As a modern Indian historian, I am accustomed to reading the records produced by the colonial state “against the grain”. This means reading them for purposes they were not intended to serve. It means retrieving, from the condemnations and indictments of the colonial record, some sense of the persons who would, in our times, be seen as the architects of the independence we enjoy, of the liberties we take for granted.

This is as true of the peasants of 1830s Mysore who rose in rebellion, as it is for those who took part in declaring freedom from British rule in 1942, in a small village of Issur, also in Mysore. They all paid the price so that we might be free.

So it is the historian in me that hopes that the Supreme Court’s decision to deny bail to activists Sharjeel Imam and Umar Khalid as a document will be read “against the grain”, perhaps in the not-too-distant a future. One must today divorce hope from reason in order to do this. Such an action is vital to our sanity today.

Those of us who were fortunate enough to be in the Delhi region in late 2019 early 2020, such as myself, were able to witness, if not participate, in one of independent India’s most creative, sustained, non-violent and therefore powerful movements against the Indian state’s intention to restrict definitions of a hard-won citizenship.

The movement brought onto the streets, quite literally, large numbers of Muslim women who had rarely participated in public political life, and who sustained their movement for weeks, with little or no overt political support.

Is it any wonder that young people were mesmerised by the hopes of that moment, that site, which experimented with new styles and repertoires of protest and communication? Is it any wonder that Sharjeel Imam and Umar........

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