How An 18th-Century Monument Became India’s Protest Epicentre

On most mornings, Jantar Mantar wakes up quietly. The traffic hums along Parliament Street, tourists drift in with cameras, and the monumental stone instruments—designed to measure time, shadow, and celestial movement—stand unbothered by the present. Yet for over three decades, this sliver of road in Lutyens’ Delhi has carried a different weight. Not astronomical, but emotional. Political. Human. This is where hopes have been raised on handwritten placards, where grief has spilled into slogans, where dissent learned how to survive inside barricades.

Jantar Mantar was never meant to be a protest space. It was built in the 18th century by Maharaja Sawai Jai Singh II as an observatory, one of five across India, designed to read the skies. But history, like protest, has a way of claiming spaces it needs. Over time, this modest curve of road between Ashoka Road and Tolstoy Marg became the closest thing India has to a Hyde Park: visible, symbolic, and just close enough for power to be impossible to ignore.

From Boat Club

Before Jantar Mantar, Delhi’s dissent had a grander stage. The Boat Club lawns near Rajpath, now Kartavya Path, were once the capital’s favoured protest ground. With the Parliament, Rashtrapati Bhavan and North and South Blocks in sight, it was the ideal place to confront authority head-on. That changed dramatically in 1988, when thousands of farmers led by Mahendra Singh Tikait laid siege to the area for nearly a week. They camped, cooked, brought cattle, and stayed put until demands were conceded. The scale of the protest rattled the government.

Security concerns followed swiftly. The proximity to sensitive installations made the Boat Club untenable as a protest venue. By 1993, amid rising political unrest in the post-Babri Masjid demolition era, authorities quietly nudged dissent away from Rajpath. Jantar Mantar emerged as a compromise: close to Parliament, but not too close; visible, but controllable. With just two main entry and exit points, it was easier to police, easier to barricade, and easier—eventually—to regulate.

There was no formal declaration, no plaque announcing its new identity. Yet over time, word spread. Organisations, activists, students, farmers, ex-servicemen, women’s groups—everyone found their way here. The space absorbed voices from across the country, becoming Delhi’s unofficial address for protest.

A Managed Dissent

What made Jantar Mantar workable also made it vulnerable. Its narrowness ensured proximity to power, but also ensured limitation. As protests multiplied, so did the challenges: overlapping demonstrations, loudspeakers competing for attention, tents becoming semi-permanent homes. Noise complaints rose. So did concerns over pollution, sanitation, and public order.

In 2017, the National Green Tribunal ordered a ban on protests at Jantar Mantar, citing environmental and civic issues, and designated Ramlila Maidan—nearly four kilometres away—as the new official site for sit-ins. The logic was administrative. The impact was symbolic. With every kilometre of distance, protest loses immediacy. Voices grow easier to ignore.

Yet history shows that dissent rarely complies quietly. Anna Hazare’s anti-corruption movement in 2011 began at Jantar Mantar before spilling into Ramlila Maidan and eventually reshaping national politics. The spontaneous protests following the 2012 Nirbhaya gangrape surged beyond designated spaces, flooding India Gate and Rajpath. When farmers were denied permission even at Ramlila Maidan in 2020–21, they turned Delhi’s borders—Singhu, Tikri, Ghazipur—into protest cities of their own.

Jantar Mantar, meanwhile, remained a paradox. A place without basic facilities like clean toilets or drinking water, yet people returned to again and again. Not because it was comfortable, but because it mattered. Because being seen there still meant something.

Beyond Designation

In recent years, Delhi’s protests have increasingly spilled into streets, highways, campuses, and neighbourhoods. Shaheen Bagh, a six-lane road in south-east Delhi, became a lodestar during the anti-CAA movement, transforming a thoroughfare into a site of quiet, determined resistance led largely by women. The message was unmistakable: if designated spaces become echo chambers, people will make new ones.

And yet, Jantar Mantar refuses to fade. Even as barricades multiply and Section 144 is imposed more frequently, the site retains its pull. Wrestlers protesting sexual harassment, tribal women from Manipur seeking attention to violence back home, pensioners demanding dignity—each wave returns to this curve of road, drawn by decades of memory layered into stone and asphalt.

Perhaps that is Jantar Mantar’s true power. Not that it guarantees change, but that it holds history. It reminds both protesters and passers-by that democracy is not static. It is argued, negotiated, demanded—often from uncomfortable places. The observatory once measured time with shadows. Today, it measures something else entirely: the distance between power and people, and how loudly that distance can still be crossed.

In a city where public space is shrinking and dissent is increasingly managed, Jantar Mantar remains an imperfect symbol—but a stubborn one. And sometimes, that is enough.

FAQs

1. Why was Jantar Mantar chosen as Delhi’s protest site?
After large-scale protests at the Boat Club raised security concerns in the late 1980s, Jantar Mantar emerged as a controlled yet visible space close to Parliament.

2. Was Jantar Mantar officially declared a protest venue?
No formal declaration was made, but from the early 1990s it became the accepted site for protests through administrative practice.

3. What major protests have taken place at Jantar Mantar?
Notable movements include Anna Hazare’s anti-corruption protests, demonstrations after the 2012 Nirbhaya case, and numerous farmers’, students’, and workers’ agitations.

4. Why were protests restricted at Jantar Mantar in recent years?
Courts and authorities cited concerns over noise, pollution, crowd management, and public inconvenience, leading to restrictions and relocations.

5. Where are protests officially allowed in Delhi now?
Ramlila Maidan is currently designated for large sit-in protests, though many movements continue to emerge across streets and city borders.