“Mona has an agenda,” one of her colleagues sniffed at a faculty party.
-Laila Lalami, Echo
When fiction begins to resemble fact, we should start paying closer attention. Laila Lalami’s haunting short story Echo (2011), part of a post-9/11 literary collection, follows an Arab academic in the U.S. who realises that university walls are not as benign as they seem - they listen, they remember, they record. One misstep, one comment, and you are marked.
In 2025 India, the eerie resonance of that story feels uncomfortably close.
On May 18, reports broke that Dr. Ali Khan Mahmudabad, a political science professor at Ashoka University, had been arrested by the Haryana police in connection with a social media post he had made in the wake of the Indian military’s Operation Sindoor. In the post, he questioned the selective nationalism that applauds women officers in military service but ignores the plight of Indian citizens facing bulldozers, mob violence, and hate speech. To his surprise, his remarks were swiftly dubbed as “anti-national.”
The Haryana State Commission for Women interpreted the post as “vilifying military operations” and “undermining women officers.” A criminal complaint followed, and charges were brought under the Bhartiya Nyaya Sanhita (BNS), including undr Section 196, which penalises the promotion of enmity between different groups, and Section 152, a newly reintroduced version of the colonial sedition law, among other provisions.
