Francesca Orsini case: Bhakt brigade allergic to composite culture, says Congress

The Congress on Thursday, 23 October, criticised the Narendra Modi government’s decision to deny entry to noted scholar Francesca Orsini, calling it an affront to India’s intellectual legacy and plural spirit.

Party general secretary Jairam Ramesh posted on social media to suggest that the move reflects a growing intolerance toward voices that celebrate the nation’s diverse cultural and linguistic traditions.

"Orsini’s work on Hindi and Urdu literary cultures has enriched our collective understanding of India’s composite cultural heritage — to which the bhakt brigade is allergic. The decision to bar her from the country is not a matter of immigration formality but a symptom of the Modi government’s hostility towards independent, serious-thinking, professional scholarship," said Ramesh in a post on X.

Orsini, a professor of Hindi and Urdu literary cultures at SOAS, University of London, has made a career of explore South Asia’s rich multilingual traditions and the interwoven worlds of its literary histories. Her seminal book, The Hindi Public Sphere 1920–1940: Language and Literature in the Age of Nationalism (2002), remains a cornerstone of modern South Asian studies; its Hindi translation, published in 2010, made her scholarship accessible to the very readership whose stories she so passionately chronicled.

Yet, on her recent arrival, Orsini was reportedly informed that she would not be allowed to enter the country — an incident that many academics have described as deeply symbolic of the shrinking space for independent scholarship under the Modi government. While official reasons for the denial remain undisclosed, observers note that her exclusion comes amid growing unease within the establishment over critical, historically grounded research on India’s composite cultural traditions.

“Francesca Orsini’s work celebrates the plural, dialogic roots of Indian literature — the very ethos that political majoritarianism seeks to erase,” said a Delhi-based academic who has collaborated with her. “To bar her from the country is to bar a mirror that reflects India’s own shared past.”

Often described as a bridge between cultures, Orsini’s research delves into how Hindi, Urdu and Persian literary spheres flourished in conversation with one another — long before linguistic and religious divides hardened into modern boundaries. Her scholarship stands as both a tribute and a challenge: a tribute to India’s centuries-old syncretic traditions and a challenge to the ideological rigidity that seeks to simplify them.

Whether this is the reason behind the government’s discomfiture or disapproval is unknown. But there have been other voices that suggest her connection with SOAS is itself the bone of contention, being a taint — for it is part of a consortium of 12 institutions that is the Open Society Foundations (OSF), founded by billionaire George Soros, who is a frequent scarecrow and scapegoat held by the BJP-RSS ecosphere as persona non grata. The OSF has, among its other interests, invested in higher education initiatives to counter authoritarianism, for one thing...

Still, the decision to deny her entry, many scholars fear, signals rather a growing intolerance toward voices that question narratives of jingoistic nationalism.

In an age where intellectual borders are tightening even as global collaboration deepens, the barring of Francesca Orsini feels less like an immigration issue and more like an act of cultural insecurity, as Ramesh pointed out — one that dims the very light her research has long helped to keep alive.