New Delhi: In the 15 months since his son, Manoranjan D., then 34 years old, was arrested for having jumped from the visitors’ gallery in Parliament into its main hall, where he leapt from row to row, releasing yellow smoke from a plastic canister, Devaraju Gowda, a farmer from Mysuru district in Karnataka, has been torn between anger and love: anger at Manoranjan’s decision to storm Lok Sabha in a bid to draw attention towards numerous social causes that he felt passionately committed to, and love for the boy who, despite his mistakes, is still his child.
“I would always tell Manoranjan that many people in India and in the world are poor, sick, or lack education… that didn’t mean he should carry the weight of their suffering on his shoulders. But my son felt responsible for everybody’s pain,” Gowda said one afternoon late in February. “Now, I just want to be with him again. But every day, I wonder if that will ever happen,” he said in Delhi, where he had come to attend matters related to Manoranjan’s impending criminal trial.
Sagar Sharma, a 26 year old from Lucknow, Uttar Pradesh, also entered Parliament and released coloured smoke at the same time as Manoranjan. Two others – Neelam Ranolia from Jind, Haryana, and Amol Shinde from Latur in Maharashtra – protested in the same way outside Parliament. The four were arrested minutes after their controversial coordinated protest began around 1 pm on December 13, 2023. Two others, who allegedly helped these four, were also arrested. After weeks in police custody, all six have been lodged in Tihar Jail in Delhi, so far unsuccessfully applying for bail.
What started as a protest with smoke cans and slogans in Parliament has led to severe consequences, including charges under harsh laws like the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act – meant to prosecute terrorists – making it nearly impossible to secure bail. But advocate Somarjuna V. M., who represents Manoranjan and Sagar, believes the accusations are based on a misunderstanding. “The government is supposed to look into why they have done this, not accuse them of things they didn’t intend to do,” he says.
What complicates the situation is that on December 13, 2023, India was marking the 22nd anniversary of an actual, deadly terrorist attack on Parliament in which six police personnel and three parliamentary employees perished, apart from the five terrorists, and at least 18 people were injured. It is unclear if Manoranjan, Sagar, Neelam and Amol purposefully chose that date to carry out their actions, or if it was a coincidence – the only day for which they could secure passes to enter Lok Sabha’s visitors’ gallery to watch the proceedings. Only their trial can make these details clearer.
However, over the last 15 months, the arrests have taken a toll on not just those arrested, but all those caught in the controversy. “Since December 13, 2023, it’s as if our entire families have been in Tihar Jail, even though we are out, and it is our children who are in,” says Gowda, his voice trembling. He has met the families of the other accused in Delhi during court hearings, when they have shared their worries about the well-being and future of their imprisoned children.
Gowda has made the long journey from Karnataka to Delhi several times, covering over 4,000 km to meet his son, usually for brief seconds as he is brought to the Patiala House court. However, the other families have not been this fortunate. They are from the working class and cannot afford regular journeys to the court or prison from their homes in Kolkata, Lucknow, Jaipur or Latur. All they can do is wait and hope.
“Now I feel she was wrong to protest,” says Ramnivas, Neelam’s brother, who’s raising a family doing manual labour and rarely gets to see her. “She is in jail, getting two meals a day, but we, her family, have nothing – I can’t afford the 200-km trip from Jind, nor take time off from work to see her in Delhi.” Their mother went to meet Neelam once, and Ramnivas tries to keep up with the case, but it’s proving next to impossible.
“Of course we’re anxious and concerned about her,” Ramnivas says. Like the other families of those arrested spoken to, he acknowledges that the mode of the protest, when viewed from the perspective of the government, may appear to have crossed a line. However, the families cannot disregard the reasons that underpinned the protest. As Ramnivas says, “People are mistaken when they claim that everything is fine [in Haryana]. Even today, nothing gets done without parchi-kharchi.”
He is referring to charges of bribery (or kharchi) and favouritism (or parchi) in government appointments levelled by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) against Congress-ruled administrations of Haryana. The issue featured prominently in the state assembly election held in 2024.
Neelam, despite being a qualified teacher pursuing an MPhil, repeatedly failed to secure a job. Job aspirants in many states have often raised doubts that such rejections are due to favouritism and limited opportunities, not lack of qualifications or performing badly in interviews.
Fading into silence
It was only at the time of the arrests, on the day of the provocative protest, that the incident attracted nationwide attention as the ‘Parliament security breach’ case. This changed quickly. TV news channels initially sensationalised the incident, airing live footage of Manoranjan and Sagar within Parliament, and of Neelam and Amol outside it, as they released yellow smoke, held up placards and raised slogans. But they forgot about it soon after.
“No NGO, media house or other organisation has been talking about what these people did and why,” says Somarjuna, “Whenever I meet the accused, they said that is what hurts the most – being forgotten despite raising issues that are everybody’s concern. They only opened smoke cans in Parliament to raise issues from the point of view of the public.”
According to him, the objectives behind the protest at Parliament became apparent through the slogans chanted, the posters displayed and the messages shared before live TV cameras as the protest unfolded. One poster featured the image of a clenched fist and the famous words inspired by a poem about Subhash Chandra Bose, which translates as, “One whose blood does not boil even now is not blood, but water. And youth that does not serve the country is useless.” Another poster declared that the prime minister of India was ‘missing’ while Manipur was rocked by violence.
