Society
Sonam Wangchuk and the Long Story of Starving for a Cause
Sonam Wangchuk hunger strike has reignited debate over fasting as political protest, tracing a tradition from ancient Ireland and Gandhi to modern India.
Sonam Wangchuk hunger strike became one of India’s defining protests of 2026, but its significance extends far beyond a single political moment. This feature journeys through centuries of hunger strikes—from ancient Ireland to Gandhi and modern India—to understand why the human body continues to be used as the ultimate instrument of democratic dissent.
Sonam Wangchuk gave up food at Delhi’s Jantar Mantar in June 2026, protesting more than just another exam paper leak controversy. The fast was a response to a crisis that had shattered the confidence of millions of Indian students, and it also brought back one of the oldest and most ethically disturbing forms of political protest: the hunger strike. For 26 days, the 59-year-old engineer, school reformer, and climate innovator made his own body a place of protest. The simple demand: India’s education minister should resign after multiple exam paper leaks put countless academic futures at risk. But the outcome was not a quiet one. Days went by, supporters gathered round him, political leaders begged him to end the protest, and eventually Delhi Police physically removed him from the protest site and took him to hospital, acting on Delhi High Court orders issued on medical advice. Organisers said it was done against his will; police said it was necessary for his safety. Either way, the decision was taken out of his hands.
The movement did not end with him. In the days after his removal, police used tear gas to disperse students marching toward Parliament, several protesters were injured, and public anger only hardened. On 25 July, Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan announced his resignation, writing that he was “pained to see the events of the past 10 days.” The Cockroach Janta Party, the youth movement that had organised the sit-in, declared its demands met and called off the protest. Wangchuk had set the demand in motion and paid the heaviest personal cost for it, but the concession itself came four days after he had already been carried out of the square — a reminder that a hunger strike’s power often lies less in the faster’s endurance than in what it makes everyone else unable to look away from. As with previous hunger strikes, the political result was only half the story. The act itself launched a national conversation that routine petitions, speeches, and marches had failed to keep alive.
The Family Legacy Behind Sonam Wangchuk Hunger Strike
For Wangchuk, fasting has become a regular tool of his political resistance, and not always a peaceful one in its consequences. Two years earlier, he had survived for twenty-one days without food in the freezing temperatures of Leh, demanding constitutional safeguards for Ladakh through inclusion in the Sixth Schedule and a renewed dialogue on statehood. He fasted again that October. Then, in September 2025, he began another hunger strike in Leh over the same demand — one that ended very differently from the others. Days into the fast, clashes broke out elsewhere in the city; buildings and police vehicles were burned, and four people were killed.
The federal government said Wangchuk’s rhetoric had contributed to the violence and detained him without trial under India’s National Security Act, a law that permits custody for up to a year without formal charge. He spent nearly six months in a jail more than a thousand kilometres from home before the detention was revoked in March 2026. Wangchuk denied inciting the violence and asked for an independent inquiry into the deaths; his wife challenged the detention before the Supreme Court, arguing it relied on complaints that predated the unrest. The matter remains legally unresolved.
The topics have shifted, from environmental governance to educational reform, but the approach has remained remarkably consistent. Each fast is a statement of the same principle: that when the institutions won’t listen, voluntary suffering can make society listen. What the September 2025 episode adds, uncomfortably, is a reminder that the state can respond to that suffering with force rather than dialogue — and that the person fasting bears that risk alone. Sonam Wangchuk’s conviction is rooted far beyond himself.
A Hunger-Torn Legacy
Long before Sonam became an internationally renowned innovator, his father Sonam Wangyal had already used fasting as a political tool. Wangyal, a prominent leader in the former state of Jammu and Kashmir, fought for Scheduled Tribe status and constitutional protections for Ladakh’s tribal communities. He, like his son, came to see that traditional political negotiations often didn’t work. In 1984, his hunger strike drew the personal intervention of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, who travelled to Leh, met him, and persuaded him to end the fast with an assurance that the demand would be addressed. The image is still powerfully significant. It represents not only the moral force that fasting can sometimes generate but also an older political culture in which governments felt it necessary to publicly respond when citizens are willing to risk their own lives for a public cause.
