As Support for Farmers’ Agitation Swells, Is the State Crackdown Backfiring?

Ajoy Ashirwad Mahaprashasta

Quite contrary to what many had anticipated, the state crackdown on farmers’ leaders has breathed a new life into the agitation. Bharatiya Kisan Union leader Rakesh Tikait’s emotional outburst against the Union government’s attempts to remove protestors from the Ghazipur sit-in has become a rallying point for a large section of farmers from western Uttar Pradesh, Haryana and eastern Rajasthan.

Tikait’s video, in which he can be seen in tears while alleging that the Narendra Modi government was conspiring to kill farmers, has gone viral. “This government will destroy farmers, BJP’s goons will come and attack them with the police,” said Tikait in the video, adding that he was ready to face bullets or hang himself at the protest site if demands of farmers are not met.

Thousands of farmers from Delhi/NCR and adjoining regions like Meerut, Baghpat, Bijnor, Muzaffarnagar, Moradabad and Bulandshahr since then have been marching towards the Ghazipur border in support of the protesting farmers. The farmers’ movement, which had appeared demoralised after incidents of violence during the tractor parade on January 26, seems to have found a renewed vigour even as it faces a likely crackdown by the Union government.

Sensing an opportunity to come down heavily on the six-month-long protests against the three controversial farm laws after the farmers’ Republic Day tractor parade turned unruly in parts, the Union government launched a concerted campaign to paint the agitations as illegitimate. A majority of pliant television channels went on an overdrive to dismiss the farmers’ movement as one with a “separatist” agenda.

Within hours of the incident, the Delhi police filed criminal cases of rioting, conspiracy and similar other serious charges against more than 25 leaders who were spearheading the protests peacefully. By Thursday evening, both the Uttar Pradesh and Delhi police closed in on the Ghazipur sit-in site with a huge security build-up in order to arrest Tikait. Section 144 was immediately imposed, and farmers were given an ultimatum to vacate the site. BJP leaders of the area also gathered with their supporters to drive the protesting farmers away.

As tension prevailed at the Delhi-Uttar Pradesh border at Ghazipur, the crowd at the sit-in swelled through the night, with thousands of farmers still making their way to the site through the Delhi-Meerut highway. By Friday afternoon, Ghazipur became one of the largest concentrations of protesting farmers.

As support for him kept swelling, the police was forced to remove its security arrangements late at night. Within hours, the Rashtriya Lok Dal chief Ajit Singh announced his support to the BKU. RLD is said to be mobilising people in support of farmers in the regions of its influence in western UP currently. “It is a matter of life and death for farmers, but do not worry. All have to stay together, united in this – this is Chaudhary Sahab’s (Ajit Singh’s) message,” the RLD vice-president said in a tweet in Hindi. Ajit Singh’s son Jayant Chaudhary, too, reached Ghazipur on Friday morning to spend time with farmers.

The way that Tikait has found support may worry the BJP. Rakesh Tikait, the younger son of the late BKU leader Mahendra Tikait, holds a significant command over the dominant Jats in western UP. In multiple elections after the 2013 Muzaffarnagar riots that drove a deep wedge between Jats and Muslims, both Rakesh and his elder brother Naresh Tikait have clearly been supporting the BJP and its brand of Hindutva politics. Jats are the mainstay of BJP’s influence in western UP, because of which the saffron party has managed to wipe out traditional parties like RLD, Samajwadi Party and Bahujan Samaj Party from the electoral map of the region.

Until now, the farmers’ protests in Ghazipur, where the biggest contingent was from western UP, had been rather muted in comparison to the sit-ins at Tikri and Singhu borders. However, the plan for a late-night crackdown at Ghazipur has now put the western UP farmers at the forefront of the farmers’ struggle against the farm laws. The way events unfolded on Thursday evening can also potentially consolidate western UP farmers against the saffron party. Rakesh Tikait seems to be repeating what his father Mahendra Tikait had done in 1988 when he mobilised lakhs of farmers in the national capital against the then Rajiv Gandhi government on a range of farm-related issues.

The state crackdown may have just gifted Tikait an opportunity to rebuild agrarian politics in western UP – something former Prime Minister Charan Singh has astutely created in the late 1970s and ’80s.

