Punjab: On Monday, the hunger strike of Samyukta Kisan Morcha (Non-Political) convener Jagjit Singh Dallewal entered its 42nd day.
Doctors said Dallewal’s blood pressure was 108/73 on Sunday, while his peripheral oxygen saturation level was 98. The respiratory rate was 18 per minute while the heart rate was 73. On Sunday evening, NGO 5 Rivers Heart Association released a bulletin stating that even if Dallewal ended his hunger strike now, his organs might not function fully. Doctors said Dallewal has been unable to stand properly for several days, making it difficult to measure his weight accurately.
Fasting has been used as a form of protest for a number of reasons throughout the political history of independent India. Mahatma Gandhi called fasting “a great weapon in the armoury of Satyagraha” during the freedom struggle and embarked on at least 20 such protests. His longest hunger strike took place in 1943, when he fasted for 21 days in protest of his detention for causing disturbances during the Quit India movement.
In Frame: Jagjit Singh Dallewal on hunger strike
Impactful hunger strikes in independent India, some changed government while some led to the creation of new states
The first significant fast-unto-death protest in Independent India occurred in 1952 when Potti Sriramulu stopped eating over his demand for a separate state of Andhra Pradesh from the former Madras State. His death after 58 days of fasting sparked violent protests, which ultimately resulted in the government separating Andhra Pradesh from the then-Madras State in 1953.
Irom Sharmila, a 28-year-old activist, launched an extended hunger strike in November 2000 in protest of the death of 10 civilians by the 8th Assam Rifles in Manipur and later she opposed Armed Forces Special Powers Act (AFSPA). Irom was arrested for “attempting suicide” three days after she started her fast, and she spent 16 years in police jail, where she was force-fed through her nose while she persisted in her hunger strike, giving her the nickname “Iron Lady of Manipur.”
International organizations, including the International Red Cross and the United Nations, called Sharmila’s forced feeding a “form of torture” and a breach of the inmates’ freedom to refuse meals. In 2021, the Madras High Court ruled that a hunger strike would not constitute an attempt to commit suicide.
Mamata Banerjee, the leader of the Trinamool Congress, protested the Left government’s alleged forced land acquisition in West Bengal for the Tata Group’s Nano factory in 2006 by going on a hunger fast. After Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and then-President A P J Abdul Kalam urged her to end her 25-day hunger strike, she did so, and the Tatas eventually left the state. In the 2011 Assembly elections, which ended the Left’s more than three-decade dominance, Mamata was swept to power, which turned Bengali politics upside down.
K Chandrashekar Rao, also known as KCR, the leader of the Telangana Rashtra Samithi, started a death-defying fast in 2009 to demand statehood. Within ten days, the Congress, which at the time was also facing pressure from throughout the country, gave in and promised to create the state of Telangana. After much deliberation on the state boundary and capital selection, Telangana was established approximately four and a half years later in 2014, with KCR serving as its first chief minister.
Hunger strikes returned to the public spotlight in 2011 thanks to activist Anna Hazare’s campaign for a Lokpal against corruption in the UPA government.
After the BJP government passed three disputed farm legislation in late 2020, farmers launched a statewide protest that included a relay hunger strike to put pressure on the federal government to abolish the rules.