Wangchuk usually describes his own movement as his father’s unfinished business. Though the constitutional demands may have been different over the years, the fundamental fight for recognition, dignity, and political voice has persisted through generations. And that continuity is an unnerving concern as well. Is the hunger strike political success or democratic failure if every generation has to use the same tactic for the same recognition?
Ancient Form of Protest
The hunger strike is often linked to Gandhi or modern India, but its roots go far deeper. Troscadh, a practice acknowledged by early Irish legal traditions, was in place centuries before constitutional democracies. If a person felt that they had been wronged, they could fast outside the offender’s house. The aim was not violence or coercion in the traditional sense of the word. Instead, it used public shaming. There was considerable social stigma associated with allowing another person to suffer openly at one’s doorstep, often demanding settlement if legal procedures failed. The premise was simple and deceptively so.
A person with little institutional power was able to turn private suffering into public accountability. With time, this moral reasoning grew to a wide range of political circumstances. Marion Wallace Dunlop was a British suffragette who refused to eat after being jailed for campaigning for women’s right to vote. Her protest inspired dozens of other activists, eventually prompting British officials to resort to force-feeding, a barbaric procedure that drew more sympathy for the suffrage cause than imprisonment itself. Terence MacSwiney, an Irish republican leader, died in British custody after a 74-day hunger strike. His death reverberated around the world and spurred international support for Irish independence. Six decades later, Bobby Sands and nine other prisoners would make the same sacrifice inside the Maze Prison, turning the prison walls into one of the most important political battlegrounds of twentieth-century Northern Ireland.
In India, fasting has traditionally been a form of resistance. Jatin Das, who was jailed with Bhagat Singh, died in Lahore Central Jail after fasting for 63 days to protest the treatment of political prisoners under British rule. His funeral attracted massive crowds all over northern India, transforming a private act of suffering into a public expression of anti-colonial sentiment. These incidents, split by country and generation, reveal a startling connectedness. Hunger strikes rarely succeed, because governments don’t suddenly develop empathy. They work because visible suffering raises the political cost of staying apathetic. No one understands this dynamic better than Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi.
Gandhi never used fasting to wring concessions from his opponents. It was an exhibition of satyagraha — the search for truth through self-discipline and self-suffering rather than through violence against others. For Gandhi, voluntary suffering was a moral appeal not just to rulers but to society, whether to oppose communal violence, caste discrimination, or to seek reconciliation after Partition. The protester did not seek to defeat an opponent in his worldview. Instead, they wanted to awaken the conscience of all. This moral insight into political resistance would have an immense impact on later movements in India and elsewhere. But the hunger strike is not only a historical custom. It also surfaces long-standing questions about the connection between power, the human body, and democratic accountability — questions that reverberate every time a protester refuses to eat in the name of justice.
When Democracy Stops Listening
Hunger strikes continue because they occupy a special niche in democratic politics: they are not violent acts or ordinary expressions of discontent but moral appeals that force communities to confront hard questions. They demonstrate the limits of institutional responses by transforming the human body into the ultimate vehicle of political communication. This method has stood the test of time, from the doorsteps of ancient Ireland to Gandhi’s satyagraha, from Jatin Das’s martyrdom to Sonam Wangchuk’s repeated fasts, not for its ability to bring political victory but for its ability to expose the moral price of official indifference. Its effectiveness has always been hit or miss. Hunger strikes have sometimes changed laws and institutions and sometimes brought only silence, jail, or death — in the space of a single year, Wangchuk’s own record now contains all three: a minister’s resignation, and, five months earlier, a detention without trial. Even if they don’t succeed in forcing instant policy change, they often succeed in changing public perception and reminding voters that democracy is as much about listening as it is about governance.
Wangchuk’s strikes raise a question that extends beyond Ladakh or exam reforms: why do citizens in the world’s largest democracy still believe the best way to be heard is by starving themselves? A healthy democracy has no business asking the people to risk their lives before their grievances are rectified. If peaceful self-sacrifice remains one of the most powerful forms of political expression, the real problem is not with those who fast, but with the institutions that make them feel they have no choice.
About the authors:
Pratyusha Pan is an English literature researcher whose work explores memory, history, and political thought.
Anusreeta Dutta is a columnist and climate researcher with experience in political research analysis, ESG research, and energy policy.
Society
Who Cares for India’s Older People?
