What is the point of a protest? To raise your voice against injustice? To draw attention to a cause? Or to make those in power uncomfortable enough to listen?
For more than three decades, Indians have tried to do all three in a narrow, tree-lined road near Jantar Mantar, an 18th Century astronomical obervatory in Delhi. But that may now be coming to an end. This week, Delhi Police said Jantar Mantar, located close to parliament, would no longer be a designated protest site. The decision comes months after the Gen Z-led Cockroach Janta Party (CJP) – not a political party but a collective which began as a joke – led a massive protest there demanding the resignation of federal education minister Dharmendra Pradhan.
Tens of thousands turned up and Pradhan subsequently resigned. Police barricaded Jantar Mantar soon afterwards, preventing further demonstrations. Last week, an attempt by CJP supporters to march there, this time demanding the resignation of India’s election chief, ended in a police crackdown. Protesters have now been directed to three other sites.
Two are far from parliament, while the third, the sprawling Ramlila Ground, is often booked months in advance. Unlike Jantar Mantar, which is free, all three charge tens of thousands of rupees a day. Delhi Police says, external it acted after the Supreme Court suggested identifying alternative sites with adequate infrastructure. But critics say the move could push protests beyond the reach of ordinary Indians, further from the seat of power and into venues many cannot afford.
Over the years, Jantar Mantar has witnessed everything from mass movements that shook governments to small, lonely demonstrations by people desperate to be heard. Farmers, students, grieving parents and ex-soldiers have gathered under its trees, holding placards and shouting slogans. Not every protest made headlines, but for many, it was a place to turn to when other doors had closed. This week, when the BBC visited, those scenes seemed a distant memory.
Yellow barricades blocked both ends of the road, with hundreds of paramilitary personnel standing guard, batons in hand. In a nearby lane, uniformed men sat in shops drinking tea or scrolling through their phones. At one of the few shops without policemen, the shopkeeper folded his hands and said he did not want to answer any questions. Built by Maharaja Sawai Jai Singh II in the 1720s, Jantar Mantar was once better known as a tourist attraction than a place where a thousand revolutions were imagined.
Its story as a protest site began in 1993, when the then-Congress government stopped allowing demonstrations at the Boat Club lawns opposite the old parliament. Historian Harleen Kaur has traced how, from the 1960s onwards, successive governments brought in new rules that shifted the site of protest in Delhi further away from parliament. “Jantar Mantar, situated 3km (1.86 miles) from the Parliament House, [allowed the government] to contain protesting crowds at some distance from the Parliament House and PM’s residence,” she wrote in a 2023 paper, external. Yet, the road saw countless spirited protests over the years.
Rachna Dhingra, an activist with the Bhopal Group for Information and Action, an advocacy group for survivors of a 1984 gas leak disaster, camped at Jantar Mantar with hundreds of others for around five months in 2008, trying to get the government to agree to demands including setting up a commission to allocate resources for rehabilitation schemes. Through a scorching summer, they held press conferences, met politicians and even chained themselves to railings opposite then Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s residence to draw attention to their cause. It was also where she formed solidarities with others – Tibetans protesting against China, activists opposing the displacement of people over large dam projects and even just lone protesters who caught a train from their home towns with nothing but a placard and a grievance. “It can be lonely to protest but that place became a home for so many of us.
We shared each other’s stories, struggles and victories,” says Dhingra. Dipa Sinha, an academic associated with the Right to Food campaign, has seen ground-breaking laws – a landmark rural jobs guarantee scheme, the National Food Safety Act and Forest Rights Act – take shape at Jantar Mantar. “It was a place where you could discuss issues with people who came to Delhi from across the country,” she says. Protesters would demonstrate outside government offices, including the erstwhile Planning Commission and the agriculture ministry, where they were often detained by police, before returning to Jantar Mantar to “gather, discuss and strategise”.
But sustaining a protest for months was not easy. Dhingra says they sheltered under tarpaulin sheets when it rained, used public toilets near the site and went to nearby gurdwaras to freshen up. In 2017, the National Green Tribunal cited the lack of infrastructure, along with complaints from locals, to have Jantar Mantar shut down for protests. A year later, the Supreme Court overturned this, citing the rights to free speech and peaceful assembly guaranteed under the constitution.
When asked whether the proximity to parliament made a difference to their cause, Dhingra quoted the reactions of her co-protesters who had come to Delhi for the first time. “That’s the president’s house? Does the prime minister live there? How can they not listen to us when we are at their gates?” she remembered them saying.
Sinha points out that Jantar Mantar was also near institutions like the Press Club and Constitution Club, making it easier to get media coverage, and for politicians to drop by and meet protesters. It was a simpler time – sometimes they would ask for permission from police only on the morning of the protest. Those rules have become much stricter, external now. In recent years, when Dhingra tried to protest at Jantar Mantar, she was told no-one could stay the night.
“Where do you go with hundreds of people who have travelled all the way to the capital to protest?” she asks. While Jantar Mantar has its supporters, others share memories of an even more vibrant protest culture. Mary E John, a gender studies scholar who lived in Delhi both as a student and as an academic, says that before 1993, she attended protests at the Boat Club on issues ranging from workers’ rights and women’s issues to topics of international significance. “We lived in a climate where protest was part of life.
In fact, we took it for granted,” she says. When the spacious Boat Club lawns made way for Jantar Mantar, it actually felt “claustrophobic”, she said. She pointed out that they, and others before and after them, protested at multiple sites – universities, colleges, streets – instead of just at Jantar Mantar. She sees signs of that in protests by farmers who camped at Delhi’s borders for months, and people who sat at the Shaheen Bagh neighbourhood demanding the repeal of a controversial citizenship law.
Even the 2012 anti-rape protests, she points out, were not restricted to Jantar Mantar but almost reached the Indian president’s heavily guarded complex and beyond into other parts of Delhi. It’s not clear what Jantar Mantar’s future is – the Supreme Court is hearing pleas challenging its removal as a protest site. Opposition leader Rahul Gandhi and CJP leaders have said that Jantar Mantar belongs to the people and will be “reclaimed”. As the debate rages on, Jantar Mantar is the quietest it has been in decades – will it hear slogans again?
