Panellists

• Akram Dhalait Independent Researcher, Maharashtra, India, Research Team Member, The School Children’s Online and Offline Learning (SCHOOL) Study

• Beena Pallical General Secretary, National Campaign on Dalit Human Rights (NCDHR), Delhi, India [Note: Beena was not able to attend the webinar but her work and the NCDHR research informed the conceptualisation of this webinar]

• Gunjan Sharma Faculty Member, School of Education Studies, Ambedkar University, Delhi, India

• Mohit Verma Bahujan Economists; Research Team Member, The SCHOOL Study; Research Associate, Good Business Lab, India

Moderator

• Maithri Research Master's in Cultural Analysis, University of Amsterdam, Netherlands

The webinar focused on the impact of the increasing repression in Kashmir and its implications for academic work. We invited four graduates to share their experiences, three as panellists and one to co-moderate the session alongside our InSAF India moderator. Days before the webinar, one panellist pulled out. They were worried that participation in our webinar might affect their security clearance to travel abroad. On 31 July 2021, the Jammu and Kashmir (J&K) government issued an order that police verification will be required for issuance or renewal of passports of all Jammu & Kashmir residents. This includes checking the person’s history of participation in “crimes prejudicial to the security of the state”. In a country increasingly using sedition laws to quell dissent, the spectrum of what is a “seditious crimes” is increasingly broadening. Following the webinar, as we heard about students being affected by this order, we decided not to upload the webinar on our YouTube channel.

Panellists

Dayamani Barla, Adivaasi, Moolvaasi, Astitva Raksha Manch, Jharkhand, India

Jerome Kujur, Social Activist, Jharkhand, India

Nikita Sonavane, Lawyer and Co-founder, Criminal Justice and Police Accountability Project (CPAProject), Bhopal, India

Father P.M. Tony, Freelance Researcher, Social Activist, and Colleague of Late Father Stan Swamy, Ranchi, India

Nihalsing Rathod, Defence Lawyer for the Bhima Koregaon Arrestees, Nagpur, India, and Human Rights Law Network

Panellists

Aakar Patel, Director, Amnesty International India and columnist
Shahrukh Alam, Lawyer, Supreme Court of India
Koel Sen, Filmmaker and artist, daughter of Shoma Sen
Jenny Rowena, Lecturer, Delhi University, wife of Hany Babu
Sagar Abraham-Gonsalves, Son of Vernon Gonsalves
Father Joseph Xavier, Associate of Stan Swamy, Bangalore

Moderation

Lotika Singha and Simi Korote (InSAF India)

Panellists

Jed Crandall Associate Professor, Biodesign Center for Biocomputation, Security and Society and School of Computing, Informatics, and Decision Systems Engineering, Arizona State University, USA

Suchitra Vijayan Author of Midnight's Borders: A People's History of Modern India and Founder and Executive Director of The Polis Project

Tarunabh Khaitan Professor of Public Law and Legal Theory, and Vice Dean, Faculty of Law, Oxford University, UK

Panelists

Anjali Arondekar, Associate Professor of Feminist Studies, and founding Co-Director, Center for South Asian Studies, University of California, Santa Cruz.

Dontha Prashanth, Research Scholar at School of Economics, University of Hyderabad.

Uma Chakravarti, Feminist historian and filmmaker

Moderator

Arun Asokan, Post-doctoral Fellow, History and Philosophy of Mathematical Sciences, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) Zurich, Switzerland

Panelists

Harinder Kaur 'Bindu', President, Bharatiya Kisan Union (Ekta Ugrahan) Women's Wing, India.

Vijoo Krishnan, All India Joint Secretary, All India Kisan Sabha, India.

Surinder Jodhka, Professor of Sociology, Jawaharlal Nehru University, Delhi, India.

Shreya Sinha, Research Associate, Department of Geography, University of Cambridge.

Moderator

Ashok Kumbamu, Sociologist and editorial board member, Capitalism, Nature, Socialism

Panelists

Professor Apoorvanand, Hindi Department, University of Delhi

Nabiya Khan, a poet and an activist

Hadif Nisar, student activist, and President of the Jammu and Kashmir Students' Association, University of Hyderabad

Moderator

Aman Abhishek, Doctoral Student, School of Journalism & Mass Communication, University of Wisconsin-Madison

Professor Ather Zia was invited to deliver this lecture at the Centre for Women's Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University in October 2021. The talk was cancelled at the last minute due to objections raised by the university administration about its supposedly provocative subject. The talk is now hosted by InSAF India as part of its 'Missing Lectures' series.

On 15 June 2021, we published a statement denouncing Hindutva’s assault on academic freedom at the Manipal Association of Higher Education (MAHE), Manipal, India. In May, Professor Deepa Kumar, a faculty member at the Department of Journalism and Media Studies at Rutgers University, USA, was due to record a Tedx talk on Islamophobia, her area of expertise, for MAHE Manipal, India. The recording was to be played on 30 May, followed by discussion and Q&A session with MAHE students. The students had talk was organized following guidelines set by Tedx. However, as soon as the talk was advertised, a Hindu right-wing campaign was launched, vilifying Dr Kumar and demanding that the invitation to speak be withdrawn. Within twenty-four hours, the Vice Chancellor of MAHE cancelled the talk. InSAF India and India Civil Watch International have collaborated to provide an online safe-space platform for the event. For our full statement read our blog post here.