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New Delhi: The true measure of a democracy lies not in parliament\u2019s pomp or election spectacles, but in how it treats dissenters, says a new book on jailed activist Umar Khalid, quoted by TheWire.in.<\/p>\n
According to Kashmir Media Service, the book holds up political prisoners as \u201ca mirror to the State itself,\u201d tracing Khalid\u2019s incarceration alongside cases of Kashmiri rights activist Khurram Parvez, Suneeta Potam of Chhattisgarh, Surendra Gadling of the BK-16, and workers arrested in the Noida protests.<\/p>\n
Quoting historian Dr. Ramchandra Guha\u2019s essay in the book, TheWire.in reported: \u201cI must note that he is one of many fine, upright men and women, who are languishing in jail under dubious charges hastily filed by the police under orders from their political masters. Some of these Indians are also scholars and researchers.<\/p>\n
Others are social workers and civil society activists, who have in their life and work shown themselves to be steadfastly committed to non-violence and the founding values of the Indian Constitution. It is this commitment to pluralism and democracy and perhaps nothing else that has made them fall foul of the authoritarian and majoritarian tendencies of the ruling regime.\u201d<\/p>\n
The report also cites novelist Milan Kundera: \u201cThe struggle of people against power is the struggle of memory against forging.\u201d It says the Indian State uses prisons \u201cnot merely as an institution of confinement, but one of erasure of public conscience itself,\u201d seeking to \u201cdelegitimise political struggles and, by locking those who speak the truth away, sever dissent and resistance from our public memory.\u201d<\/p>\n
In his 2016 JNU speech quoted in the book, Umar Khalid had said: \u201cThey fear us\u2026 They fear our struggles and they fear us because we think.\u201d Rights observers in Indian illegally occupied Jammu and Kashmir say the treatment of political prisoners like Khurram Parvez reflects New Delhi\u2019s attempt to silence dissent in the territory and across India.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
New Delhi: The true measure of a democracy lies not in parliament\u2019s pomp or election spectacles, but in how it treats dissenters, says a new book on jailed activist Umar Khalid, quoted by TheWire.in. According to Kashmir Media Service, the book holds up political prisoners as \u201ca mirror to the State itself,\u201d tracing Khalid\u2019s incarceration …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":199511,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-199510","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-india"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/kmsnews.org\/kms\/assests\/2026\/05\/Umar-Khalid.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kmsnews.org\/kms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/199510","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kmsnews.org\/kms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kmsnews.org\/kms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kmsnews.org\/kms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kmsnews.org\/kms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=199510"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/kmsnews.org\/kms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/199510\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":199512,"href":"https:\/\/kmsnews.org\/kms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/199510\/revisions\/199512"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kmsnews.org\/kms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/199511"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kmsnews.org\/kms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=199510"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kmsnews.org\/kms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=199510"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kmsnews.org\/kms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=199510"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}