Opinion At India Gate, a protest for survival

India Gate, for me and families like mine, with generations of military service, is not just a monument or tourist spot — it is sacred. The National War Memorial is not just a structure of tablets — on one of those chakras, I will always find a familiar name. Someone I have met. Someone my family has loved more than life itself. Someone whose absence will forever remain.

But yesterday, all I saw were barricades, gates chained shut, and police cordoning off every corner. A memorial meant to be a place of gratitude and honour had turned into a fortress — not to protect the nation, but to silence its people.

I was one of those protesting against air pollution on Sunday. We were not violent. We simply wanted to tell the government that we are in a state of emergency — that the air is unbreathable, our children are not well, and Delhi has become injurious to our health. Yet, the masked amongst us became easy targets. We were the ones stopped, questioned, pushed to the sides and asked to leave. The masks meant to protect us made us identifiable faces of dissent.

But there was another India there too — unmasked, unaware or unwilling to accept reality. They had come to enjoy a Sunday evening. Children chasing balloons, couples taking selfies, vendors selling “bhel puri” while I stood ushered to the other side of India Gate, caught between despair, memory and responsibility — our two worlds collided in the same toxic air.

I wanted to cross over and walk to the War Memorial to say hello to my brother. But I was surrounded by the living and the dead, between police barricades and gasping children, thinking: “Didn’t those who died for this country die for all of us — the masked and unmasked?”

They died trusting that the nation they served would honour their sacrifice by protecting the future of their children. They died believing that governance would mean guardianship. And yet we are fighting for something as basic as clean air.

It’s ironic that the regions whose countless sons and daughters make up the armed forces — the villages of North India, the towns of Haryana, Punjab, Uttar Pradesh — are blanketed with air choking youngsters and a future where coming generations may not be able to serve the way their fathers did.

Yesterday’s protest was a plea to listen. Help us, tell us what to do. We do not have all the answers. We are not policymakers or atmospheric scientists or environmental engineers.

We are parents.
We are citizens.
We are human beings; mothers who just want their children to live.

And yet, when I raised my voice, I was asked, “How will you solve it?”

I cannot solve it alone. Why should I have to? This is why we elect governments, rely on policy makers, scientists and experts. Instead, the only advice we receive is: Leave Delhi.

Where should I go? More importantly, why should I have to? Where should millions of us go? Some may return to villages or towns their forefathers once migrated from in search of a better life. But why do we have to abandon our homes, our memories, our identity, our history?

Why can’t we be heard? Why did some of us — mothers, fathers and children have to be detained for asking for something as fundamental yet priceless as life?

Standing at India Gate — between the masked protesters and the unmasked picnickers, between the present crisis and the memorial of sacrifice — I felt lost, betrayed.

This nation has been served by generations of families like mine. But today, service is being replaced by survival. Sacrifice is being replaced by silence. Honour is being replaced by indifference.

I went there to protest. I came back knowing this: If the dead could speak, they would ask why we stopped fighting for the living.

The writer is an independent researcher and mother of a 7-year-old boy