Jantar Mantar

[caption id="attachment_661" align="alignleft" width="300" caption="File photo of Jantar Mantar. Getty Images"][/caption]Democracy’s discontent gravitates at New Delhi’s Jantar Mantar. Till recently, it found a mention in the fine print but hardly ever made headlines. But when Anna Hazare took his grouse against graft to Jantar Mantar on April 5 and won, the 18^th century astronomical observatory made it to point size 50. What was being called India’s Hyde Park is being dubbed the country’s Tahrir square where hundreds stood by or squatted, and sloganeered.When did Maharaja Jai Singh II’s architectural marvel go from tourist attraction to the default address for agitations? Economic Times reports (http://bit.ly/dVCgH9) that the Boat Club lawns on both sides of the Rajpath were the old Jantar Mantar in the early 1990s.  But they soon went from being protest grounds of the proletariat to rallying points of the politicos. For over two decades, this is the point from where any and every issue is taken down Parliament Street -- whether it is justice for the Bhopal Gas tragedy victims, the rights of Orissa’s displaced tribals, Irom Sharmila’s protest against the AFSPA in the Northeast, grassroots women vigilante group Gulabi Gang’s demand for Bundelkhand, the gay pride march or the Aarushi Talwar case. In 1998, a Tibetan protestor, Thupten Ngodup, set himself on fire here for in support of the Tibetan cause. Jantar Mantar saw over 1.5 lakh people taking part in demonstrations and over 12,000 detentions for breach of law in the first eight months of 2010. Further, from January 2006 to August 2010, at least 13,118 dharnas and as many as 5,491 demonstrations, rallies and processions were held at the site (http://bit.ly/dVCgH9.The site sees at least one protest in the day. Sometimes, a new one begins while another ends or when tired protestors stop to camp for the day.