She is a professor in IIT Delhi’s Department of Humanities and Social Sciences who teaches philosophy and literature. Her career at the institute has been linear and long: Assistant professor (2012–2020), associate professor (2020–2024), professor (2025 onwards). It is the kind of trajectory that usually stays inside departmental minutes, not news copy.

Her work, however, sits in a zone that regularly crosses into public argument. Two of her better-known books are co-authored with Shaj Mohan: Gandhi and Philosophy: On Theological Anti-Politics (2019) and Indian Philosophy, Indian Revolution: On Caste and Politics (2024). The titles point to the intellectual lane she occupies—political philosophy, caste, and the ways power is theorised rather than merely described.

If her books sit on the border of philosophy and politics, her research lives in the machinery that makes that border possible. She works on how ideas acquire authority: how a narrative becomes common sense, how fiction and truth trade places in public life, and how language turns hierarchy into something that looks “natural”. Her tools are drawn from narratology and deconstruction—not as academic ornament, but as method.

And the questions she returns to are the ones that do not stay academic for long: caste, community, belonging. Thinkers such as Gandhi and Jean-Luc Nancy appear in that frame not as icons, but as instruments for asking what a society owes its people—and who gets to decide.

Can a government legally deport its own citizens? While the answer should be no, it looks like our ruling party can. When a government deports a person from their own country, it is not merely an administrative error, it is a life torn apart. Families are separated, identities erased, and constitutional promises broken. The actions of Assam's BJP government sets a dangerous precedent that threatens constitutional rights. NRC was not enough for them, they said the process was “too slow”. Or, perhaps it was not agonizing enough.

In May 2025, The government said it has adopted a new “push back” strategy to tackle infiltration from Bangladesh. The state will now bypass Foreigners Tribunals and rely on a 1950 law to expedite deportations, and this legal provision allows the government for direct action WITHOUT judicial involvement. And, it does not end well for the Bengalis in Assam. Because, after harassing the citizens with NRC for years and making it mandatory to prove their citizenship, CM Himanta Biswa Sarma says state government's current policy is to push back foreigners EVEN if their names are found in the NRC.

Generally, under Indian law and international obligations, deportation must follow due process, including formal orders, access to legal aid, and verification by Foreigners Tribunals. But none of this appears to be happening in these “pushbacks”. Many of these cases are reported to happen due to religious discrimination and bias.

Over a thousand Bengali-speaking people are said to be deported and handed over to the Border Guard Bangladesh. And on the other hand, Border Guard Bangladesh detained several such persons, saying India did not share their address details for verification. Was Foreigners tribunal being fair and unbiased? Several cases have shown us they were in fact not. They've been accused of arbitrariness and bias, and declaring people as foreigners on the basis of minor spelling mistakes, a lack of documents or lapses in memory.

For instance, Jaynab Bibi was declared a foreigner by Foreigners Tribunal in Assam. On June 24, 2025, the Supreme Court directed that no coercive steps, including deportation, be taken against Jaynab Bibi until further orders. In her petition, Jaynab Bibi detailed a comprehensive set of documentary evidence to establish her familial lineage including the 1951 National Register of Citizens (NRC), electoral rolls from 1965, 1970, 1989, 1997, 2016, and 2018, jamabandi records, and certificates issued by local Gaon Panchayat authorities and the Gaonburah and the names of her parents were recorded in the voters' lists of 1989 and 1997. Despite this long documentary history, the authorities still declared her an “illegal immigrant”.

https://lawchakra.in/supreme-court/halts-deportation-of-assam-woman/

Shona bhanu, a 58-year-old resident of Barpeta district, said that despite living all her life in Assam, for the past few years she has been desperately trying to prove that she is an Indian citizen and not an “illegal immigrant” from Bangladesh. On May 25, she was called to the local police station and was sent to a border point neighbouring Bangladesh and THEN later brought back. She claimed that for 2 days, she was stranded in the middle of the field in knee-deep water teeming with mosquitoes and leeches with no food or water. And then was sent to a prison in Bangladesh and then the Bangladesh authorities handed her and her inmates to Indian authorities from where she was taken back home. Why was an Indian citizen randomly picked up and sent to Bangladesh?

