On Saturday, about 300 protesters gathered at a Delhi gurdwara before attempting to reach the locked-down Jantar Mantar site. These students and workers, part of the Cockroach Janta Party, traveled from states like Bihar and Punjab. They hoped the sacred space would protect them as they faced thousands of security forces.
A group of demonstrators used a house of worship known as a gurdwara as a staging ground before their long-shot effort to reach a locked-down protest site in New Delhi.
The young men and women were students, lawyers, farm hands, doctors, engineers -- the largest group of anti-government demonstrators to come anywhere close to a protest site in New Delhi under lockdown on Saturday.
The group of protesters, which would ultimately grow to about 300 people, had gathered the previous night at a Sikh temple, known as a gurdwara, and was hoping that the police would not take action against them in that sacred space.
With India in turmoil over what critics have called a politically motivated revision of the nation's voter rolls, I watched the protesters early on Saturday as they looked for a way to cover the approximately 1,000 yards between the temple and the protest site.
Their goal: to reach the site, known as Jantar Mantar, without clashing with thousands of security forces who were showing zero tolerance for the protests.
Many of the protesters, supporters of the Gen Z movement known as the Cockroach Janta Party, had traveled for hours on trains and buses from far away villages in states like Bihar and Punjab, before finally reaching the marbled courtyard inside the Sri Bangla Sahib gurdwara. Others who lived in New Delhi walked several miles.