Sonam Wangchuk on why a fast works even when the people in power don't care about you | NL interview

This is a great tool, a great path of Satyagraha that Mahatma Gandhi showed. And each time I sit on such fasts, I learn more. Because not only could I have thought, nothing is happening, I should leave it. Everybody who visited me, everybody, the tallest leaders to youngest people would say, Sir, please don't do it. Break your fast. These are not the people who listen to Anshans and fasts. Even British would listen, but these are not the kind who would bother about you. And I didn't clearly understand a dimension of fasts at that time, which I understood later, that it's actually not to do with you and the rulers or the leaders in the government. It's not their sensitivity or apathy that decides whether they listen to you or not. It actually your hunger and your suffering is in communication not with the leaders who can ignore and who can let you die it more in communication with the people of the nation who they cannot ignore so it is it works very differently through a in indirect rebound rather than direct to the leaders so as days grew and my health conditions were worsening it moved the people who moved the leaders because they may not have cared about me but they cared about the people who would keep them in their seats or bring them down so it was not my health condition that made them maybe some leaders yes you know in every um setup there are all kinds of people i'm sure there are good people in the ruling party also who genuinely felt for me but those who were tough and could have let me die were not moved by my condition they were moved by their own health moved by possibilities about their own health when they saw people moved and ready to do anything