There was a particular poignancy to the status of Jantar Mantar as the national capital’s designated protest site. It is at one end of Sansad Marg, whose other end leads to the old Parliament House. So the people could air their grievances at a walking distance from where the people’s representatives convened to legislate. The earlier protest site at the Boat Club Lawns along Kartavya Path was also a shouting distance from the House of the People. The proximity remained intact even when parliament was shifted in 2023 to the new premises. But now the denotification of Jantar Mantar as a protest site severs that vital democratic link for the first time.
Let’s consider the three alternative sites notified by Delhi Police. Ramlila Maidan, which is a bit over 6 km to the north of the new Parliament House, offers for free only a small space that can hold a few hundred people; the main ground, which can accommodate more than 50,000, needs to be booked well in advance with a daily fee and a security deposit that add up to more than `1 lakh. It seems there are only three days near the end of December that are open for booking this year. Those who want to exercise their democratic right to protest peacefully will also have to compete with fairs, weddings and religious events to book Burari Ground near the city’s northern fringes or CBD Ground across the Yamuna to the east. So the idea of a thriving democracy—Ram Manohar Lohia’s “zinda qaum” or alive nation, which does not wait for five years to demand its rights—will now be subservient to commercial priorities of event management.
It’s not a mere symbolic shift. Along with large-scale detentions and internet shutdowns, it reinforces the sense that the space for democratic dissent is being stifled and invisibilised. London has Parliament Square adjacent to Westminster Abbey and Washington has Union Square at the foot of Capitol Hill. As courts hear challenges to Jantar Mantar’s denotification and Cockroach Janta Party leaders are remanded to judicial custody for protesting it at the site, surely the “mother of democracy” feels the need to pass the ‘town square test’, which measures freedom by the citizenry’s ability to openly express views close to the seat of power.