Since 23 April, several Indian wrestlers -- many of them Olympians -- have been protesting at Delhi's iconic Jantar Mantar against the (now sidelined) Wrestling Federation of India (WFI) president and a BJP Member of Parliament, Brijbhushan Sharan Singh. The 66-year-old has been accused of sexual harassment by female wrestlers.
An FIR was finally registered against him on 28 April. After much struggle and despite attempts to demean and isolate the concerns of female wrestlers, an investigation has now begun.
Just before the wrestlers made it to Jantar Mantar, I had coordinated a 60-day peaceful protest by National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA) workers at the same venue under the platform of NREGA Sangharsh Morcha. The wrestlers’ protest began on the very day that the NREGA workers’ dharna ended.
For decades, the Jantar Mantar protest site has been a democratic free space where citizens have been registering their concerns coming from all over the country. Earlier this was a larger area stretching across the Jantar Mantar lane from Kerala House to the end of the lane. People used to even stay at night at the protest site and the information was required to submit to the police regarding the protest.
Now the protest area has been shortened to a greater extent making it a place with less than 500 metres of the area with many barricades on both sides. A protest can only be held from 10 am to 4 pm. Currently at the Jantar Mantar protest site, to hold a protest one has to take permission from Parliament Street Police station 10 days before the day of the protest. An organisation/union, under their letterhead, is allowed to take permission once in the span of the next 10 days. Having all these difficulties and the complexities that a person or any organisation/union goes through, those who do not belong to Delhi cannot think of doing a protest in the national capital.