A study by IIT Indore has traced how protest spaces in Delhi have shifted over the years, arguing that access, visibility and proximity to centres of power are central to democratic dissent. The study comes as Delhi Police has denotified Jantar Mantar as a protest site and designated Ramlila Maidan, Burari Ground and CBD Ground as the new sites for protests and demonstrations.
Titled "Spatial Denial and Displacement: Exploring the Literary Lineage of Protest Sites (Public Spaces)", the study places these changes in a longer history stretching from the Mughal and British periods to the post-Independence era. The shift is taking place amid protests called by opposition parties and the Cockroach Janta Party against the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) and the chief election commissioner.
The researchers said the existence of a "designated protest site" by itself is not enough, and that its location, accessibility and visibility matter. They argued that where people are allowed to gather shapes their ability to raise demands and engage with centres of power, and examined how access to public spaces has been shaped by authority.
According to the study, the lawns along Rajpath, now Kartavya Path and earlier known as Kingsway, once resembled a "village of tents" as people from across the country gathered there to make their issues known. After Independence, the area became a prominent space for public gatherings, with hill residents demanding a separate state, farmers seeking better prices and industrial workers protesting retrenchment, bringing varied demands into a central public space.
In 1993, Jantar Mantar was designated as Delhi's official protest site after restrictions were imposed on collective demonstrations at the Boat Club. The study said this move reduced the visibility of protests and increased the distance from the corridors of power.
It added that protests at Ramlila Maidan in 2017, the anti-CAA stir at Shaheen Bagh in 2019-20 and the farmers' demonstrations at Singhu, Tikri and Ghazipur in 2021-22 showed how protests moved to different locations when access to established sites was restricted.
The study said this pattern reflected a rise in newly created protest spaces alongside increasing designation and displacement, which the researchers saw as a sign of declining access to central public spaces.
To explain this, they used three ideas - denial, designation and creation. Denial refers to restricting access to public spaces, designation means officially assigning areas for protests, and creation describes protesters occupying or developing other spaces when existing locations become inaccessible.
To study these changes, the researchers combined literary analysis with architectural study, handmade maps and digital mapping. They examined fiction, non-fiction, poetry and visual material linked to different protest movements to understand how people use public spaces and how the meaning of these places changes over time.
The study also raised concerns about the decline of accessible public spaces and the growth of privatised spaces, saying public areas are important not only for movement and recreation but also for collective action, social interaction and participation in public life.
Overall, it argued that designating a protest site does not necessarily ensure equal access to public space, and that moving demonstrations further away changes both their visibility and their proximity to political institutions.
- Ends