THE INTERVIEW

"The people are naked before the government but the government is opaque to them"

- / AJEET MAHALE

The scholar and activist Anand Teltumbde spent 31 months incarcerated in Taloja Central Jail, as an undertrial in what is broadly termed the Bhima Koregaon case. He was released on bail in November 2022. In his new book The Cell and the Soul: A Prison Memoir, published by Bloomsbury, he writes at length about his period in jail, the pandemic, the prison’s systemic failures, the people he met, among other experiences. In another new book, The Caste Con Census, published by Navayana, he assesses the ideas driving the demand for a caste census, and its potential consequences. Ajeet Mahale, an assistant editor at The Caravan, spoke to Teltumbde about his recent writing, ideas of the caste census, recollections of time in prison and life afterwards, the criminalisation of dissent and more.

On 26 November, it will be three years since you were released. How has life been since?

In some ways, it has been different. My entire life is disturbed and dislocated. I started a world-class programme in Big Data in Goa Institute of management. I joined them in 2016 leaving IIT, Kharagpur to establish a Big Data centre within two years. But there were delays in creating infrastructure and the programme began in 2018. It began one of the top programmes, right from its inception. As I was neck-deep involved in it, they implicated me in this case in 2018, which precipitated into my arrest in April 2020.