(Courtesy: The Wire.in)

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Day of Clashes With ‘BJP-Sponsored Goons’ Bolsters Farmers’ Resolve

Pawanjot Kaur

A day after the Uttar Pradesh government tried to forcibly remove protesting farmers and their allies from the Ghazipur border, the Delhi Police and Rapid Action Force showed up at the Singhu and the Tikri Border in large numbers as well. According to protesters at the site, the police were joined by people they called “goons sponsored by BJP and RSS”. These people were determined to provoke people on religious grounds and disrupt the harmony of the movement, protesters said.

At the Singhu border, the stages of the Kisan Mazdoor Sangharsh Committee (KMSC) and the Samyukta Kisan Morcha (SKM) are situated at some distance from each other. According to Navjot Kaur, a protester who spoke to The Wire, the stage of the KMSC was attacked and volunteers of the group were brutally injured.

The KMSC is the union which took the Outer Ring Road route on January 26, defying the SKM’s call to stick to routes decided upon in meetings with the Delhi Police. After this, the SKM called for a boycott of the union. But when their stage and volunteers were being attacked, those from the SKM camp helped fight disruptors and took the injured to a safe place.

“This shows how each one in this movement is fighting the government-run propaganda together,” Navjot Kaur said.

Speaking to The Wire, Sarwan Singh Pandher, the chief of the KMSC said: “Our fight is with the government, not amongst ourselves.”

When asked about the call for the boycott of his union, he said: “There are fights between family members as well, things don’t always work out smoothly. But that doesn’t mean that there are no solutions. We will fight the government and stick together to get the three farm laws repealed.”

Navjot Kaur and several other protesters who have taken leading roles are convinced that those who attacked the Singhu site today, January 29, have close ties with the BJP. Kaur shared pictures with The Wire to support her claim. According to her, the wife of a person who was present at the protest site today is a BJP councillor . The person was also photographed walking with Union home minister and former BJP chief Amit Shah at an event. “There’s no doubt that these people are government sponsored people who wanted to cause mayhem,” she said.

A planned human chain

At the Tikri Border, Ajay Pal Natt, a protester and the editor of the farmers’ newspaper Trolley Times who was witness to the disruption told The Wire that the unity of the farmers’ front successfully thwarted the evil designs of the disruptors.

“They seemed like goondas, and had their masks on. They were raising provocative slogans. I think they wanted to damage our stages and tents and threaten us. They wanted to help their favourite lapdog media channels with some good visuals of confrontation but we did not let them,” he said.

“We made a human chain to counter them. We knew they were going to raise slogans which will provoke the Sikhs in the protest, so we got people from Haryana to dominate the human chain. We had done our planning beforehand after all that we saw at Ghazipur and at Singhu,” he added.

The Bharatiya Kisan Union (Ekta-Ugrahan) which is the front union at the Tikri Border‘s 22-km long stretch had planned a tricolour march at the site today. Just before the march, the “goons appeared at the protest site,” Natt said.

“I think they had planned that they would destroy our stages and damage our tents while we would have been busy at the march. But we had already manned all our stages with volunteers. We were prepared,” he said.

The huge gathering of farmers and the arrival of protesters from the Muzaffarnagar mahapanchayat at the Ghazipur border after last night’s stand-off between farmers’ leader Rakesh Tikait and the Uttar Pradesh administration has rejuvenated the movement.

In Punjab, calls are being given in every village, once again, to join the movement. “I have come back to my village to take as many people with me as I can and urge them to join the movement and make history,” Jagroop Singh, the village head of Fatehpur village told The Wire.

‘Communal colour’

In their press statement, the BKU (Ekta-Ugrahan) sharply criticised the provocation by goons at both the Tikri and Singhu Border. The press note read: “The police were a mute spectator when RSS-backed goons attacked the Singhu site. This shows how the RSS and the police are working as one unit to shut down the farmers movement.”

The All India Kisan Sabha also issued a press note condemning the attack on the movement. “AIKS notes that the Sangh Parivar has orchestrated violent groups with active connivance of the Uttar Pradesh and Haryana police at Gazipur, Palwal, Shahjahanpur and is seeking to create a civil strife kind of a situation,” the statement read. The AIKS also issued a call to all democratic sections to come out in support of the farmers.

