Pankaj Mishra was in the midst of a weeks-long protest against a fee hike at his New Delhi university in November 2019 when he received a perplexing call from one of India’s independent news outlets dedicated to debunking disinformation online. 

The fact-checking reporter on the line told Mishra his photo was circulating on social media with a fake profile identifying him as Moinuddin, a 47-year old Muslim student from Kerala who had been studying at the university since 1989 — the year Mishra was born. 

The post disparaged the grad student, implying that he was a fake “revolutionary” who was there for