Overview
- Congress MP Shashi Tharoor publicly endorsed Swapan Dasgupta’s column and said deporting foreign academics for minor visa issues harms India’s image.
- Dasgupta argued the state should enforce visa rules without assessing scholarship and warned against optics that suggest India is closing its doors to academics.
- Government sources maintain Orsini was placed on a blacklist in March 2025 for alleged breaches tied to entering on a tourist visa while engaging in research.
- The SOAS professor emerita was denied entry and deported from Delhi last month after arriving from Hong Kong, according to officials.
- The Congress party and historian Ramachandra Guha condemned the move as hostile to independent scholarship, and no reversal by authorities has been reported.