The SKM, which had been negotiating with the government on the three farm laws, also said that the BJP is trying to give a communal colour to the movement.

“The way the government has unsuccessfully tried to spoil the atmosphere on the Ghazipur border and the Singhu border for the last 3 days proves that the police and BJP-RSS are desperately plotting to kill this movement. Similar unsuccessful attempts were made on the Tikri border too,” their statement read.

The SKM will observe a fast from 9 am to 5 pm at all borders and protest sites across India on January 30, on the martyrdom day of Mahatma Gandhi. The day will be marked as ‘Sadbhavana Diwas’, to spread the values of truth and non-violence, the SKM’s statement noted.

Rahul Gandhi and Smriti Irani

Meanwhile, Congress leader Rahul Gandhi attacked the BJP for forcibly trying to shutdown the farmers’ movement. “Centre must not think that the farmers will go home,” he said.

Gandhi blamed the Ministry of Home Affairs, under Amit Shah, for the clashes that occurred on Republic Day.

“Why were people allowed in the Red Fort? Why weren’t they stopped? Ask the home minister what the objective was of letting those people inside the premises,” Gandhi said. Gandhi also stated that the Congress is supporting the farmers movement.

Congress’s Priyanka Gandhi Vadra also tweeted that “farmers’ trust is the country’s capital”.

Meanwhile, Union minister Smriti Irani accused Rahul Gandhi of “declaring war on the people of India”.

(Courtesy: The Wire.in)

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Three Farmers Explain Why They Rushed to the Ghazipur Protest Even as UP Planned a Crackdown

Vijayta Lalwani

Gursevak barely slept on Thursday night. The 23-year-old Sikh farmer from Bulandshahr, Uttar Pradesh, anxiously watched news videos that showed the swelling number of police personnel at Ghazipur, one of the sites of the two-month-long farmers’ protest on the borders of Delhi. The administration had ordered the eviction of the protest site by midnight.

Another video Gursevak watched showed Bharatiya Kisan Union spokesperson Rakesh Tikait teary-eyed, saying that the two-month-old protest against the three agricultural laws would continue no matter what the authorities did. The message had an immediate impact. In Tikait’s hometown in Sisauli, Muzaffarnagar, slogans expressing support for him began to be chanted.

As a result, on a day when the administration appeared prepared to crack down and clear out the site, hundreds of farmers poured in to Ghazipur. The protestors at this site and other places on highways entering Delhi fear that the new laws open the doors to corporate dominance of the agricultural sector and will undermine their livelihoods.

Most of these farmers came from districts in Western Uttar Pradesh like Muzaffarnagar, Bijnor, Ghaziabad, Bulandshahr, Meerut and Baghpat. Some poured in from Jind, Sonipat, Panipat and Hisar districts in Haryana.

Several said they had come to Delhi to participate in the tractor parade on January 26 and then returned home. That event had become chaotic as some people veered off the route that had agreed to with the authorities and resulted in violence at the Red Fort. It led to the police fililng cases against several farm union leaders,

But this time, the farmers said, they would be in Ghazipur “permanently” until the government repealed the laws.

“It is useless to sit at home now,” said Gursevak, who left Bulandshahr in his car at 5 am on Friday morning and reached Ghazipur three hours later. He came with all six members of his family. Four or five tractors piled with their clothes and rations were en route to the protest site, he said.

“If someone arrests our leader [Rakesh Tikait] then what will happen to us?” he said. “We have locked our homes and we will only leave once the laws have been revoked.”

‘Tikait’s tears are our tears’

On Friday, the Ghazipur flyover was choc-a-block with incoming cars, tractors and trolleys. The area in front of the stage at the protest site was filled with a sea of farmers who had arrived the previous night and on Friday morning.

From the stage, farmers appealed for peace and compared their movement to the battle of the Mahabharata. Most of them said they came because of Tikait’s emotional appeal, reflecting his influence over the Jat community in Haryana and Western Uttar Pradesh. “Rakesh Tikait Zindabad!”, the crowd chanted. Long live Rakesh Tikait. “Kisan Ekta Zindabad.” Long live farmer unity.

“Tikait’s tears are our tears,” said Devender Kumar, a farmer from Bhagpat in Uttar Pradesh who arrived in Ghazipur on Thursday night.

