Syed Umar Khalid is a former student leader and research scholar at the Jawaharlal Nehru University, he rose to prominence when Delhi Police detained him in 2016, over the JNU sedition row. In 2017, he started the United Against Hate campaign with Nadeem Khan and others, in response to a series of hate crimes in north Indian states. In 2018, a cow vigilante group attempted to assassinate him. Between the winter of 2019 and 2020, he participated in nationwide protests against the Citizenship Amendment Act.