Enemies of the State: Internment, Citizenship, and Belonging in India — with Raghu Karnad

How does a state decide who belongs — and what does it do to those it casts out? In the world’s largest democracy, that question is being fought in real time: in the detention regimes of India’s CAA and NRC, and in the youth-led protests now sweeping the country against the mass deletion of 130 million voters from India’s electoral rolls. The same machinery recurs — shifting the burden onto individuals to prove their right to belong, so that the poor, the migrant, and the minority are the ones stripped of it.

Writer and journalist Raghu Karnad — author of Farthest Field and co-founder of The Wire — has spent a year as a fellow at the New York Public Library, recovering a forgotten history: the British internment of Japanese civilians at Delhi’s Purana Qila in 1942. In this moderated conversation, he traces that logic from the wartime camp to this week’s headlines. Join us for a conversation on citizenship, belonging, and the rule of law, from the archive to the present. This event will be moderated by Arnaaz Ameer, S.J.D. Candidate at HLS.

Lunch will be provided.