Sonam Wangchuk: Why India still turns to the hunger strike

Activist Anna Hazare’s 13-day fast in 2011 gave fresh momentum to an anti-corruption campaign that briefly captured the national imagination. Irom Sharmila, protesting against the draconian Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act in India’s north-east, refused food for 16 years, surviving only because authorities force-fed her through a nasal tube. Medha Patkar, a prominent social activist, has repeatedly undertaken prolonged hunger strikes to demand fair compensation and rehabilitation for people displaced by big dam projects.

“Hunger strikes are a global form of protest, not uniquely Indian,” says Sayantan Saha Roy, an anthropologist at the University of Connecticut whose recent research explores the politics of fasting.

To be sure, across the British Empire, the hunger strike emerged as a shared language of democratic, anti-colonial resistance – embraced by suffragettes in Britain and nationalists in Ireland and India.

“But in India, where governments can become deeply unresponsive, protesters often see fasting as the only way to force those in power to act,” says Saha Roy.

India, he says, has a particularly rich tradition of the hunger strike because Gandhi transformed it into an enduring moral and political act. “In a world of self-interested politics, they stand out as acts of self-sacrifice. As the protester’s body weakens, the moral and political pressure on those in power grows.”

That pressure, however, depends on an audience. “Hunger strikes have to be performative to be persuasive. They’re not just aimed at the state, but at the public, whose outrage can pressure those in power,” Saha Roy says.

He points to the Irish hunger strikes in the 1970s and 80s as an example. “These protesters [Irish republicans demanding to be treated as political prisoners instead of criminals] were trying to mobilise the Irish public through a vivid demonstration of their suffering and by embracing their death. The body of the hunger striker then becomes a demonstration of the cruelty of the state.

“But there’s no guarantee the audience will respond, which is what makes hunger strikes such a precarious form of protest.”