New Delhi: Even days after ending a 23-day hunger strike, AISA president Neha Bora’s body is still “not used to food” as it is relearning how to eat.
All the same, her frail state did not stop her from travelling across states to raise her voice for the release of protesters detained or arrested for taking part in the protest at Jantar Mantar.
Bora was one of the few agitators who went on a days-long hunger strike against the NEET fiasco, seeking former education minister Dharmendra Pradhan’s resignation.
For the PhD scholar from Uttarakhand, the awakening of the youth has been a big upside of the agitation. And so is the shift in her mother’s attitude to her politics.
“My body adapted to surviving without food during the hunger strike. Now it has to adapt again to eating,” Bora, a JNU student, told PTI in an interview.
“My digestive tract is still not used to food and is not able to tolerate much. I am avoiding spicy food and red meat because it disturbs my digestive system. Otherwise, I am doing well. Slowly my body is trying to tolerate the food that I am giving it,” she said.
Despite the physical toll, Bora travelled to Bihar soon after the agitation ended to meet protesters who had been arrested despite assurances that cases against them would be withdrawn.
“It was a little difficult, but it was important,” she said. “More than 600 students were arrested, and some even faced attempt-to-murder charges. We went to Patna, met injured protesters in Siwan and also met the DGP. If we had not done this then, they would not have been released.”
The activist said it would not have been right to leave those in the lurch who stood by her at Jantar Mantar.
Bora said she was too weak to join the July 20 march because of her hunger strike. She stayed back at the protest camp with doctors when the injured began returning.
“Our hunger strike had ended that day, and we were in no condition to join the march. If we had been hit with a baton, we would probably have landed in the ICU,” she said.
“We were sitting in our tent with three doctors and medical supplies. About 30 to 45 minutes after the march started, we heard tear-gas shells. Then people started coming back.”
“The kind of wounds they were bringing, we saw it with our own eyes,” she said.
She recalled a student arriving with a fractured arm, which the doctors bandaged using a folded piece of cardboard as a sling because an ambulance could not reach him. Another colleague, she said, had been struck on the neck with a baton. “His neck had turned red, swollen and bent.”
A woman protester, Bora alleged, had “her leg split open,” while another was struck on the chest by a male security personnel and suffered swelling and ligament injuries.
She also alleged that protesters were trapped between multiple layers of barricades.
“There were tear-gas shells from one side and baton charges from the other, so people would run in one direction. Then there was another layer of barricades with tear gas and batons again. The barricades were removed so people converged, and a stampede was forced. Elderly people and children were caught in it. People didn’t know where to go,” she alleged.
Bora said she later met a Delhi University student who had lost vision in one eye due to a pellet injury, an Ambedkar University student whose body still contained pellets, and the parents of a student who was on a ventilator.
“We witnessed all of this with our own eyes,” she said.
She believes the police action only strengthened the movement.
“They thought they would break our bodies and our emotions. But after July 20, the number of people who came to Jantar Mantar was unbelievable. People came with broken heads and broken bones and sat there from morning till evening,” she said.
Recalling her speech after returning to the protest site, Bora said she told the gathering that “the marks on our bodies will bear witness.”
“We will tell the coming generation what the people sitting in Parliament ordered and how they treated the citizens of this country. We will remember it.”
The movement, she said, also transformed her relationship with her family.
Her mother, who had long disagreed with her politics, came to Jantar Mantar on July 19 and witnessed the events of the following day.
“When Dharmendra Pradhan resigned, she called me and said I should congratulate my colleagues because we had achieved this. The change that I saw among parents across the country reached my own home as well. For me, this movement is a personal achievement,” Bora said.
Asked about her father, who served in the Indian Army, Bora said she was yet to speak to him after the agitation.
“I haven’t spoken to my father yet. Hopefully, when I go home…” she said, trailing off with a smile.