On International Day of Older Persons, a HelpAge India study highlights gaps in healthcare, income, family care and social support facing older people in India, including added risks from climate-related hazards.
Growing older can change something as ordinary as getting medicines, visiting a doctor or managing a difficult day alone. For many older people, the question is not simply whether help exists, but whether someone is close enough and able to provide it when it is needed.
A recent HelpAge India study of 2,224 older people across 20 districts in 10 states offers a picture of the support systems on which they depend. It found that 94% of older people who needed care received it from family members. But that support is not equally available to everyone.
Thirteen percent of those surveyed lived alone, 33% were widows and 28% were aged 80 or above. Nearly half reported a long-term impairment, including mobility and vision difficulties. These circumstances matter because everyday care often depends on another person being physically present.
When Family is not Nearby
India’s older population continues to rely heavily on family for care. But migration for work is changing household arrangements. In the HelpAge study, 18% of households reported that a family member had migrated for work. Sons accounted for 76% of those migrants.
For older people living alone, neighbours often fill part of the gap. Thirty-eight percent depended on neighbours for care, while 20% relied on family members living elsewhere. Sixteen percent said they received no care.
Distance does not necessarily mean that families stop supporting older relatives. Financial assistance and regular communication can continue. But some needs cannot be met remotely: taking someone to a hospital, collecting medicines, helping them move around the house or responding when they suddenly fall ill. This distinction becomes particularly important during emergencies.
Health Harder to Manage
The study found that 52% of respondents could not afford medicines. Public facilities were an important source of healthcare, with 51% using primary health centres and 49% government hospitals.
Climate-related events exposed some of these existing difficulties further. Seventy-eight percent of those surveyed had experienced at least one such hazard in the previous three years, with heatwaves the most common.
Among those who experienced heatwaves, 74% said illness increased and 44% said existing health conditions worsened. One-third reported difficulty accessing healthcare. These figures are less about the hazard itself than about what happens when an older person already managing health problems has fewer options for care.
“Older persons are among those most at risk from rising climate shocks, particularly those living alone or with impairments, yet they remain largely invisible in climate response efforts,” says Rohit Prasad, CEO, HelpAge India. “Climate impacts extend beyond physical hazards, affecting health, income, housing, care and social wellbeing.”
Prasad says age-related physical, financial and social challenges can limit older people’s ability to prepare for, withstand and recover from climate events. He calls for ageing to be integrated into climate adaptation, climate financing, elder-centric disaster risk reduction and social protection policies.
Income Constraint
Healthcare is only one part of financial insecurity in later life. Pensions were the main source of income for 49% of respondents. Sixteen percent had neither work nor income, while others continued to work in agriculture, agricultural labour or other forms of employment.
The ability to pay for medicines, travel to healthcare facilities, household repairs or basic necessities depends heavily on this income. Work also changes with age. The HelpAge study found that the proportion reporting no work or income rose from 11% among those aged 60–69 to 21% among those aged 80 and above.
For people who have spent much of their lives in informal employment, growing older can therefore mean entering a period with limited savings, little employment protection and greater healthcare needs.
The Problem of Access
Government schemes can provide important support, but knowing about a benefit does not always mean being able to obtain it. The study found relatively high awareness of the Public Distribution System, pensions, subsidised healthcare and housing schemes. Yet access was more difficult for people with poor health, those severely affected by climate hazards, people without formal education and those from lower socioeconomic groups.
Respondents also reported delays, difficulties with digital access and a lack of assistance with applications. For an older person with limited mobility, poor eyesight or little experience with digital services, even a relatively straightforward application can become difficult without help.
Ageing Needs More Than Family Care
India’s ageing population is growing, while the family structures that have traditionally provided care are changing.
UNFPA estimates that the number of Indians aged 60 and above could approach 193 million by 2030. That growth will increase the need for healthcare, financial support and forms of care that do not depend entirely on whether an older person’s children live nearby.
The answer is not to replace family care, which remains central to the lives of many older people. It is to ensure that those who do not have family nearby, cannot afford private care or need support beyond what relatives can provide are not left without alternatives.
Ageing policy therefore needs to look beyond longevity. It has to account for who provides care, who pays for healthcare, how older people access public services and what happens when the person they depend on is no longer close by. For many older Indians, these are not future questions. They are questions of everyday life.
Health
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