Farm, anti-CAA stir: Restoring the majesty of protest

Over a year ago, after visiting the farm protest sites on the borders of Delhi, I wrote a piece published on December 5, 2020, saying that it's hard to see how the government will have any option but to repeal the three farm laws. In size, the protest was huge, in intent, it was determined, and in scale, it was magnificently organised. It was clear there was no backing down a year ago. Yet, it took so long for the Narendra Modi government to accept that they could not defeat the farmers. In the end, because this is a regime that prioritises elections over everything else, it succumbed on the farm laws and conceded most of the farmers demands only because crucial polls are round the corner, most significantly in Uttar Pradesh, that remains the pivot of the BJP's strength. With the farmers now disbanding their settlements on the borders, the ruling party hopes that in west Uttar Pradesh and further afield, the sting would go out of the anti-BJP sentiment being openly expressed by some farming communities.

But meanwhile, the farmers have restored the majesty and legitimacy of protest in our democracy. This was one of the largest peaceful protests in the world in recent times—and the world had taken note of it. It all happened on the borders of India's national capital, the city where two other significant protests have taken place in the last decade. The 2011 Anna Movement that defined itself as anti-corruption began in the Jantar Mantar protest site in central Delhi and became a lightning rod for sentiment against the then Congress-led UPA regime in Delhi. Its political outcomes were the founding of the Aam Admi Party in 2012, whose zone of influence remains restricted to Delhi, and the eventual defeat of the UPA at the hands of the Narendra Modi-led BJP in 2014. Because the credibility of the UPA was in tatters, the edifice would come crumbling down, and after decades of coalitions, India got a simple majority regime.

It's been during these years of single-party dominance that there has been a sustained attempt to delegitimise protest. This was most blatantly visible during the protests that too began in the national capital against the Citizenship (Amendment) Act or CAA that uses religion as a criterion to grant citizenship to refugees. These protests that started in the Muslim-dominated neighbourhood of Shaheen Bagh were very different in scale and size to the farm agitation. They were spread across small sites in the national capital and eventually other parts of the country and structured around swearing allegiance to the Constitution of India. They erupted at the end of 2019 when CAA was rammed through Parliament and continued till the end of March 2020 when the Covid lockdown and the Delhi riots were used to shut them down. The subsequent arrest of Muslim women, students and activists under draconian laws was seen as psychological messaging against protest, particularly those led by minorities.

The farm protests actually began in this environment of lockdown and crushing of protest, yet they sustained and eventually triumphed. A narrative had been created by a section of the media that these protests too were illegitimate, subversive and against the interests of the nation. So when the PM first announced in a television address on November 19 that his regime is taking back the farm laws, a facetious argument was offered by a section of the commentariat that this was done because of deep worry over alienation in Punjab, a border state where Sikhs make up 58 per cent of the population. The implication was that Sikhs could somehow go on the path of militancy again if their protest over economic issues were not heeded. This sort of thinking springs from the subliminal suspicion of any minority group, be they Muslim or Sikh.

But if such delicate concerns about alienating communities were behind the repeal of the farm laws, then the New Delhi regime would not have encouraged depiction in sections of the media of the farmers as anti-nationals who were believers in the separate Sikh homeland of Khalistan. The shameful attempt to defame a genuine people's movement is now part of public record and memory. Indeed, one of the significant achievements of the protests is to get the government to agree to withdraw all criminal cases against farmers in various BJP-ruled states, notably Haryana and Uttar Pradesh (those arrested over the CAA protests in contrast still languish in jail or face a long legal battle).

The farm protests always had resonance beyond Punjab and certainly in parts of Uttar Pradesh where the son of a Union minister allegedly ran over protesting farmers on October 3, killing four. They were also a factor in bypolls in the BJP-ruled Himachal Pradesh on October 30 this year, where the party lost three Assembly seats by large margins and a Lok Sabha seat to the Congress. The case of Himachal Pradesh is instructive in understanding how widespread the anger against the farm policies of the BJP regime was. In the run-up to the polls, there had been a crash in apple prices due to the low rate offered by Adani Agrifresh Limited. Apple growers were enraged, and the Congress raised the issue of seeking a minimum support price for the apple crop to protect farmers from the manipulations of corporate interests.

Indeed, that is what lay at the heart of the farmers' protest. At each of the three protest sites on the Delhi borders, the articulation was always about India being sold off to corporations. Stump speeches would be made, day in and out, for 15 months about people's interests being hawked off to big corporations where men in suits would henceforth run agriculture after making big donations to India's pre-eminent party.

If that was indeed the plan, the farmers of India have certainly derailed it.

(Saba Naqvi is a journalist and an author)

Disclaimer: The views expressed above are the author's own. They do not necessarily reflect the views of DH.