From JNU night meetings to Kunal Kamra podcast, how Anirban has kept the conversation going

Few things annoy Anirban Bhattacharya more than people asking him where he “disappeared” after 2016. He was in the eye of a storm that February, after an event he helped organise at the Jawaharlal Nehru University in Delhi became primetime television news and put several students in the dock for sedition.

Delhi police had arrested him, Kanhaiya Kumar and Umar Khalid in the case. Upon their release, the other two became well-known politicians and activists. But Bhattacharya receded from the limelight and returned to his research, completing his PhD in history five months later.

“2016 was an aberration,” he told Scroll. “It was an intrusion in our lives. After that, I needed to get back to my comfort zone.”

But comfort did not mean disengagement. Bhattacharya, now 39, remains invested in public life – characteristically, working behind the scenes.

A national storm erupted in February 2016 when the Modi government ordered a police crackdown against students of the Jawaharlal Nehru University for slogans raised at a campus event. Three students were arrested on charges of sedition, sparking a debate on nationalism and democratic freedoms.

Ten years later, we revisit the legacy of that moment by tracing the trajectories of four student-activists – the choices they made, the outcomes that followed, and what that reveals about political life in India.

Millions have watched satirist Kunal Kamra’s podcast series featuring prominent civil society figures, lawyers and academics. Each of them was handpicked by Bhattacharya, who is the researcher of the show.

Kamra told Scroll he wanted Bhattacharya to be in front of the camera “because it is his show”. But the former JNU activist declined – he said he prefers being a facilitator who enables discussions on pressing issues that concern India, not a talking head.

“Everyone has different roles,” Bhattacharya explained. “It is very important for somebody to be out there in front of the camera. It is a difficult and important role. It is just that it is not my role.”

Being in the spotlight has always made him uneasy. One year into JNU, when he moderated his first campus event in 2008, he was so riddled with stage fright that he oiled his glasses and blurred his own vision just to avoid eye contact with the audience.

The history student enjoyed writing pamphlets and coining slogans more than delivering speeches for the Democratic Students’ Union, the hard left outfit that he was part of, which was critical of mainstream communist parties.

Bhattacharya’s aversion to the spotlight, however, did not come in the way of standing up for his principles – and his friend Umar Khalid – in February 2016.

After Kanhaiya Kumar, president of the JNU students’ union, was arrested by the police, despite not even being present at the campus gathering that had turned controversial, Khalid, Bhattacharya and others who had actually organised that event went into hiding.

Large sections of the media then began singling out Khalid on account of his Muslim identity. It soon became evident to his friends that he would have to surrender, recalled researcher Banojyotsna Lahiri, Khalid’s partner. They were worried about his safety and did not want him to be alone in police custody. At the same time, they did not want to pressure Bhattacharya into risking his own safety either.

“But for Ban [Bhattacharya’s nickname], this was not even a question,” recollected Lahiri, who is also one of Bhattacharya’s closest friends. “He was clear that Umar was not surrendering alone. He would surrender with him.”

In an interview Khalid gave to Scroll after his release from prison in March 2016, he talked about how Bhattacharya’s presence came in the way of the police’s alleged attempts to steer the investigation in a religious direction.

A quiet leader

This willingness to rise to the occasion has struck others who know Bhattacharya. One such associate is Joe Athialy, the executive director at the Centre for Financial Accountability, which studies the workings of national and international financial institutions. Bhattacharya has been employed with the centre since 2021.

In his first couple of years at the organisation, he did research and writing. But, after the centre lost access to crucial foreign funding in 2024, allegedly for its criticism of the Modi government, Athialy has noticed him shouldering more responsibility.

The media-shy Bhattacharya now leads campaigns and represents the centre publicly. “The more challenges you throw at him, the best will come out of him,” Athialy said.

It was not always like this. The introverted Bhattacharya struggled with confidence issues for years before he came to JNU. He changed 11 schools in his childhood as his father, a professor of genetics at a state university then, took the family from one small town in West Bengal to another.

Despite the churn, he aced his school exams and earned a place in Delhi’s prestigious St Stephen’s College for his undergraduation. While he did make some good friends in college, he does not remember it fondly.

“It was an extremely elite space,” he complained. “Many of the others came from a certain pedigree that I had no idea about. There were enough opportunities to feel very out of place. It could start with English songs and parties.”

It was in JNU, where he enrolled for a master’s degree, that he finally felt at home. In Lahiri, Khalid and many others, he found friends with whom he spent days and nights debating, protesting, organising talks and slowly forming his own worldview.

Through making posters and campaign material, he developed a knack for design. His friends say that his use of colours elevated the overall standard of design on campus as those from rival organisations sought to emulate him.

Most significantly, though, he learned to stand for what he believed in. Ayesha Kidwai, a linguistics professor at JNU, remembered how Bhattacharya used to seek her out to discuss accusations of sexual harassment against faculty members.

“He would explain to me that we can’t keep it silent, we have to stand in support [of complainants],” she recalled, adding that he always did so respectfully.

After JNU, Bhattacharya took up a research job with the human rights activist Harsh Mander at the Centre for Equity Studies and worked there for almost five years.

Mander also saw him as a man with strong opinions that he was unafraid of expressing. “There were disagreements between us,” he admitted, recollecting how Bhattacharya had once refused to share a byline on a piece with him because he had praised Mahatma Gandhi in it. Gandhi’s views on the caste system and revolutionary violence have made him unpopular among the left.

Bhattacharya said his views on Gandhi have changed since then. Either way, Mander added: “There was a lot of affection which remains.”

Going to the masses

Bhattacharya is acutely aware that JNU has shaped him into who he is. That is why he is now sharing what he learnt there with the masses through YouTube. “The podcast came as a great opportunity to take all my concerns to a much larger audience,” he explained.

He used an example from his university days to describe what he does for the podcast. As a student-activist, he was immersed in JNU’s unique tradition of night meetings as part of which students would invite teachers to debate them. The conversations would take place after dinner in the dhabas on campus and go on till late in the night.

Bhattacharya sees continuity in the night meetings he held at JNU and the work he does for Kamra. The stand-up comedian, too, sees tremendous value in what the former student-activist brings to the table.

“He has got us great guests that would never be on our radar without him,” he said. “He is very crucial to the set-up.”

The researcher does not take himself very seriously, though. He even joked about how he brings bad luck to the workplace, given that the Modi government’s investigative agencies have gone after each of his employers so far.

Still, that has not stopped Bhattacharya from doing what he does. “I guess we are that incorrigible lot which will find some way to get these ‘unnecessary’ conversations out into the world,” he said.

Also read: Shehla Rashid is now a college teacher in Kashmir: ‘Democracy cuts everyone down to size’