Photo Essays
Albums from the archive, in the order the movement unfolded.
The Lighthouse is open to writers. Album 011 came from a reader — the first that did, and the reason we asked. We would like it not to be the last, especially from people who were actually there. 800 to 1,600 words, written from the photographs. What we're looking for · Send us an essay
The Streets Speak: Wit as Witness
Hand-lettered cardboard, borrowed cartoons, and one-line jokes sharp enough to cut through a news cycle — how ordinary people design their dissent.
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Rain at Jantar Mantar
On 20 July 2026, students from across India gathered in the Delhi monsoon before marching on Parliament. Photographs by Sumita Roy Dutta.
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We Won: The Resignation
The education minister resigned, and the streets that demanded it turned, for one evening, into a festival — told through the archive's photographs.
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Sealdah to Esplanade
24 July 2026: Kolkata marches against the paper leak carrying memes, and the police meet the crowd at Dorina Crossing. The minister resigned the next day.
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Day Eight at Freedom Park
Bengaluru got the resignation it had been asking for, spent an afternoon celebrating, and then asked for considerably more.
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Five Thousand at Shivaji Park
24 July 2026: Mumbai's turn, with the tricolour, the national anthem, and a drawing nobody was meant to forget.
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Twenty-Six Days
A pavement outside Parliament, a party named after an insult, and a hunger strike that outlasted the minister it was aimed at.
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Know Your Parasites
What the placards were actually written in — the exam form, the group chat, and one insult that got taken and kept.
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Ek Baap Ka Hoga Toh
A minister in a pink hair bow, a packet of nappies, and a placard about daddy issues. What the students were really accusing the state of.
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Ka Cut Gaya
Three scripts, four languages, and a pun that only works if you can read two of them at once. What the protest chose to write in.
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Mitaoge To Kal Phir Aayenge
Within a day of the protests being called off, the walls around Jantar Mantar were painted over. One message had already been sprayed across an earlier erasure.
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Who They Brought With Them
Savitribai Phule, Ambedkar, Bhagat Singh and a printed copy of the Constitution, held above a crowd that had come about a question paper.
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Frands
Three cities printed the same photograph under the same word. Then two months of placards addressed to somebody who did not reply.
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