Explained: How the Punjabi diaspora is influencing farmer agitation

The agitation is a massive alliance of unions - as many as 472 unions are associated with the movement, of which 32 are leading it upfront, and at least 40 involved in the talks with the governments

On the last day of 2020, farmers protesting on Delhi’s borders advised all hues of guests who had gathered there, ostensibly to express solidarity, to take their celebratory panache elsewhere.

Instead, the protesting farmers ended 2020 by remembering as many as 50 of their comrades — “martyrs” to their cause — who lost their lives during the agitation that entered its 40th day on Delhi’s borders on Monday. They also resolved to continue their agitation for the next few weeks, if not months or even years. It is rare for participants of a movement of this scale to know they aren’t merely fighting for the repeal of the Centre’s three farm laws.

A lot many among them understand they are in the midst of an “existential battle” to halt the complete collapse of their way of life — one that many before them have fought and lost against a decaying but creeping urbanization, the takeover of agriculture by big corporates, threats of ecological destruction, and to preserve food democracy.

Each passing day of their satyagraha, elderly women and men sitting in the bitter cold away from their homes and hearths, as even the younger lot among the farmers would tell you, increases their moral strength to take on the government at the Centre that seems unwilling to heed them.

“This protest is a culmination of decades of crises in Indian agriculture. Punjab, as the land of the green revolution, has faced the brunt of this with lands becoming toxic, increasing incidence of cancer, a depleting water table, indebtedness, and government policies that failed to promote diversification of crops,” surmises author and entrepreneur Amaan Bali in his popular podcasts.

After 100-days of protests in Punjab and 40-days on the outskirts of Delhi, younger farmers are losing patience with a government that they believe is negotiating in bad faith by indulging in meandering negotiations, trying to split them or holding parallel meetings with farm unions of questionable antecedents or even forcing the rank and file of the protestors to get provoked into violence.

It is a massive alliance of unions – as many as 472 unions are associated with the movement, of which 32 are leading it upfront, and at least 40 involved in the talks with the governments. Each of these unions represents thousands of farmers, a majority of them small farmers.

At the protest sites, the discussions are imbued with a sense of the history of the Jats, not just the Sikhs but their Hindu brethren as well, of the last three centuries. There are screenings of films and documentaries on the Sikh and Jat history every evening, and also the previous farmer struggles in north-western India, especially the ones that took place in 1907 and again those after India attained independence. In the morning, bare-chested Sikh and other youths take out march pasts in the bitter cold.

“What is understood to a lesser degree is the influence of the Punjabi diaspora on the movement, and not just with material support,” says activist and writer Ravinder Singh.

The first of the Punjabi farmers landed in North America over a century back, and witnessed first-hand, especially since the 1970s, how rural life transformed there as small farmers were edged out because of increasing indebtedness. They see in the three farm laws an attempt to replicate that “failed” model in India as well. There is also a good understanding among the leadership of the urban bias in policymaking in India.

For example, according to one estimate, only Rs 45 crore has been spent on crop diversification by governments in the last three years, while they opened purse strings for construction of dozens of flyovers, statues and the proposed central vista in the national capital.

Farmers, particularly the younger lot, are also savvier in countering the government messaging in the mainstream newspapers and television channels against the movement, and have taken to social media. Here again, the diaspora has played a key role in becoming a force multiplier.

Farmer leader Balbir Singh Rajewal says the three laws are also unconstitutional as the Centre ventured into a subject that belongs to the state list.

The songs that blare at the protest sites also reflect the trust deficit, and a deep conviction that the battle is about the ownership of land. Take for example songs such as Jatta takda hoja, or Jatts get strong, by Punjabi singer Jas Bajwa, which premiered in mid-September, became an anthem for the protestors in the initial weeks. “Centre di sarkar rahi zimindaaran layi gaddar (the government at the Centre has always betrayed the cause of landlords/farmers),” sang Bajwa, who has addressed innumerable protest rallies in Punjab and Haryana.

The lines resonate with more than three centuries of Punjab’s trust deficit with the throne of Delhi, from the days of Emperor Aurangzeb and subsequent Mughal rulers, to the British raj and the rule of former prime minister Indira Gandhi.

The song speaks of the three central farm laws as a conspiracy to allow the entry of the private sector in agriculture, and reduce farmers to the state of labourers.

The PM, and sundry experts trying to convince farmers otherwise, are at least three months late. The fear of a couple of big private companies usurping their lands has refreshed the historical memories of the ‘Company Raj’ of the English East India Company, and that of a similar siege of Delhi in 1857.

The farmers have taken to boycotting the products of certain companies, and disconnecting power supply to the towers of a cellular phone company in Punjab, a border state.   

But there is more. Farmers, particularly the younger ones, have taken to question the freeze on cross border trade with Pakistan at the Attari-Wagah border check post.

A revolution is taking place in the minds of the farmers of the region. All that remains is for the government to acknowledge it and address it with empathy instead of some misplaced 'iron hand'.