‘Be with Us Again, in Freedom, Sharjeel and Umar’: A JNU Teacher’s Message for Her Jailed Students
Janaki Nair | 06 January 2026 | Scroll
As a modern Indian historian, I am accustomed to reading the records produced by the colonial state “against the grain”. This means reading them for purposes they were not intended to serve. It means retrieving, from the condemnations and indictments of the colonial record, some sense of the persons who would, in our times, be seen as the architects of the independence we enjoy, of the liberties we take for granted.
This is as true of the peasants of 1830s Mysore who rose in rebellion, as it is for those who took part in declaring freedom from British rule in 1942, in a small village of Issur, also in Mysore. They all paid the price so that we might be free…