Sonam Wangchuk was carried out of Jantar Mantar on Saturday morning, 21 days into a fast that had already cost him significant muscle mass, on orders from the Delhi High Court that cited his deteriorating health. He is now under care at Safdarjung Hospital, and the court's next hearing on his condition is set for Monday. Around him, the scene stayed loud: Cockroach Janta Party workers pushed back against the police action, and founder Abhijeet Dipke says he was manhandled and briefly held during the confrontation. The hunger strike itself has never really been about Wangchuk. It began on June 28 as an act of solidarity with a Gen Z-led movement demanding accountability for the NEET-UG paper leak, a scandal that preceded at least twelve student suicides between the exam's cancellation in May and its re-test in June.
What's striking, looking back over the three weeks since, is how many people actually did show up, and how specifically they said what they came to say.
Imran Khan didn't hedge. Addressing the students directly on Instagram, he wrote that it is his honour to stand beside you, framing the moment as one where institutions owe students the same integrity they demand of them. Vir Das took a different route, needling the entire premise of celebrity neutrality; he called the idea that speaking up requires some special "privilege" about the most bizarre argument he'd heard. Sonakshi Sinha, who says she rarely comments on political matters, broke that pattern to ask, plainly, why should I be quiet, and to insist that concern for her country doesn't make her anti-national. Zeenat Aman's appeal to Wangchuk himself was gentler, closing with a simple please end your fast today. Music composer Vishal Dadlani, posting from the US, kept his ask narrow and specific: his request to the government is to listen to their demands. Actor Atul Kulkarni went further than a post, observing a one-day fast of his own to connect with the pain that Sonam ji and his associates are going through. Author Shobhaa De flagged the medical clock publicly, warning that the following 24 to 48 hours could prove decisive for Wangchuk's health.
The comedians moved differently, and it's worth separating them out rather than folding them into the general Bollywood tally, because comedy in India currently carries its own, sharper set of professional risks. Samay Raina, who has spent the past year fielding controversy of his own, posted Wangchuk's photograph with a message hoping and praying that he's okay and that this ends soon with dialogue, brief, but a break from the caution he might reasonably have chosen instead. Kunal Kamra, who is still contending with legal fallout from an unrelated set mocking a sitting deputy chief minister, showed up at the protest site in person rather than posting from a distance, a choice that reads as more exposed than a tweet, given what he is already navigating in the courts. Munawar Faruqui, whose own history with the legal system over jokes is well documented, added his voice to the chorus. None of these three had much cover left to lose. They came anyway.
That's really the pattern underneath all of it. The people who spoke fastest and most specifically, Sinha, Kulkarni, Dadlani, Aman, the comedians, are largely the ones without deep reserves of brand insulation to protect in the first place. Swara Bhaskar, who visited Wangchuk in person at Jantar Mantar, has said as much herself: she believes many actors are staying quiet because they watched what happened to her career after she spoke up in the past, and concluded the same treatment awaited them. She isn't guessing. She's reporting from experience.
Meanwhile, the industry's biggest wallets stayed shut. Shah Rukh Khan, Salman Khan, Amitabh Bachchan, Akshay Kumar and Ajay Devgn, the five names with the widest commercial exposure in Hindi cinema, said nothing through nineteen days of a man visibly starving in the national capital. When Aamir Khan did finally speak, at a London Indian Film Festival screening of Lagaan, the moment he chose to address was whether his 3 Idiots character had been inspired by Wangchuk, calling the long-standing belief a misconception, before adding, almost as an afterthought, that we are all very concerned about his health and his life. Congress, AAP and RJD leaders read that sequencing as its own kind of answer, asking, in effect, how many years it takes a star to find his spine when the target is a sitting minister rather than a movie trivia dispute.
Wangchuk is in a hospital bed now, and the court will decide on Monday what happens next. Whatever it rules, the ledger of who spoke, and what, specifically, they were willing to risk saying, has already been written. The comedians and the mid-tier stars wrote themselves into the column with something to lose. The industry's biggest names wrote themselves into the quieter one, with the most to protect.
