Our Government Says It Loves Hindi, Then Bans a Hindi Scholar
Leading Expert on Hindi Literature, Denied Entry Despite Valid Visa
October 22, 2025
Francesca Orsini, a world-renowned scholar of Hindi and South Asian literature, was turned away at Delhi airport despite holding a valid Indian visa, without explanation. If this government is truly the patron saint of Hindi, it seems to have a curious way of showing affection, by banning one of its most devoted translators.
Orsini, Professor Emerita at SOAS and a Fellow of the British Academy, arrived in Delhi late Monday night after speaking at a literature conference in China, as reported by ThePrint. She was reportedly stopped at immigration and informed that she would not be allowed to enter the country. Her passport was allegedly withheld by Indian officials during the process. She was soon placed on a return flight to London via Hong Kong. No reason was communicated to her at the airport.
Her husband, Prof. Peter Kornicki of the University of Cambridge, was quoted as saying that Orsini was deeply distressed and confused, having been a regular visitor to India for more than four decades. Her visit this time was strictly personal and research-related, as she planned to meet a Hindi novelist in Bhopal to clarify parts of a translation. She was not scheduled to attend any seminars or public events.
Indian authorities later told the press, anonymously, that Orsini had been blacklisted in March for violating visa conditions, without giving further details. She had travelled on a tourist visa, which, they claimed, she had misused on a prior visit. Her supporters in Indian academia rejected this reasoning, pointing out that she has never made political comments and that her visits have always been scholarly in nature.
What kind of Hindi nationalism turns away a woman who spent her life reading old journals and tracing the early life of Hindi literature, long before television, social media, or government slogans took over?
For a government so publicly enamoured with Hindi that it insists on promoting it across parliamentary proceedings, civil services and signage from Kashmir to Kanyakumari, this decision is either an act of theatrical absurdity or a bureaucratic nervous breakdown. Possibly both. In banning Orsini, the State has managed to wage war on the very thing it claims to protect, like a jealous deity angered by genuine worship.
The irony is sharp. Orsini’s work is not about grammar, but about how language and power are linked, how Hindi, Urdu and English influenced one another, and how writers once tried to build a common literary world. Her research has given Hindi more standing in the world than all the government’s statements put together.
One would think a government so proud of Hindi would welcome her with a bouquet and a speech full of slogans. But in today’s India, devotion to Hindi must come with a political loyalty test. It seems language is a symbol of identity, one to be guarded by gatekeepers who read visas more closely than they do literature.
The way the State treated Orsini sounds like the old colonial fear of thinkers with too many books and too much time. If this is about security, the biggest threat she posed was likely a worn-out copy of Premchand. Throwing out scholars without reason only shows what many already believe, that this isn’t about honouring Hindi, it’s about controlling it.
Historian and novelist Mukul Kesavan responded on X, calling it “the visceral hostility of the NDA government to scholars and scholarship.” He added, “A government ideologically committed to Hindi has banned Francesca Orsini. You can’t make this up.”
This move fits into a growing pattern of paranoia, where even silent dissent is met with punishment. In recent years, other scholars like Professor Nitasha Kaul have been turned away without clear reason. It suggests the government is not watching actions, but watching minds. It turns away people who think, who ask questions, who do not fit its clean and quiet picture of the nation.
Orsini’s deportation should trouble not just scholars but anyone who cares about Hindi as a language that grows and thinks. Literature lives through exchange, through voices that cross borders and speak to each other. A government that drives out its most loyal scholars is not guarding culture, it is trying to own it. And ownership, like in ghost stories, never ends well.
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