Prabir Purkayastha’s fight against two Emergencies in India – under Modi and Indira Gandhi

PRABIR PURKAYASTHA’S RATHER dramatic abduction in 1975 and his subsequent year-long detention under the draconian Maintenance of Internal Security Act (MISA) was his first experience of incarceration. During a students’ protest on the politically charged campus of Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) in Delhi in 1975, three months after Prime Minister Indira Gandhi seized absolute power to begin the Emergency, Purkayastha was picked up by the police in a case of mistaken identity.

“I was on the lawns of the School of Languages that morning, with a few friends from the SFI [Students’ Federation of India], when a black Ambassador stopped near us and a burly man got out, Purkayastha writes in Keeping up the Good Fight, his recent memoir. “He came up to me and asked if I was D.P. Tripathi – then president of the students’ union. I replied that I was not, but my questioner was a cop, DIG-Range P.S. Bhinder, and he didn’t believe me. He and his men, all in plainclothes, swiftly proceeded to kidnap me in broad daylight.” The real D P Tripathi was arrested a month later, and, together with Purkayastha, became a sort of Communist Party of India (Marxist) voice in jail.