Join us as we discuss the arrest and imprisonment of Parsi-Zoroastrian activist Khobad Ghandy as he worked to empower oppressed communities in India. Ghandy and his late wife, Anuradha, exchanged upper middle-class comforts for lives of hardship in service of India’s most downtrodden. Then the government charged him with terrorism and sedition. Courts threw the charges out, but not before he spent 10 years in some of India’s most notorious prisons. At liberty now, Ghandy speaks to FEZANA Talks from Mumbai and shares stories from his memoir.

VIDEO RECORDING OF THE TALK

Speaker Bios

Kobad Ghandy was born into an affluent Bombay Parsi family, graduated from an elite high school, and was on his way to qualifying as a chartered accountant in London when he changed course. Instead of trying to scale lucrative heights in finance, he became a radical activist, espousing Marxism as he worked to empower oppressed communities in India. He paid a cruel price for his idealism: 10 years in jails, on terrorism-related charges that were thrown out by courts. His life has inspired lurid headlines and been fictionalized in Bollywood. Now he tells his story in a memoir, “Fractured Freedom.” 

Porus P. Cooper is a veteran journalist who got his start in the profession at the Times of India in Bombay, and most recently was a senior editor at the Philadelphia Inquirer. His freelance articles have been published in Parsiana, the FEZANA Journal, and other publications. He maintains an abiding interest in India and in his Zoroastrian community. Through media accounts he has followed the Kobad Ghandy saga for years.