Hindutva student group seeks ban on film about jailed Indian Muslim activist

NEW DELHI, India (MNTV) — A Hindu nationalist student organization in India has demanded that a leading law university cancel a documentary about Muslim student activist Umar Khalid, as supporters mark six years since he was jailed under a sweeping anti-terrorism law without his trial beginning.

The Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP) has asked the National Law School of India University in Bengaluru to stop Monday’s planned screening of filmmaker Lalit Vachani’s Prisoner No. 626710 is Present. The screening is being organized by a student group in solidarity with Khalid on the anniversary of his arrest.

ABVP is the student organization affiliated with the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), the Hindu supremacist ideological movement that spawned Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party and remains deeply influential in India’s Hindu nationalist politics.

Khalid, a former student leader at New Delhi’s Jawaharlal Nehru University, was arrested on Sept. 14, 2020, and accused of involvement in a conspiracy behind deadly communal violence in the Indian capital earlier that year.

He has remained imprisoned ever since under the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act (UAPA), an anti-terrorism law that makes obtaining bail exceptionally difficult. Khalid denies the allegations against him and has not been convicted of any crime.

His prolonged imprisonment has become an international symbol of concerns over India’s use of anti-terror legislation against government critics and Muslim activists, particularly those involved in protests against a controversial citizenship law introduced by Modi’s Hindu nationalist government.

The Bengaluru screening was scheduled a day after Political Prisoners’ Day, observed by rights activists in India on Sept. 13, and forms part of a series of gatherings marking Khalid’s six years in custody.

ABVP Bengaluru Secretary Abhinandan Mirji said the organization had formally complained to the university and demanded cancellation, arguing that campuses should promote “national integrity and learning” rather than become platforms for political propaganda or what it described as glorification of civil unrest.

A lawyer, Girish Bharadwaj, separately wrote to university Vice Chancellor Sudhir Krishnaswamy seeking cancellation of the screening.

The effort follows another controversy involving Khalid at Jawaharlal Nehru University, where administrators last month withdrew permission for a venue scheduled to host a discussion of his book, Fractured Communities: Adivasi Histories and the Politics of Power.

Khalid’s father, Syed Qasim Rasool Ilyas, accused ABVP of taking an authoritarian approach toward a man who has never been convicted.

“Until a court convicts a person, they are considered innocent in the eyes of the law,” Ilyas said.

Khalid was among activists prosecuted following protests against India’s Citizenship Amendment Act, or CAA, which fast-tracks citizenship for migrants belonging to several religions from neighboring countries but excludes Muslims.

Critics have long argued that combining the law with citizenship-verification exercises could disproportionately threaten Muslims’ status in India.

Ilyas said activists who participated in the anti-CAA movement were subsequently implicated in the Delhi violence and questioned why his son remained behind bars after six years without trial.

The dispute over the documentary has therefore extended the controversy surrounding Khalid beyond his imprisonment, raising questions over whether even campus discussions about one of India’s most prominent jailed Muslim activists can take place without pressure from organizations aligned with the country’s dominant Hindu nationalist movement.