction is very important, because over the last 13–14 years, this distinction has been completely erased. People generally understand teaching to mean propaganda. If you are teaching Marxism, it is propaganda for Marxism; if you are teaching Gandhism, it is propaganda for Gandhism; if you are teaching Savarkar, it is propaganda for Savarkar. That is not what it is. We invite students to examine these ideas and provide them with the intellectual tools to do so.” Further speaking on the importance of academic freedom in research, he said, “A research supervisor does not want to mould their researcher into their own voice. That is not their success. It is the university’s responsibility, and the question of academic freedom is deeply connected to this. We must introduce our students to all the sources and references that help them understand an issue, while also making them realise that their own voice matters. Their voice should not be the voice of their teacher.” Unequal space for Muslim dissent Senior journalist Arfa Khanum Sherwani spoke about the risks faced by Muslim youth who express dissent, arguing that Umar Khalid’s incarceration has had a wider chilling effect on political expression. “But if a Muslim young person speaks even five per cent of what Neha (Bora, AISA leader) is saying, the hand of the state would tighten around their throat so tightly that they would not be able to rise. Not only would their voice be taken away, but even the few breaths remaining in their throat would be taken away. That is the difference, in today’s India, between being a Muslim activist, or even simply a Muslim individual.” Sherwani also described Khalid as an inspiration, revolutionary and scholar who had sacrificed his freedom for the country and the community. The book as a research guideRajya Sabha MP Manoj Jha highlighted the importance of Khalid’s book for research and academia. “ I looked at this book as a research guide. And all of you who are pursuing PhD, look at this as how you access archives, how you deal with archives. There are very few books that I have seen which teach how to go about archiving, accessing it, making meaning out of it.”Jha also talked about the complexity of Umar Khalid’s research: “Umar is not in a hurry to reduce people to sociological categories, and that’s the best part of it.”