"All our struggles of freedoms are after all intertwined with each other"

Since 13 September 2020, the activist, historian and former student leader Umar Khalid has been jailed, charged under several sections of the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act. This excerpt includes selections from the introductory chapter of Umar Khalid and His World: An Anthology, a volume edited by Anirban Bhattacharya, Banojyotsna Lahiri and Shuddhabrata Sengupta, and published by Three Essays Collective. The collection highlights questions and ideas that animated Umar and his work, before and after his arrest. It also compiles many of his articles, letters and “stray thoughts, on the passing of time, and on the difficulty of the passing of time while incarcerated.”

“Partly, this book also emerges from our habit of gathering books for Umar to read while he is ‘inside’ (because the one thing he has more than us is time),” the editors note in their introduction to the book. “Partly, it is also to see his incarceration as a lens through which we attempt to understand the time that we are all living through.”

FROM A HANDWRITTEN LIST of books that we have managed to collect for him over these years, which Umar has marked as “read,” we know that his reading habit has grown more voracious and eclectic. That he reads whatever he can lay his hands on. Some of these books also make their way back from prison, when Umar’s small cell (eight feet in width and 24 feet in length) becomes overfull with books and printed material. The cell was originally meant for three inmates, but he occupies it alone owing to security concerns. Then, the books make their way back to Banojyotsna’s apartment. And wait (once read, yet desirous of being read again) to be reunited with their primary reader, when he finally walks out of confinement.