The four were seen shouting ‘Jai Bhim’, a slogan widely used to refer to Dr B.R. Ambedkar’s struggle for Dalit uplift, ‘Jai Bharat’, a patriotic cry that salutes the Indian nation, ‘Bharat Mata Ki Jai’, which symbolises reverence for India as a mother figure, and ‘Manipur bachao’, a prominent cry for justice and peace in response to the ethnic strife in the state in 2023. They also shouted ‘tanashahi nahi chaleygi’, or dictatorship won’t be tolerated. However, once the incident disappeared from the news, it faded from public memory.
The frustration and history of activism
The accused, including Neelam, the sole woman arrested, have been involved in past movements – from the Manipur protests to the farmers’ and wrestlers’ struggles. For them, this protest was a continuation of their growing sense of injustice done to the nation’s most marginalised people.
They followed the ideals of freedom fighters like Bhagat Singh and Chandrashekhar Azad, hoping to spark a similar sense of change as they did. But instead of the recognition they expected, their protest has been labelled as a violent act against the state, something they vehemently deny.
“What happened on December 13, 2023 was not an act of defiance against the state itself, but against a state machinery that failed so many people. They had been raising their issues for many years, which nobody resolved, leading them to the step they took,” says Somarjuna.
For Sagar’s mother, Rani Sharma, a housewife whose husband is a small-time carpenter, the protest, followed by her son’s arrest on serious charges, has meant forever swinging between despondency, restlessness and hope. Though desperate to see Sagar, talk to him, she and her husband have rarely visited him due to their straightened circumstances.
“Sagar is a child born after we prayed for one, so he is special, blessed,” says Rani over the phone from her home in Lucknow. “I long for my only son, and we don’t believe he did anything wrong, but I’m helpless against fate unless he’s granted bail.” The police, too, acknowledged in the charge sheet related to the case that the “financial condition of Sagar Sharma’s family is very bleak”.
“Aren’t hundreds of youngsters roaming our cities, hopelessly seeking work? Didn’t my son just try to highlight that?” Rani says. She would know. After all, Sagar took up numerous jobs as he struggled to survive – he started out as a tattoo artist, became an assistant in a government office, a DJ’s assistant, and an e-rickshaw driver. He worked as a service boy for an electrical store, in a property developer’s office, as a record-room file scanner in a government office, as a salesboy in a toy store, and as an AC repairman, bangle-seller and salesman at a garment store.
Rani now better understands her son’s longings and desires, recalling how upset he would get on seeing people suffer the indignities of poverty, which echoed Sagar’s own struggles after he could not study after Class 12 due to the family’s financial hardships. “He helped many despite his own difficulties,” she says. To her advice not to be a “do-gooder”, he would retort: “Nobody will stand up for the poor, except those who are equally poor.”
According to the charge sheet, Sagar was part of an online ‘Bhagat Singh Club’, but according to his mother, he was an ardent follower of Bhagat Singh in real life as well. Around two years before December 13, 2023, he visited Bhagat Singh’s ancestral village in Punjab [Khatkar Kalan in Shaheed Bhagat Singh Nagar district], returning with photographs of the revolutionary’s home, including his cot, books and even cooking utensils. “You should have seen the excitement with which he returned, filled with little stories about the place…” says Rani.
Once, Sagar, a skilled painter, drew blood from a finger and dotted it on the foreheads of Bhagat Singh and his comrades, Sukhdev and Rajguru, on a painting he had made. The tilak signified the honour and respect he believed they deserve for having been hanged by the British for daring to resist colonial rule.
“Seeing the blood made me furious, and I tore up his painting. But he drew more blood to anoint another picture of his three heroes, and told me never to disrespect them again,” says Rani.
Quizzed about the allegations against Sagar and the others of wanting to overthrow the government, Rani says, “The authorities say this because Sagar criticised the government, and the government considers its critics its enemies.”
Another accused in the case, Mahesh Kumawat, was 27 years old in 2023. He is from Kuchaman city in Rajasthan’s Nagaur district, and also worked odd jobs. His brother, Manoj, has been supporting his own family and his parents single-handedly since Mahesh’s arrest. Working as a salesman for a sanitaryware company, he cannot afford to take days off to visit Mahesh in Tihar Jail.
“He’s our brother and my parents’ son – of course we miss him. But my brother wasn’t involved in the case at all,” says Manoj, “Out of nervousness, he mumbled incoherently to the police, leading to his current troubles.” For now, the family has decided to focus on its own struggle to survive, while awaiting with hope news of Mahesh being granted bail.
When asked how Mahesh came to be a devotee of freedom fighter Bhagat Singh, Manoj says, “Who does not believe in Bhagat Singh? Is he not worshipped around the country?” But was his brother passionately moved by the message of revolutionaries like Bhagat Singh? “Is it really possible to measure exactly how much one should admire those who fought for our country’s freedom – can affection for them be described as ‘too much’ or ‘too little’?”
Indeed Bhagat Singh is revered around the country, including by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who shared a tweet on his 115th birth anniversary, saying, “I bow to Shaheed Bhagat Singh Ji on his Jayanti. His courage motivates us greatly. We reiterate our commitment to realise his vision for our nation.”
Yet, as the nation honours his legacy, those who stand up for the weak, the oppressed and the forgotten are locked away – punished for the very ideals he fought to uphold.
Pragya Singh is an independent journalist.
