You could say that I’m a radical democrat ideologically. Mr. Khalid told VICE Asia, “I believe in democracy, and I believe in democracy that is not limited until your voting.”
“It must come into practice in everyday life in a way you can voice your issues and concerns with democratic functioning.”
Mr. Khalid rose to prominence in 2016 when he was among five Indian students charged with sedition for planning a demonstration against the 2013 hanging of a Kashmiri man at Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), his alma mater in Delhi.
What nationalism means to students studying Indian “sedition”
After turning himself in to the police, he and another student were given bail several months later. The colonial sedition law was temporarily suspended by the Supreme Court in 2022, and the government was ordered to stop all trials until the court made a definitive ruling regarding the law’s validity.
Mr. Khalid was detained once more four years later, in September 2020, and charged with being a “key conspirator” in the violent clashes in Delhi that claimed 53 lives, the majority of them Muslim. Massive demonstrations against a divisive citizenship law took place for several months prior to the riots in the Indian capital in February.
The activist has been held prisoner in the city’s maximum security facility ever since. Mr. Khalid, one of the activists and students detained for the violence, has refuted the accusations made against him. The 36-year-old claims he only participated in a nonviolent demonstration.
There were two police reports made against Mr. Khalid. In one case, the charges have been dropped, and in the other, the trial has not yet started. In the second case, he was twice denied bail and now faces an extended period of incarceration due to the police’s use of the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA), a strict anti-terror law that is well-known for making it extremely difficult to obtain bail and frequently leading to years of detention until the trial is over.