But aside from the support for Tikait, Kumar said there was another reason why farmers were pouring in.

“Haryana and UP have a roti-beti ka rishta,” he said. Haryana and Uttar Pradesh have a very strong bond.“But Punjab is like our elder brother. And this time, our elder brother has been disrespected. We will not tolerate it,” said Kumar, referring to the portrayal of Sikh farmers as “Khalistanis” and “terrorists” by mainstream media over the last few months, and particularly after the events of January 26.

Another farmer concurred. “Sardar birhadhri pe bahut bada akraman tha.” The Sikh community has been attacked, said Amit, a 45-year-old farmer from Bulandshahr. He reached Ghazipur at 6 am.

“But we have understood that this will not work,” he said. You cannot divide and rule in the name of Sikhs, sardars, Jats… till when will they [government] do this tandav.”

Change in scene

The vigour and enthusiasm at display was in stark contrast to the moodat the protest site on January 27. The stage was quiet and the protestors were silent and sombre after the violence that erupted as thousands of farmers participated in a tractor parade on Republic Day.

After protesting outside Delhi for two months in the bitter cold, farmers had entered the national capital from three directions – Singhu in the north, Tikri in the west and Ghazipur in the southeast.

Over a lakh protestors joyously drove tractors and peacefully marched down the three officially sanctioned routes. But a few thousand from Ghazipur broke through the barricades and reached central Delhi while the official Republic Day parade was nearing an end.

As they entered Delhi, clashes erupted at Income Tax Office area. A short distance away, some farmers climbed on top of one of the gates of the Red Fort to unfurl Sikh flags, resulting in more clashes with the police. The incident left 394 policemen injured, according to the Delhi Police. There was no count of how many farmers were hurt but videos showed doctors stitching up their wounds.

Protesters at Ghazipur spent the next two days in a state of anxiety. As the electricity supply was cut, they patrolled the area by their tents at night.

Fearing a police crackdown, farmers who ran a community kitchen at the site packed up and left on Thursday. But hey too returned to the site by Friday evening.

Some of them explained why they had come back to the protest site.

Gursevak, Bulandshahr

Before he came to Ghazipur on Friday, rumours around the protests made him restless. “We thought that the government might arrest Tikait sahab or there may be lathicharge,” he said.

Gursevak had attended the tractor parade but returned to Bulandshahr as violence ensued in the capital. The Nishan Sahib, he said, was sacred but did not belong atop the Red Fort.

“The Nishan Sahib was there on the official Punjab tableau on Republic Day. But these people took it to the wrong place,” he said. “The entire credibility of the protest is being tarnished.”

He alleged that there was a conspiracy to defame the protests and that the government was trying to drive a wedge between farmers on the basis of religion.

“When there is a farmer, then it does not matter if it is Hindu, Sikh or Muslim,” he said. “They [government] are trying to [divide] Hindus and Sikhs by using the Republic Day incident.”

But he was here to stay: “We will not leave even if we have to die.”

Ram Singh Khubru, Sonipat

Ram Singh Khubru left his village in Sonipat at 8.30 am and reached Ghazipur at 12.30 pm. This was the first time he was protest against the farm laws outside his village.

But the video of Tikait in tears had caused immense anger among the Jat community in his village, he said. “Why else would we come here if we were not angry?” asked Khubru, 65. “In the village, we discussed that they were trying to humiliate our community. They were trying to evict us [from here].”

At least 70 other farmers from his village were making their way to Ghazipur, he said. “We are not going to leave from here.”

Aditya Balliyan, Muzaffarnagar

Aditya Balliyan, a sugarcane farmer, arrived in Ghazipur at 11 pm on Thursday. He had left from Sisauli village before Rakesh Tikait’s panchayat began. “We just watched the video and we decided to leave,” he said.

The 20-year-old spent the night at the protest site in the biting cold without electricity or water. Hundreds of farmers had gathered next to the stage restless, while Tikait appealed for peace and affirmed that the protest would continue.

But as the night progressed, members of the Bharatiya Janata Party were at the opposite end of the flyover threatening to evict protestors while the police watched silently, he said. “I cannot tell you what people would have done if something happened to Tikait,” he said.

He would not return home till the government revoked the laws. “We are going to be here permanently,” he said.

(Courtesy: Scroll.in.)