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The first thing that catches your attention at Delhi’s Jantar Mantar isn’t a slogan. It is a fan. Not the electric kind that cuts through the national capital’s unforgiving July heat, but the humble hand fan made of paper, bamboo, cloth and plastic. And even those colourful Japanese folding fans – all moving tirelessly from one protester to another. One person fans a stranger. A teenager takes over from an elderly woman. A child absent-mindedly waves air towards a man sitting cross-legged in silence. Nobody asks names. Nobody asks where the other person comes from. For a few moments, the fan belongs to everyone.
On the day climate activist and education reformer Sonam Wangchuk was taken to hospital after completing 21 days of his indefinite hunger strike, the protest site at Jantar Mantar continued to swell. Students remained on fast. Volunteers distributed water and other necessities. Families stayed inside makeshift tents. Some were stationed inside foldable mosquito nets. Groups from different parts of the country arrived carrying banners, sleeping mats and hope in equal measure.
But amid speeches, placards, chants and songs, it was these ordinary acts of care that quietly defined the evening. Ironically, the protest unfolds almost hidden in plain sight.
For most Delhiites, Jantar Mantar refers to the 18th-century astronomical observatory and a protected tourist-favourite monument. Yet, just beside it lies another Jantar Mantar. It is an open stretch that has, for decades, become synonymous with public demonstrations. Step out at the monument, and unless you walk a little further, you may never realise that hundreds of people are living, waiting and voicing their concerns just metres away in the heart of central Delhi.
That evening, the protest ground resembled a temporary neighbourhood more than a demonstration site. Children played between tents. Volunteers organised meals. Students sat in circles discussing the movement. Some read books. Others rested on thin mattresses laid out under tarpaulin sheets. Every now and then, someone would quietly pick up a hand fan and begin fanning another protester trying to escape the humidity. Those without fans improvised with whatever they had at hand. From pamphlets to flyers and even leaflets became makeshift fans, waved just as earnestly towards themselves and fellow protesters.
The gesture repeated itself so often that it seemed almost instinctive. In a city where July air feels heavy enough to stand still, the fan became more than relief from the weather. It became an unspoken language of care. No volunteer assigned the task. No announcement instructed people to do it. Yet the fans kept moving, from hand to hand, stranger to stranger.
Among those carrying a fan was an elderly man from South Delhi, who said he had come after his daughter living in the United States urged him to join the protest. “Whenever there’s a protest for a cause I believe in, I usually try to show up. This time my daughter kept insisting that I come. When I reached here, I saw people struggling because of the humidity. I couldn’t change everything, but I could at least help someone breathe a little easier. So I picked up a fan and started fanning people,” he said.
Nearby, a college student echoed a similar sentiment while gently fanning fellow protesters. “The heat is unbearable, and this is the least I can do for people who have been sitting here for hours. For me, education is what matters the most. If there is a problem in the education system itself, then it affects everyone. This is my way of contributing to something I care about,” she said.
The protest itself brings together people from different regions, age groups and backgrounds. Students sit alongside retired professionals. Young volunteers share space with elderly participants. Religion, language and occupation fade into the background, replaced by a common purpose, even if individual motivations differ.
The politics of the movement may continue to invite debate. The demands may be discussed in courtrooms, Parliament and television studios. But on the ground, the most enduring image isn’t necessarily a banner or a speech. It is a stranger choosing to make another stranger a little more comfortable.
Sometimes democracy reveals itself not only through slogans or speeches, but through the smallest acts of humanity. On a humid evening in central Delhi, that humanity arrived in the shape of a simple hand fan – of paper, bamboo, cloth, plastic and even improvised flyers that became symbols of shared care.
