Francesca Orsini, a Hindi scholar and professor at London’s School of Oriental and African Studies, was allegedly stopped from entering India on Monday despite having a valid five-year visa, The Wire reported.

Orsini had arrived in Delhi from Hong Kong after attending an academic conference in China, according to the news portal. However, the immigration authorities allegedly denied her entry into the country.

The scholar claimed that no reason was provided for the denial.

“I am being deported,” The Wire quoted her as saying. “That is all I know.”

Orsini, an undergraduate in Hindi from Venice University in Italy, studied in New Delhi at the Central Institute of Hindi and Jawaharlal Nehru University. She completed her PhD at SOAS, which is part of the University of London.

Her works include East of Delhi: Multilingual Literary Culture and World Literature, Print and Pleasure: Popular Literature and Entertaining Fictions in Colonial North India and The Hindi Public Sphere 1920-1940: Language and Literature in the Age of Nationalism.

Orsini is currently professor emerita of Hindi and South Asian Literature at SOAS’ School of Languages, Cultures and Linguistics.

Similar cases in recent years

Several scholars and activists have similarly been denied entry into India in recent years.

In February, Indian-origin anti-caste activist Kshama Sawant alleged that the Indian government had denied her an emergency visa thrice to visit her ailing mother in Bengaluru, claiming that her name was on a “reject list”.

The United States-based activist also claimed that officials had refused to give her an explanation for the rejection.

Sawant was an elected representative on the Seattle City Council from 2013 to 2023.

In 2020, she introduced a resolution in the Seattle City Council against India’s Citizenship Amendment Act and the National Register for Citizens. The resolution was passed in February that year.

In February 2023, Seattle became the first US city to ban caste-based discrimination, voting on a resolution moved by Sawant.

Sawant had claimed that these were the reasons for her visa being rejected.

In January, Swedish Indian-origin professor Ashok Swain moved the Delhi High Court seeking an early hearing of his petition challenging the cancellation of his Overseas Citizen of India status.

Overseas Citizenship of India is an immigration status that allows foreigners of Indian origin to live and work in India indefinitely. The cancellation effectively barred him from entering the country.

Swain is a professor at the department of peace and conflict research at Sweden’s Uppsala University.

He had argued that his ailing 82-year-old mother, who lives alone in Odisha’s Bhubaneshwar and whom he had not been able to meet in five years, “may not survive this winter”.

The Union government had cancelled Swain’s OCI registration in July 2023 on the grounds that he had been found indulging in “illegal activities inimical” to the interests of the sovereignty, integrity and security of India.

The High Court in March set aside the government’s order cancelling Swain’s OCI registration. However, it allowed the government to issue a fresh show cause notice to the professor.

In February 2024, Nitasha Kaul, a British writer of Indian origin and professor of politics at the University of Westminster in London, alleged that she was denied entry into the country and deported from Bengaluru airport on the orders of the Union government “for speaking on democratic and constitutional values”.

The professor had been invited by Karnataka’s Congress government to speak at its Constitution and National Unity Convention on the topic of “Constitution and Democracy”. After she landed in Bengaluru, she was denied permission to leave the airport despite having a valid visa.

Kaul, an OCI cardholder, is known for her criticism of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, the parent organisation of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party.

In 2019, she testified before the United States House Committee on Foreign Affairs, highlighting human rights violations in Kashmir after the abrogation of Article 370 of the Constitution, which granted special status to the erstwhile state of Jammu and Kashmir.

In August 2022, US-based journalist Angad Singh was allegedly deported from Delhi airport when he was on his way from New York to visit his family in Punjab. In January 2023, the Union government told the Delhi High Court that Singh was blacklisted from visiting India because his documentary India Burning presented a “very negative view of India’s secular credentials”.

Singh is a US citizen and an OCI cardholder.

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