Fasting as Protest: What Sonam Wangchuk’s hospitalisation says about India’s history of hunger strikes

Delhi Police picked up Sonam Wangchuk from the protest site on Supreme Court direction as he entered 21 days into a hunger strike, looking feeble and weak nearly 9 kg lighter, and failing health. He was taken to Safdarjung Hospital where he denied taking any medical treatment. As per medical reports Wangchuk has low potassium levels which are affecting his vitals. As of now Wangchuk is stable but refuses to take anything orally.

Sonam Wangchuk has been fasting with the Cockroach Janta Party (CJP) since June 28, demanding Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan’s resignation over the alleged NEET-UG paper leaks that coerced several students to end their life. The moment it was learnt that he was detained by disguised commandos, CJP founder Abhijeet Dipke started his own indefinite fast.

This isn’t new terrain for India. Irom Sharmila held out longer than anyone –sixteen years against the Armed Forces Special Powers Act in Manipur. The state’s answer was judicial custody and a nasal feeding tube, year after year. Not a negotiation. A medical procedure, repeated until it became routine.

Swami Nigamananda picked a different fight– Illegal sand mining, pollution choking the Ganga. He fasted 68 days and died in 2011. The government did not budge.

Swami Gyan Swaroop Sanand — G.D. Agarwal before he took vows, an IIT professor who’d once advised the very ministries later fasted against. His second strike ran 111 days. He died in 2018 waiting on promises that came too late to matter.

Three different causes, one government habit: turn the protest into a patient. Sharmila got tubes. Nigamananda and Sanand got sympathy statements and silence, then funerals. Wangchuk got a court order and an ambulance instead of a meeting with the minister he’s trying to unseat.

What’s actually different this time is the internet. Sharmila fought alone for a decade and a half before most of the country paid attention. Wangchuk had a movement behind him already, one that reacted within hours — Dipke picking up the fast before Wangchuk had even finished his ambulance ride. That’s new. Whether it’s enough to actually force Pradhan’s resignation, or whether this ends the way the Ganga fasts did — quietly, without resolution — is what Monday’s march will start to answer.