The prestigious Doon School should have Kobad Ghandy as the chief guest at its next Founder’s Day, which is graced, usually, by luminaries who are considered a paragon of success. Ghandy is their very antithesis. He burst into headlines in September 2009, after he was arrested in Delhi under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act for being a politburo member of the banned Communist Party of India (Maoist). He spent the next seven years in Delhi’s Tihar Jail, was acquitted in 2016, and then shifted from one jail to another in over five states where he was entangled in court cases. Ghandy was released on bail in October 2019; he still has 10 cases pending against him. Yet his spirit shines, as it does in his recently published book, Fractured Freedom: A Prison Memoir.

The suggestion to make Ghandy the chief guest is to not instigate the Doon School into mocking the State for victimising its alumnus, but because his life epitomises an alternative way of living — and imagining success. How many Doscos, the term used for Doon School alumni, do you know who shunned the life of luxury to live in squalid bastis, to organise them in the battle for a more equal, democratic India?