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Sonam Wangchuk was carried out of Jantar Mantar on Saturday morning, 21 days into a fast that had already cost him significant muscle mass, on orders from the Delhi High Court that cited his deteriorating health. He is now under care at Safdarjung Hospital, and the court's next hearing on his condition is set for Monday. Around him, the scene stayed loud: Cockroach Janta Party workers pushed back against the police action, and founder Abhijeet Dipke says he was manhandled and briefly held during the confrontation. The hunger strike itself has never really been about Wangchuk. It began on June 28 as an act of solidarity with a Gen Z-led movement demanding accountability for the NEET-UG paper leak, a scandal that preceded at least twelve student suicides between the exam's cancellation in May and its re-test in June.
What's striking, looking back over the three weeks since, is how many people actually did show up, and how specifically they said what they came to say.
Imran Khan didn't hedge. Addressing the students directly on Instagram, he wrote that it is his honour to stand beside you, framing the moment as one where institutions owe students the same integrity they demand of them. Vir Das took a different route, needling the entire premise of celebrity neutrality; he called the idea that speaking up requires some special "privilege" about the most bizarre argument he'd heard. Sonakshi Sinha, who says she rarely comments on political matters, broke that pattern to ask, plainly, why should I be quiet, and to insist that concern for her country doesn't make her anti-national. Zeenat Aman's appeal to Wangchuk himself was gentler, closing with a simple please end your fast today. Music composer Vishal Dadlani, posting from the US, kept his ask narrow and specific: his request to the government is to listen to their demands. Actor Atul Kulkarni went further than a post, observing a one-day fast of his own to connect with the pain that Sonam ji and his associates are going through. Author Shobhaa De flagged the medical clock publicly, warning that the following 24 to 48 hours could prove decisive for Wangchuk's health.
The comedians moved differently, and it's worth separating them out rather than folding them into the general Bollywood tally, because comedy in India currently carries its own, sharper set of professional risks. Samay Raina, who has spent the past year fielding controversy of his own, posted Wangchuk's photograph with a message hoping and praying that he's okay and that this ends soon with dialogue, brief, but a break from the caution he might reasonably have chosen instead. Kunal Kamra, who is still contending with legal fallout from an unrelated set mocking a sitting deputy chief minister, showed up at the protest site in person rather than posting from a distance, a choice that reads as more exposed than a tweet, given what he is already navigating in the courts. Munawar Faruqui, whose own history with the legal system over jokes is well documented, added his voice to the chorus. None of these three had much cover left to lose. They came anyway.
That's really the pattern underneath all of it. The people who spoke fastest and most specifically, Sinha, Kulkarni, Dadlani, Aman, the comedians, are largely the ones without deep reserves of brand insulation to protect in the first place. Swara Bhaskar, who visited Wangchuk in person at Jantar Mantar, has said as much herself: she believes many actors are staying quiet because they watched what happened to her career after she spoke up in the past, and concluded the same treatment awaited them. She isn't guessing. She's reporting from experience.
Meanwhile, the industry's biggest wallets stayed shut. Shah Rukh Khan, Salman Khan, Amitabh Bachchan, Akshay Kumar and Ajay Devgn, the five names with the widest commercial exposure in Hindi cinema, said nothing through nineteen days of a man visibly starving in the national capital. When Aamir Khan did finally speak, at a London Indian Film Festival screening of Lagaan, the moment he chose to address was whether his 3 Idiots character had been inspired by Wangchuk, calling the long-standing belief a misconception, before adding, almost as an afterthought, that we are all very concerned about his health and his life. Congress, AAP and RJD leaders read that sequencing as its own kind of answer, asking, in effect, how many years it takes a star to find his spine when the target is a sitting minister rather than a movie trivia dispute.
Wangchuk is in a hospital bed now, and the court will decide on Monday what happens next. Whatever it rules, the ledger of who spoke, and what, specifically, they were willing to risk saying, has already been written. The comedians and the mid-tier stars wrote themselves into the column with something to lose. The industry's biggest names wrote themselves into the quieter one, with the most to protect.
TO BE CONTINUED, FOR SUBSCRIBERS ONLY.
This is where the surface ends and the reporting begins.
The complete piece, the full archive, and access to The French Press Circle. Reporting answerable only to its readers.
Already a subscriber ?
Login
Read these on the house, with our compliments.
A selection from the current issue, open to all readers. Read them in full. The rest is one decision away.
