When people signed up to listen to actor Naseeruddin Shah recite Urdu poetry at Mumbai University’s Jashn-e-Urdu on February 1, none could have imagined how the mehfil would sour just a night before he was to take the stage. With hours to go for the event, Shah was summarily told not to come. 

In a scathing opinion piece published in a national daily on February 6, Shah claims a university official said it was because he “openly makes statements against the country”. 

The ink on Shah’s article had barely dried, when news broke of yet another event being cancelled, this time a panel discussion at the Kala Ghoda Arts Festival featuring writer and activist Anand Teltumbde. The speakers were to discuss his book, The Cell and the Soul: A Prison Memoir, which is based on his incarceration in the controversial Bhima Koregaon case. Officially, Mumbai Police cited a “security risk”. One can’t help but wonder, though, how much of a role Teltumbde’s background and the topic of discussion played.