Hindi Scholar Francesca Orsini Denied Entry into India Despite Valid Visa

Francesca Orsini, a renowned scholar of Hindi and professor emerita at SOAS, University of London, was stopped from entering India on Monday night despite holding a valid five-year e-visa. She was informed by immigration officials at Delhi airport that she was being deported immediately.

Orsini, author of the acclaimed 2002 work The Hindi Public Sphere 1920–1940: Language and Literature in the Age of Nationalism and several other landmark studies, had arrived in Delhi from Hong Kong after attending an academic conference in China. She had planned to visit friends during her stay and had last travelled to India in October 2024. Speaking to The Wire from Delhi airport, Orsini said that no explanation was provided. “I am being deported. That is all I know,” she said.

A resident of London, she was told to make her own arrangements to return home.

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 the fourth foreign scholar with a valid visa to be denied entry into India in recent years. In March 2022, Britain-based anthropologist Filippo Osella was stopped at Thiruvananthapuram airport and deported without explanation. That same year, British architecture professor Lindsay Bremner was also deported.

In 2024, UK-based Kashmiri academic Nitasha Kaul was denied entry at Bengaluru airport despite being invited to a Karnataka government conference, and her OCI card was later cancelled. The government also revoked the OCI status of Sweden-based academic Ashok Swain, a critic of the BJP, though he later secured relief from the Delhi High Court.

While the number of such cases remains limited, the apparent arbitrariness of these deportations has caused deep concern in academic circles.

Reacting to Orsini’s deportation, historian Ramachandra Guha said it is a “mark of a government that is insecure, paranoid and even stupid.” He wrote on X: “Professor Francesca Orsini is a great scholar of Indian literature, whose work has richly illuminated our understanding of our own cultural heritage. To deport her without reason is the mark of a government that is insecure, paranoid and even stupid.”

Apoorvanand, professor of Hindi at Delhi University, called the move “shocking” and a “direct attack on scholarship.” “Shocking that Francesca Orsini, a friend and renowned scholar of Hindi has been stopped from entering India despite valid papers. Her visits to India have been entirely for scholarly purposes. This is a direct attack on scholarship,” he said.

Historian and novelist Mukul Kesavan said the action reflected the Modi government’s “visceral hostility” to “scholars and scholarship.” He wrote on X: “The visceral hostility of the NDA government to scholars and scholarship is something to behold. A government ideologically committed to Hindi has banned Francesca Orsini. You can’t make this up.”

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, who served on the Seattle City Council from 2013 to 2023, is known for her outspoken positions on caste and citizenship issues. In 2020, she introduced a resolution in the Seattle City Council against India’s Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) and the National Register of Citizens (NRC), which was passed that February. In 2023, Seattle became the first US city to ban caste-based discrimination following a resolution moved by Sawant. She alleged that these actions were the reasons behind her visa being rejected.

The deportation of Orsini and the denial of visas to other critics and scholars come amid growing global concern over shrinking academic freedom and increasing restrictions on free expression in Indian universities.

(with inputs from The Wire and Scroll.in)