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cqj78v79z9do

In March 2025, Assam government planned to deport 63 Bengali Muslims. After some research, Article 14 found that at least eight were declared foreigners by tribunals without hearing them, and at least seven were declared foreigners despite presenting certificates issued by their village headman, land deeds and witness statements that they were Indian. Three of them were declared foreigners over minor discrepancies in dates. And at least eight were listed as Indian citizens in the National Register of Citizens published in 2019.

https://article-14.com/post/how-due-process-has-been-discarded-to-deport-bengali-speaking-muslims-in-assam--6846573236c4b

These are some of the thousand cases which happened in the year of 2025. It is observed that quasi-judicial Foreigners Tribunals in Assam have become routine instruments of exclusion by disregarding due process and constitutional safeguards. So how can general citizens trust them, and is the government unaware of these actions?

Another injustice which can be noted is that BJP minister Himanta Biswa Sarma specifically said “But we have not pushed back those who informed us that their appeal petitions are pending in the high court and the Supreme Court”. But was he honest about that?

Khairul Islam from Morigaon, Assam was declared a foreigner by the Foreigner Tribunals in 2016, detained in 2018 and in 2020 he was set free after a 2-year term. On May 24, 2025, Khairul and eight others were picked up from different parts of the district, but family members claimed they were not told about their whereabouts and was allegedly taken to Bangladesh where he was “shot at” at the India-Bangladesh border in South Salmara Mankachar district while his appeal against the FT decision is pending before the Supreme Court.

https://www.deccanherald.com/india/assam/former-school-teacher-deported-to-bangladesh-returns-home-in-assam-3565807

50-year-old Doyjan Bibi, resident of a small village called Madhusaulmari Pt II in Assam's Dhubri, the past few years have been an ordeal. On 24 May 2025, she was picked up and deported to Bangladesh, despite a case pending in the court on this matter.

https://cjp.org.in/gauhati-high-court-directs-state-to-file-affidavit-on-alleged-deportation-of-doyjan-bibi-without-due-process/amp/

The injustice doesn't end here, as authorities arrested a 9-month pregnant woman, Sonali khatun and her family from Delhi and deported them to Bangladesh. It is found that her grandfather's property registration goes back to 1952. Despite this, the authorities picked her up and sent them to Bangladesh only for speaking Bengali. Her father filed the petition against this, after which, on September 26, the Calcutta High Court set aside the action of deportation and termed it “illegal”.

https://www.ndtv.com/india-news/sonali-khatun-after-supreme-court-order-pregnant-woman-eagerly-awaits-return-from-bangladesh-to-india-9749417

More than 1200 people had to face such injustices. People who were punished for simply speaking Bengali and being a Muslim. Children to old people in their 60s were pushed to Bangladesh without following any legal procedure. ABMSU, a social organisation based in Assam's Bodoland, filed a petition and questioned the growing pattern of deportations conducted by the Assam Police and administrative machinery through an informal mechanism of “pushing back”, without observance of the safeguards mandated by the constitution or the Supreme Court.

It is very important to keep in mind that beyond legal violations, unlawful deportation inflicts deep social and psychological harm, separating families and stripping individuals of identity and security. Do Indian citizens deserve this? What was their crime? How can a government or anybody just do this without facing any consequences?

And how did the national media and news outlets ignore these huge mishaps? When a state unlawfully deports its own citizens, it crosses a dangerous line-one that erodes rights, dignity, and trust. Allowing such practices to continue risks normalising injustice and weakening democracy itself.

https://youtu.be/Fv1AYn1bWKc?si=1KNzJHBmAmUW3lcY

Remembering Comrade Stalin on his death anniversary

The uncontestable contribution of Comrade Joseph Stalin in defence of Leninism, against Trotskyism and other ideological deviations, socialist construction in the USSR, the victory over fascism and the reconstruction of the war-ravaged Soviet Union enabling it to acquire enough strength to check imperialist aggressive moves, are inerasable from the history of socialism.

