Dear Friends,
I owe a debt to the land that gave me my blood and my book PANJAB. Towards that aim and against the undemocratic forces who rule the country today and their draconian, unconstitutional Far Lwas, I have been trying to support the farmer protests.
In this context sharing many appearances in media in the last two weeks and some critical Facebook posts.
This one is from two days after the farmers of Haryana and Panjab broke the Haryana police barricades and marched to Delhi.
Facebook: December 1, 2020
Control the Delhi Chalo Narrative:
Today is Day 6 of the famer protests against the draconian Farm laws. There is a protest on ground and there is a battle of narratives in cyber space, in people’s minds. Until now the Hindutva state and its lapdog media has tried everything to derail the protests but have failed pathetically.
The two major tactics were:
1. Khalistan mis-narrative: failed because thousands of pictures circulated showing protesters feeding the police at langars. Including yesterday on Baba Nanak’s birth anniversary. It also failed because if Sikh farmers are protesting with a hidden Khalistan agenda then why are farmers from Haryana, Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh are joining them?
2. Panjab’s rich farmers: failed, again because there are thousands of pictures that show these farmers cooking on roadside, living in bare tents on their trollies. (Two attached) If they are ‘fat cat’ as Bhaktas are calling them – and my cat’s name is Shaheen – it is in spirit. Only 4 per cent of India’s farmers own more than 10 hectares, 25 acres of land. Around 65 per cent Panjab farmers are small and marginal – less than 5 acres and 2.5 acres. Every third Panjab farmer is below BPL. The average earnings of farmers in India is Rs 20,00 per year, Rs 1,700 per month for their entire household from agriculture. You spend that much on one family dinner.
In any such movement we need to realise how strong is the state, how bare minimum are the protesters. Poet Sant Ram Udasi calls it the fight between ‘Delhi’s stone forts and people’s mud fortresses’.
Many many people outside Delhi, wish to offer support to the protesting farmers. But please note, these farmers are Annadatas – feeders of the nation. They have enough food, they have enough warm clothes. What they need is mobile toilets, Odomos because of mosquitoes, and basic medicines. Please direct your efforts in those directions through people you know in Delhi. Do not send money. Repeat: do not send money. Send relief in kind, through your personal trusted sources. Exert a bit fellow Indians, for long you have been used to taking your food for granted.
The next tactic lapdog media will adopt is ‘ordinary people are inconvenienced’.
Now that biryani is replaced by langar even for police, this ‘inconvenience’ was the biggest argument against Shaheen Bagh and the hundreds of anti-CAA/NRC protests around the country it inspired.
To that the simple argument is: you did not squeak when Modi locked you in for 40 days. Now in a few days you are massively inconvenienced? You did not speak when the national economy tumbled to -23.9 per cent growth in which the only positive 3.4 per cent was through agriculture. When crores of workers walked back home. Now you are inconvenienced because farmers who fed you for 60 years are demanding food security for the whole nation?
Get a hold on yourself, stand in solidarity with Annadatas.
Don’t be namak haram!