Two government raids had done little to change the sanguine character of the open and sunlit space where Harsh Mander’s NGOs, the Centre for Equity Studies and the Aman Biradari Trust, have been ensconced for many years in south Delhi.

When we met on a cool and crisp morning in March 2024, the 69-year-old peace worker, bespectacled and soft-spoken, talked for a long time amid the quiet calm of the courtyard and gentle gusts of wind. There were moments when he hid his sorrow and trepidation behind a matter-of-fact smile and shrugged.

As he leaned forward to share his breakfast of cut papaya, Mander said most of his employees had left since the government started accusing him of grave financial crimes, summoned him and them for questioning, and stopped the foreign funding that sustained the research they did to advocate policies for the poor and marginalised.

Domestic donors, too, had deserted him, and he had scrambled to arrange for other NGOs to step in and keep the humanitarian work going.

The one good thing that had happened to Mander was not getting kicked out of the serene office space in a leafy corner of the city. His landlord, whose grandfather was a soldier in Subhash Chandra Bose’s Indian National Army, was unmoved by the litany of allegations that had succeeded in tarring and feathering Mander’s reputation, even though after months of investigation, the state did not have a case to take to court.

A relentless critic of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, his government, and the Hindu nationalist vision of India, Mander was one of many detractors targeted by the police and federal agencies since the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) came to power in 2014.




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