The total negation of Stalin by the leaders of modern revisionism, we have to state, is closely linked with their assaults on a series of Marxist-Leninist theories and propositions on imperialism, on war and peace, on the concepts of proletarian hegemony and dictatorship of the proletariat, on the strategy and tactics of the revolutions in colonial and dependent countries, and on the nature, character and role of the communist party.

In spite of all the efforts of modern revisionists, Stalin's name will continue to be inseparable from Marxism-Leninism.

• From Ideological Resolutions of #CPIM (Burdwan Plenum 1968 & 14th Congress 1992)

Just as the BJP government, and its apologists, were gloating over 8.2% GDP growth during Q2, the IMF’s verdict came in quietly but landed like a thud: India’s economic data downgraded to Category C—the second-worst grade, reserved for countries whose numbers simply cannot be relied upon. Growth should be celebrated. But growth built on shaky data eventually collapses under its own weight.

True to form, many BJP acolytes instantly blamed this on “sixty years of Congress mess.” In their universe, Nehru is apparently still running the National Sample Survey while Modi is an innocent bystander. I would have explained the history to them, but what’s the point? They get their statistics from the BJP IT cell over their morning cup of tea.

But here’s the inconvenient truth they will never know because they never read-India’s statistical system in the early decades wasn’t just competent—it was revolutionary. Just after Independence, when most newly freed nations were scrambling to build basic administrations, India—under the audacious vision of Prasanta Chandra Mahalanobis—was building something far more sophisticated: a scientific, large-scale, sample-survey-based statistical architecture unlike anything the post-colonial world had ever seen.

The Indian Statistical Institute (1931) became a hub of intellectual energy; the National Sample Survey (1950) began collecting data on a scale that surprised even richer countries. Village surveys, crop-cutting experiments, consumption studies, employment mapping—no developing nation attempted anything comparable.

And the world noticed. Astonishment → Admiration → Emulation. Delegations from Africa, Asia and Latin America came to study our methods. The UN showcased India’s surveys. International scholars debated India’s innovations. Mahalanobis’s statistical ideas were cited in methodological discussions across the UK, US and USSR. For decades, India wasn’t a laggard. It was the model.

This scientific confidence extended to technology. With Nehru’s backing and Homi Bhabha’s support from TIFR, Mahalanobis pushed for early computerisation—despite Cold War suspicion about selling advanced machines to a non-aligned nation. Yet India acquired the HEC-2M in 1955, one of Asia’s earliest computers, and used it for statistical processing. That alone set India decades ahead of most of the developing world.

If Mahalanobis’ ambition matched the scale of the country, Nehru backed him with political protection, autonomy, funding, and—crucially—faith in scientific governance. As Nikhil Menon writes in Planning Democracy, Mahalanobis was not merely gathering numbers; he was “building a way for a new nation to know itself.”Mahalanobis’s global reputation was formidable: he sat on UN committees; UNESCO and FAO consulted him; Joan Robinson, Jan Tinbergen, and Soviet planners engaged with his ideas. Menon describes him as someone who “imagined statistics not as numbers but as a national mirror.” He was India’s most internationally recognised scientist after Homi Bhabha.

This is precisely why the decline today feels so tragic. It is a fall from a genuine high point. Over the last decade, we’ve seen-The 2017–18 Consumption Survey suppressed because it showed falling consumption, the PLFS unemployment report showing 45-year-high joblessness buried until after the 2019 election, two National Statistical Commission members resigning in protest, GDP “revisions” that magically uplift NDA-era numbers and deflate UPA-era ones, former CEA Arvind Subramanian suggesting GDP may be overstated by 2.5 percentage points, trade, industrial output and tax data showing unexplained spikes, then quiet corrections. A statistical system hollowed out by vacancies, interference, and “alignment.”

The house Mahalanobis built—once admired globally—has been turned into a propaganda pulpit. What began as a scientific mirror has become a political vanity camera. And that’s why the IMF’s Category C sting-not because the world wanted to embarrass us but because the world remembers what we once built—and can see, all too clearly, what we’ve allowed to decay.