Keeping Up the Good Fight

September 25, 1975. The students of Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi had called for a strike to protest the expulsion of Ashoklata Jain, an elected councillor of the students’ union. Three months before, Prime Minister Indira Gandhi had declared a state of Emergency. It was the second day of the strike and the campus was tense. A black Ambassador car pulled up near a group of students, a few cops in plainclothes got out, and abducted one of them. The student spent the next one year in jail.

February 9, 2021. Officers from the Enforcement Directorate raided the home of the founder of an online news portal. The raid lasted 113 hours, over five days. The office of the news portal was also raided.

October 3, 2023. Officers of the Special Cell of Delhi Police remanded the founder of the news portal and his colleague to custody under the dreaded Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA).

Keeping Up the Good Fight is the story of Prabir Purkayastha, incarcerated by two authoritarian regimes, half a century apart. It is also the story of a young man’s political coming of age, told with wit and humour, and of his engagement with some of India’s most pressing social, political and economic issues over the decades.