Burgers, langar and a protest that refused to go hungry

“Oh, that was the last burger, and he just took it. I’m so sorry, madam,” Rahul told me as I caught up with him outside the Jantar Mantar protest site. He was still seated on his bike, the red Zomato delivery bag strapped behind him – now apparently empty at 6.30 in the evening. “The bag had 30 burger packets for 'anyone who wants one' that someone in Bengaluru had sent,” he said.

Rahul Kumar Yadav, from Bihar’s Darbhanga district, is a student by day. He did not take a break from his studies to take part in the protest; instead, he chose to work the night shift as a delivery guy, from 6 p.m. to 6 a.m. Some of the orders he transported included meals that people in other cities had paid for. Parcels sent by anonymous donors and addressed to no one in particular – just to whoever at Jantar Mantar happened to be hungry.

Throughout the student protest at Jantar Mantar, amid lathi charges and mass detentions, food kept arriving from many directions. Burgers, sandwiches, packets of Parle-G and more, transported by ‘service delivery partners’ (read gig workers) of assorted online Apps. Also cooked food came in from Delhi households. And, importantly, from a nearby gurdwara’s langar (free community kitchen with food cooked and served by volunteers) open to the public for decades.

Since early June, this set of 18th century sundials and architectural astronomy instruments in the heart of the capital became the base of a sit-in protest led by the Cockroach Janta Party. A youth movement that began as online satire before spilling onto the street.

Joined by various student groups, the protesters had demanded the resignation of Union Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan – which did subsequently happen – over the 2026 NEET paper leak and other examination irregularities. They also sought broader reforms in the public education system. Ladakh-based activist Sonam Wangchuk sat on an over three-week hunger strike here from June 28. On July 20, when thousands tried to march to Parliament on the first day of its monsoon session, Delhi Police answered with lathis and tear gas.

Through all of it, food and drinking water were among the least of the protesters’ concerns at Jantar Mantar.

The place had turned into a free community kitchen, fed by people from very different backgrounds.

Officegoers came after work, elderly residents and children came with their families; local golgappa and dahi-bhalla vendors often served the protestors free; and students shared biscuits bought with pocket money. Food came in from other cities too, ordered through Swiggy and Zomato and left for whoever needed it. The menu leaned young – pizzas, biryani, chips, cold drinks – and some packets arrived with folding hand-fans made of card paper, tucked in against the July humidity. So much came in that, on one of the busiest days, the organisers posted a request asking people to stop: they had enough, and did not want anything to go to waste.

When Luvkush Prajapati, 21, came to join the protest with thousands of fellow students, he arrived with 500 rupees and a homemade lunchbox, clueless about his next meal or where he would find shelter. He had travelled from Atarra town in Banda district, Uttar Pradesh.

“But” he said, “that was never a concern here at Jantar Mantar. We all felt like one big family.”

His concern was police violence. His left leg, covered in plaster, was resting on a white plastic chair. “My ankle is broken, and even with this plaster on, I was detained for five hours,” he told PARI, also showing us the wounds on his neck, arm and stomach from the lathi charge by the Delhi Police on July 20. He was held overnight in a police bus, from 10 p.m. to 4 a.m., without food.

“But when they dropped me back, my family of thousands was waiting with all kinds of food. This guy offered me Parle-G biscuits even before I had completely stepped out of the bus,” he said, pointing towards Mohammad Adil, in a faded pink T-shirt. Adil, a BA student from Ghaziabad, was still moving among the crowd with packets of biscuits he had bought with his pocket money.

Sustained help came from the Bangla Sahib Gurdwara, one of Delhi’s most prominent places of Sikh assembly and worship. It ran its langar for the protesters and kept its doors open around the clock. The Sachkhand Foundation, the Hemkunt Foundation and several others – brought food, clothes, water bottles, raincoats and sleeping bags, set up temporary toilets, handed out power banks, and arranged places to sleep, some of it in coordination with the gurdwara itself.

Sudeep Singh, media advisor to the Delhi Sikh Gurdwara Management Committee, told PARI, “The langar was prepared at Bangla Sahib Gurdwara, and gurdwaras are open to everyone. From the very start of the protests, the students came three times a day, and we served them. We also provided overnight shelter to several protesters, including women students. As an institution, we hold no particular view on the CJP protest. Our responsibility is simply to serve anyone who comes to our doors.”

Langar – the free community kitchen – is among the oldest institutions of Sikhism, and has over the past few years become one of the recurring languages of protest in India. At the Delhi border protests against the farm laws in 2020 and 2021, langars fed countless thousands, day and night, through a bitter winter and a pandemic, for more than a year. During the anti-CAA sit-in at Shaheen Bagh, Punjabi farmers set up a langar in solidarity; later, Muslim youth in Punjab’s Malerkotla cooked for protesting Sikh farmers. The gesture repeats itself because it is simple and difficult to argue with: whatever the disagreement, no one who has come should go hungry.

The contrast was not lost on anyone at Jantar Mantar. The police had kept Luvkush in a bus through the night with nothing to eat. Strangers put food in his hands before he was fully off it.

On July 25, Pradhan resigned and the CJP wound down its protest. In the weeks before that, the food never ran out.

As we left Jantar Mantar, Rahul kept riding his night shift, carrying strangers’ orders to whoever was hungry. Luvkush’s ankle was still in plaster. And Adil still had biscuits in his hand, in case someone else stepped off a bus with nothing.

The author thanks journalist Nacchinarkkiniyan M for his valuable inputs