Sagar Gorkhe, a Dalit accused in the Bhima-Koregaon case, was on the fourth day of his hunger strike at Mumbai’s Taloja Central Jail when his mother Surekha learnt about it, via a WhatsApp forward on her daughter’s mobile. Surekha stopped taking food. Her family and members of the Kabir Kala Manch, a cultural troupe to which Sagar belongs, tried to coax her into eating. She chewed and chewed but not a morsel went down her gullet. “Beta hai, bhooka [hungry] hai,” she explained to them her body’s unwilled revolt.

Sagar went on an indefinite fast on May 20, to protest the denial of basic facilities, like a mosquito net, to jail inmates. He broke it on May 28, after assurances from Kapil Patil, a Maharashtra MLC, that his complaints would be addressed. Sagar’s defiance was like Billy’s in Prison Trilogy, which Joan Baez sang decades ago: “In an Arizona jail there are some who tell the tale how/Billy fought the sergeant for some milk that he demanded/Knowing they’d remain the boss/Knowing he would pay the cost/They saw he was severely reprimanded.”