For the last three years, Umar Khalid has not written much in his PhD thesis about the land alienation of the tribals in Jharkhand.
But the series of events unfolding in Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) in the last twelve days have certainly highlighted his image as a student leader - an ambition that he has harboured ever since he landed on the campus seven years ago after graduating from Delhi University.
Before immersing himself in university politics, Umar was known as a cricketer in Kiroli Mal College of Delhi University where he did his BA. “He had to choose between cricket and politics and he chose the latter one because of his sensitivities towards marginalised,” a friend said.
Umar shot into the limelight as one of the organisers of the event held in JNU on Parliament attack convict Afzal Guru’s death anniversary on February 9 where the alleged anti-national sloganeering resulted in the suspension of eight students from JNU and the arrest of JNU Students’ Union president Kanhaiya Kumar for sedition.
On Monday night, wearing the same striped sweater and a maroon muffler in which he was seen on February 9 when he went into a hiding after the row over “anti-national” event on campus, Umar kept to the academic block of the university even as police awaited orders for a crackdown on him and the four other students who have been accused of sedition. A trimmed beard was the only change in the way he looks.
His friends say Umar, in their conversations after resurfacing on campus over puffs of cigarettes, seemed more than ready to land in police custody for a long grilling session to say the least. But, as his friends hope, the case against him doesn’t make for a jail term and he will get away.
He has been evading media queries perhaps, in accordance, with his lawyer’s advice. Other students in the university too, are not speaking to reporters and even if they do not want to be identified.
A leader of ultra-Leftist Democratic Students’ Union (DSU) till November 2015, Umar has never contested union elections but his friends consider him one of the most vocal voices on the campus who often raised issues about social justice.
On the day of the “anti-national” event that he allegedly organised, Umar was part of the hunger strike on JNU campus demanding justice for Rohith Vemula - the Dalit student of the University of Hyderabad who allegedly committed suicide last month.
They say he is an intelligent student with Left leanings and wants to academically engage with grave issues concerning the marginalised people. “He has always been one of those students who think that academics should be used to help oppressed sections of the society,” one of Umar’s friends, who is now pursuing a PhD in the US, said.
Those close to him say he never played his Muslim identity even though he comes from a perceived conservative family. In his blog, Umar comes across as an atheist - a major point of contention with the family - and wants to work for all marginalised communities including Muslims.
“He is just being targeted because of his religion which he never practices. His image and extreme left political leaning make for a perfect image of a Muslim radical. Thankfully, he trimmed his beard,” another friends said.
Joyeeta Dey, a family friend, wrote on her Facebook page on February 16 that she heard Umar’s sister saying on many occasions that her brother was a “communist pagal” and how he caused grief to his family by renouncing religion.
“He is a Muslim only by name. He did not choose to take the path of his father Qasim Rasool Ilyas. He resigned from DSU over for its insensitivity on gender and Dalit issues,” a teacher at Delhi’s Ambedkar University, who knows Umar since college, said.
But his political activism has found favours in the family. His father, now the president of Welfare Party of India, was a prominent face in the early 2000s as convener-cum-spokesperson of Babri Masjid Action Committee in the contentious Ramjanmabhoomi/Babri Masjid dispute. He was also a member of the later-banned Students’ Islamic Organisation of India (SIMI) in the 1980s.
His family came to Delhi from the Amravati district of Maharashtra 35 years ago. One of his two sisters studies at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Massachusetts, US.
“For the six-seven years that I have done politics on this campus, I have never thought of myself as a Muslim. In the last 10 days, for the first time I felt like a Muslim,” Umar told a gathering on the campus after resurfacing on Sunday night.
On Kashmir, like many other Left parties, Umar subscribes to the ‘right to self-determination’ view, his friends say.
Umar’s supervisor Sangeeta DasGupta at the Centre for Historical Studies doesn’t want to talk about him as of now.
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