Jan 28, 2021, late evening

Dear Nation,

#FarmersProtest is not a circus, a spectacle for all to go ooh! ah! at a leader of Rakesh Tikait stature to be crying on national media. He is not crying for himself. He is crying because he has taken a stand: support the Sikhs, support the farmers of the nation.

In the 1980s, the narrative was twisted so much that the whole nation believed Sikhs were wrong. After the 1990s, the nation moved at such a breath taking speed that urban India forgot the rural India.

Tikait is crying because he stands with his brothers, with his land. This means so much to me who was growing up in the 1980s and saw the discourse on Sikhs turn from soldiers and farmers to traitors and terrorists. I find a warm embrace in his tears.

Would the nation give this warm embrace to its Sikhs, to its farmers? You know I have been active from Day 1 of the protests, just so we do not have a repeat of the 1980s. Just that much. I was a little boy then, an adult now. Would my understanding of India then and now be the same? Then what is the use of my life? Is it too much to ask? Is it too much to ask that we stand up against injustice and live in this nation?

Ask yourself: what you can do? Amplify the protests, reject the Hindutva propaganda machinery. Why does Tikait have to wait for his village to get him water? He has come to your home Dilli.

Dilli, we saw your big heart to January 26. Now once again please, get out on the streets to preserve the Ghazipur protest site. Get them water. Get them electricity.

Do it! Please.