Now Reading: Abandoned footwear becomes a record of India’s protests and suffering
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Abandoned footwear becomes a record of India’s protests and suffering
Hindustan Times uses abandoned and damaged footwear to trace India’s recent political history, from migrant workers walking home during the 2020 lockdown to farmers facing nails and razor wire on roads into…
The Story in Brief
Hindustan Times uses abandoned and damaged footwear to trace India’s recent political history, from migrant workers walking home during the 2020 lockdown to farmers facing nails and razor wire on roads into Delhi. Shoes left outside banks during demonetisation and at Shaheen Bagh became symbols of citizens’ presence and hardship. The account also recalls protesters’ footwear scattered near Delhi’s Constitution Club, Sansad Marg and Jantar Mantar on July 20, 2026, after they ran from lathi charges and teargas. Through photographs, artworks and literary references, the article presents footwear as both an everyday object and a record of survival, protest and state power.
The Indian Opinion
The lazy reading is that these images are either sentimental art or proof of one side’s villainy. They are neither. A broken slipper cannot explain every policy or protest, but it can show who had to walk, flee, queue or face barriers. The useful question is less what footwear symbolises than what institutions did to the people wearing it. Were roads, policing and relief judged by citizens’ safety, not just administrative convenience?
Source: hindustantimes.com
This story was synthesised by AI from the source linked above.
