LUCKNOW: Ali Khan Mahmudabad, Associate Professor at Ashoka University, and an acclaimed historian and political scientist, carries a royal legacy rooted in Lucknow, the city of Nawabs.
The professor, recently in the news for his social media post on women officers holding a media briefing during Operation Sindoor, was born in Lucknow on December 2, 1982.
Known for his scholarly work on nationalism, political Islam, and South Asian history, Ali Khan Mahmudabad sparked controversy with a Facebook post questioning the “optics” of women officers leading a media briefing.
The post reportedly challenged the “representational intent” behind showcasing women officers during the military operation, asking whether their presence signified a genuine shift or was merely symbolic.
It led to his arrest on 18 May and subsequent 14-day judicial custody, prior to an interim bail granted by the Supreme Court of India on Wednesday.
However, the apex court did not halt the investigation against the professor and instructed him to refrain from posting on social media regarding the case, commenting on Operation Sindoor, or the Pahalgam attack. He was also ordered to surrender his passport.
Hailing from the historic royal family of Mahmudabad in Uttar Pradesh, Ali Khan’s father, Mohammad Amir Mohammad Khan – popularly known as Raja Sahib Mahmudabad – was a two-time Congress MLA and had fought a decades-long legal battle to reclaim family properties seized under the Enemy Properties Act.
Having completed his schooling at the prestigious La Martiniere in Lucknow, Ali Khan Mahmudabad went on to study at King’s College School and Winchester College in the UK. He holds an MPhil and PhD in Historical Studies from the University of Cambridge.
He is the author of Poetry of Belonging, a widely acclaimed book that explores Muslim political imagination in colonial India.
Fluent in Urdu, Hindi, English, and Arabic, Mahmudabad also has a connection with war-ravaged Syria, where he studied Arabic at Damascus University, along with academic fieldwork conducted in Iran and Iraq.
His grandfather, Mohammad Amir Ahmad Khan, was the last ruling Raja of Mahmudabad and was known to be a key financier of the Muslim League in the pre-Partition era.
Mahmudabad has illustrious maternal roots as well. His mother, Rani Vijay, is the daughter of Jagat Singh Mehta, who served as India’s Foreign Secretary between 1976 and 1979. He is also the nephew of policy expert Vikram Mehta.
Mahmudabad is married to the daughter of Haseeb Drabu, the J&K Finance Minister during the PDP–BJP alliance from 2015 to 2018.
He had a brief political stint with the Samajwadi Party in 2017 and served as its national spokesperson until 2022. Though he has distanced himself from formal politics in recent years, he continues to engage with national issues through his writing and lectures.
His arrest triggered widespread condemnation from civil society, opposition leaders, and academic communities both in India and abroad.
While Congress leaders, including president Mallikarjun Kharge, called the arrest “unconstitutional and dangerous,” the Samajwadi Party, with which Mahmudabad was associated between 2017 and 2022, also issued a strong statement.
“This government is terrified of intellect,” said SP chief Akhilesh Yadav. “It jails those who write, think, and question, and celebrates those who polarise and provoke.”
