Online Desk: Umar Khalid, one of the country’s most prominent political prisoners, has described the toll of nearly six years in jail without trial, saying the experience has “wreaked havoc on my mind and body.” Despite this, his opposition to Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government remains unchanged.

Speaking in his first interview since his September 2020 arrest, the 38-year-old activist told Hannah Ellis-Peterson of The Guardian that “humanity is a privilege that is not granted to people like me.”

Due to prison conditions, questions and answers were conveyed via family and friends.

Khalid, Prisoner Number 626714 in Delhi’s Tihar jail, said prison is hardest at sunset. “It starts sinking in that another day of your life has been spent in captivity,” he said. He noted that political prisoner Fyodor Dostoevsky described the same feeling in his 19th-century prison memoir.

Umar Khalid has now spent more than 2,100 days in jail without trial.

Khalid was arrested under India’s terrorism laws in September 2020. Delhi Police accused him of being a “key conspirator” in deadly religious riots that erupted in the national capital in February 2020, and of conspiring to bring about “violent regime change.” Khalid calls the charges “dystopian” and denies them. He was 1,600 kilometres away when the violence broke out.

Umar Khalid rose to national prominence as a PhD student at New Delhi’s Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU). After taking part in a 2016 political event on campus, he was arrested for sedition. Media outlets ran headlines branding him an “anti-national” and a threat to the country’s sovereignty. “From that point, my life was never the same,” he said.

He became a central figure in the 2019 protests against the controversial Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) and the National Register of Citizens (NRC), laws considered discriminatory against Muslims. At rallies, Umar Khalid told crowds: “We won’t respond to violence with violence. We won’t respond to hate with hate. If they spread hate, we will respond to it with love.”

The government met the protests with police violence, he said. Tensions escalated into the February 2020 Delhi riots. Umar Khalid was arrested seven months later.

While others named in the same case have been granted bail, Umar Khalid’s applications have been repeatedly delayed, adjourned or denied. Judges have also recused themselves. No trial date has been set.

“The endlessly dashed hopes for freedom have been quite heartbreaking,” Umar Khalid said. “Slowly, hope started dying out. And without having hope to hang on to, surviving prison becomes exceptionally difficult.”

Khalid, a student activist, remains a fierce critic of the ruling BJP’s Hindu nationalist agenda. He accused the Modi government of fuelling harassment of India’s 200 million Muslims and other minorities.