Jantar Mantar goes from royal observatory to common slum

Says Surender Shukla, an octogenarian guide who once made a comfortable living showing off the famous Jantar Mantar to both foreign and Indian tourists. “There was this time that people used to wait to be shown around. This is a place built according to scientific principles and has to be explained to the the tourists. The sun dial, its operations and its functions. There was a time when we could make Rs 1,000 per day. Now nobody wants to come here. A few odd-tourists come reading about Jantar Mantar in tourist guide books but turn back the moment they see a jhuggi cluster,” he laments.

What was once lush green grass is now a patchwork of dirty utensils waiting to be cleaned, clothes drying and scores of little children running naked, begging the moment they spot a tourist.

Rupinder Singh and his family of eight, wife, aged parents and five children are among 52 Sikh families squatting at Jantar Mantar since government demolished their land holding in Tilak Nagar more than a year ago. “We were promised land in Rohini but are yet to get it. Where could we go. Our applications are still pending with the government but they are doing nothing,” he says.

Even as Singh and his brother-squatters swear not to leave Jantar Mantar till alternate land is allotted to them, his wife pulled the thick black hose meant for watering the plants and bathed her children on the pavement. Then as water flowed into the gutter nearby she began washing the utensils. Others joined her. A little later while Singh’s father criticised the world for speeding past in fast cars, not sparing a moment for the displaced, Singh climbed the nearest tree and broke off a couple of branches. “They will take some time to dry. The dry wood comes very handy for cooking,” he explains. Police patrolling the area, ignore this upcoming slum.

The New Delhi Municipal Council has stationed a mobile potable water tanker for the “residents of Jantar Mantar”. The stench of literally hundreds of people defecating and urinating along the pavement, near the office of the Janata Dal and behind the Masonic Lodge forced the government to park a mobile latrine van behind Jantar Mantar.

The Buddhist monks are relatively new to the neighbourhood. They are here at Jantar Mantar since February 25. Why ? “We are protesting the government’s reluctance to hand over the Bodh Gaya monastry to us. We are monks and deserve to have the control of the place,” says Bhikshu Kundan, from West Bengal. How long do they plan to be here ? “As long as it takes to get justice,” he says with conviction.

There is a strange camaraderie between the protestors. They all have a common one point agenda – the government cannot evict us. The government – NDMC and the police, meanwhile are dithering. “One step forward and two steps backwards,” says a senior New Delhi district police officer. He says that all he has to do is provide the force. “I can provide it any day, any time. Just need one day’s notice. The government has to decide,” he adds.

He points out that the government has yet to choose an alternate place for them to protest. First it was boat club, then it became Jantar Mantar. Probably Red Fort, now,” says an NDMC official. They have given a notice to the squatters. “We have been told to leave by July 10. But we will stay,” says Balwant, another `resident’ of Jantar Mantar.

The only person visibly perturbed is Shukla and others like him who are losing business. And of course, motorists who roll up their windows while driving down Sansad Marg to keep out the stench.