Veteran anthropologist and sociologist Filippo Osella was not allowed entry to India after he landed at the Thiruvanthapuram airport on Thursday morning and sent back to the UK. He arrived through Dubai and was sent back to Dubai from where he will return to the UK.
Upon arrival at the airport here, he was received by an official who took him to the immigration desk and after a brief while, he was told that he was being deported.
Airport officials were tight-lipped on the reason for the deportation, only saying that they were doing their duty. Reacting to it, Congress leader Shashi Tharoor said the act was "shameful" and demanded immediate reversal.
Tharoor called it the "petty form of intolerance". He said the government "persists in shaming us before the world" and demanded to issue an apology. "Our government persists in shaming us before the world. This decision should be reversed, apology issued & Osella invited back," Tharoor tweeted.
Who's Filippo Osella ?
A Professor of Anthropology and South Asian Studies at the University of Sussex, the 65-year-old Osella is an expert on Kerala and arrived here to take part in a seminar scheduled for Friday. Incidentally, Osella has a valid research visa till April and his return was slated much before the expiry.
He has conducted extensive research in Kerala as well as in Sri Lanka, and in Gulf Cooperation Council countries such as UAE, Oman and Qatar on issues concerning social mobility in the context of socio-religious reform movements and migration to West Asia.
In his more recent research, Prof. Osella has explored the emergence of various strands of Islamic reformism in Kerala, and relationships between religious practice, politics and economic action. As a development of this strand of research, he has considered transformations of Islamic charity in both South India and Sri Lanka.
In his current research he is considering the configuration of trading networks and circulation of cheap commodities between China, India and West Asia, with fieldwork in Yiwu (China), Ernakulam (India) and Dubai (UAE).
He has also recently begun fieldwork in coastal Kerala on artisanal fishers' attitudes towards risk across the whole range of their activities, and on the role of the Catholic church in supporting fishers' political and social mobilization.
