How long could you go without eating?
We’ve all heard about hunger strikes, but if the cause was great enough would we do one? I asked my doctor about how it might go. “Most of us have skipped breakfast or worked through lunch,” he said. “By dinner you’re hungry and ready to eat almost anything. After a week without food, your body begins using its own muscles for energy. Walking becomes harder. You feel weak. Thinking becomes slower. As your doctor, I won’t be asking you if you’re hungry, I’ll be too worried about whether your body can survive.”
I don’t know if I could do that. That is why I kept thinking about Sonam Wangchuk.
Wangchuk grew up in Ladakh, a high mountain region in northern India. As a boy, he struggled in school because lessons were taught in a language he barely understood. Instead of giving up, he became an engineer and later helped redesign schools so children could learn in ways that made more sense. He also became known for building giant towers of ice that slowly melt in the spring, giving mountain farmers water when they need it most. For years he was known as someone who solved problems with ideas instead of anger.
This summer, he chose a different kind of solution.
Wangchuk began a hunger strike to protest government policies affecting Ladakh. He has argued that the region needs stronger environmental protections and greater local control over decisions that affect its land and people. The Indian government has defended its policies, and many of the political questions remain the subject of public debate. What is not debated is the cost Wangchuk accepted. As the weeks passed without food, doctors warned that his health had become dangerous. Police eventually took him to a hospital, saying they were trying to save his life. Wangchuk wanted to continue the fast.
America has seen this kind of courage before.
When Alice Paul fought for women’s right to vote, she refused food while in prison. Officials force-fed her through tubes. Many Americans were shocked when they learned what had happened.
Years later, César Chávez stopped eating for twenty-five days during the fight to improve conditions for farmworkers. He believed that if he asked others to sacrifice, he should be willing to suffer first.
These people disagreed about many things, but they shared one belief. Before asking others to pay a price, they paid one themselves.
That may be why hunger strikes are so difficult for governments to answer. A person who refuses food is not attacking anyone. Yet doing nothing can lead to tragedy, while stepping in can take away a person’s freedom to choose. Democracies have struggled with that problem for a long time.
I don’t know whether Sonam Wangchuk’s protest will change anything. I don’t know whether history will remember his fast or whether his goals will be achieved.
I do know this.
Before I read about him, I had never seriously asked myself what I believed strongly enough to stop eating for.
Most of us will never face that choice. Our tests are usually much smaller. We may have to tell the truth when it could cost us a job, defend someone everyone else has turned against, or refuse to do something we know is wrong. Those moments rarely make headlines, but they show us what we truly believe.
Whether Sonam Wangchuk is right is for each of us to decide.
The harder question is, what would we have to believe before we pushed away our next meal?