Time and Protest.

[Text and photo by Mayank Austen Soofi]

Jantar Mantar has two lives. One belongs to the sky. The other belongs to the street.

Today, the street has reclaimed it once again. Young people gather outside the 18th century observatory demanding accountability in education, among other things. The slogans of their movement rise above the yellow police barricades, drifting towards a set of structures built to observe a different kind of movement.

Jantar Mantar was built to chart the movement of planets, predict eclipses and measure time. In independent India, perhaps because the observatory stands close to our Parliament, the area beside it became the place where generations of Indians came to stage protests, hoping this was where power might finally listen.

Raised by a Jaipur ruler, the monument resembles a geometry diagram. Giant triangles rise into the sky. Circular wells sink into the earth. Curved chambers wrap around empty space. The surface seems coated in terracotta, darkened by multiple cycles of monsoons and summers. A monument is conventionally a tribute to stillness, but this one exists for the sole aim of measuring what cannot be held still. As the sun slowly crosses the sky, sharp shadows slide across the observatory’s sloping walls, changing shape from hour to hour. The Samrat Yantra, a giant sundial, is the tallest of these structures. A staircase is cut along its knife-edge, pointing towards a sky that has since been interrupted by the business towers of Connaught Place.

Beyond the observatory’s boundary fence, one protest has followed another, decade after decade. Farmers have pitched tents here. Ex-servicemen did the same. Gandhians, Ambedkarites, sanitation workers, pensioners and queer activists all have registered their presence. Some citizens once came to oppose the construction of a dam. Another group came to demand the banning of a book. Elderly men and women have sat here on hunger strikes. So did a young woman from distant Manipur. Some citizens left the protest place feeling victorious. Some returned home defeated. Over time, the slogans changed, the faces changed, the demands changed. The monument watched every gathering with complete indifference.

The rest of the Jantar Mantar observatory is no less intriguing. The angular structures especially create spaces that seem both mathematical and sculptural. Closest to the entrance, the Misra Yantra is a favourite backdrop for group photographs.

And so, 302 years after Jantar Mantar was built to record the movement of celestial bodies, people still gather beside it hoping to influence events on earth. This sunset hour, as a youthful crowd has gathered holding banners, slogans, and flags (see photo), the old observatory (beyond the frame) continues keeping time.