London-based scholar stopped from entering India

Hours after London-based Hindi scholar Francesca Orsini was denied entry into India, a senior government official said she had been placed on an immigration blacklist in March 2025 for “violating visa conditions”.

Ms. Orsini is of Italian origin, and Professor Emerita at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), London. She was stopped in the early hours on Tuesday at the Delhi airport, and deported by immigration officials.

Ms. Orsini had a valid five-year tourist e-visa when she was deported. She arrived in India via Hong Kong, prior to which she attended a conference in China. She last visited India in October 2024.

She could not be reached for comments.

Although Ms. Orsini had a tourist visa, she was “regularly violating” visa conditions, the government official said.

“This is a standard global practice that if a person is found violating visa conditions, he/she can be blacklisted,” the official said.

Ms. Orsini is believed to be an Italian national. The Italian Embassy in Delhi did not respond to a request for an official comment. Ms. Orsini did not contact the mission after being informed of her deportation order, according to diplomatic sources.

According to another official, Ms. Orsini had travelled to India in 2024 on her e-visa issued for tourism purposes, but had spoken at a university, and conducted research, which was considered a violation of the terms of her visa.

After completing B.A. in Hindi from Venice University in Italy, Ms. Orsini studied in Delhi at the Central Institute of Hindi, and the Jawaharlal Nehru University.

The SOAS website says that she is currently finishing a book on the multilingual literary history of Awadh from the 15th century to the early 20 century. “I am also leading the project ‘Multilingual Locals and Significant Geographies: For a New Approach to World Literature” (MULOSIGE, funded by the European Research Council), which seeks to propose an alternative, located, and multilingual approach to world literature, from the perspective of three regional sites — north India, the Maghreb, and the Horn of Africa — in the colonial and postcolonial periods and the contemporary globalising moment,” her biography on the SOAS website says.

Historian Ramachandra Guha criticised the government’s decision to deport her. “Professor Francesca Orsini is a great scholar of Indian literature, whose work has richly illuminated our understanding of our own cultural heritage. To deport her without reason is the mark of a government that is insecure, paranoid, and even stupid,” Mr. Guha posted on social media platform X.

Earlier, Kashmiri-origin British academic Nitasha Kaul, Professor of Politics and International Relations at London’s University of Westminster, was denied entry into India on February 25, 2024, when she was invited by the Karnataka government to participate in an event. Prof. Kaul’s Overseas Citizens of India (OCI) card was cancelled in May this year.