From Gandhi's fast to global resistance: why hunger still moves politics?
Why does a century-old form of protest still haunt modern democracies? From Gandhi's fasts and the Ganga to Sonam Wangchuk, Palestinian prisons and the Ken–Betwa movement, this is the story of how the human body became politics' last democratic language—and why institutions continue to force citizens to speak through suffering.
The images are familiar, even if the causes are not. In Jharkhand, student leader Devendra Nath Mahato along with hundreds of student protesters has remained on an indefinite hunger strike, demanding transparency in recruitment examinations and alleging irregularities in the JPSC and JSSC selection processes. National media have already begun calling him ‘Jharkhand's Sonam Wangchuk’ —a comparison that reaches beyond two individuals to evoke a much older political language. Only days earlier, s...
