Farmers' protest internal issue of India: British envoy to New Delhi ahead of debate in UK parliament

British lawmakers will debate the issue of press freedom and safety of protesters in India next Monday in response to an e-petition

Even as the United Kingdom’s parliament is likely to discuss the issue on March 8 next, the new British High Commissioner in New Delhi, Alex Ellis, on Friday said that the protest against the new agricultural laws was an “internal matter” of India.

“This is something we (the UK) look at, but it is something for India to resolve,” said Ellis, who took over as London’s envoy to New Delhi last month.

The protest by farmers in India is likely to be taken up in the UK parliament on March 8 as an e-petition asking the lawmakers to discuss it had crossed the 1,00,000-signature threshold required for such a debate.

Ellis told journalists in New Delhi that what happened in India often created ripples in the UK, which was now home to a large Indian Diaspora.

“I think the (UK) Foreign Secretary (Dominic Raab) said it when he was here. ‘Your politics is our politics’. In other words, things that happen in India have ripples in the UK partly because you have such a big diaspora community in the UK, so these things get debated,” the British High Commissioner to India said. “Our Prime Minister (Boris Johnson) was asked about it actually in the Prime Minister's Question Time (in Parliament).”

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“This is something that is done by Parliament, the Government has to participate, it has to answer, but it is the parliamentarians, as you expect, raising issues that are a concern to them in their constituencies,” he said, responding to a question on the impact such a discussion in the UK parliament on an “internal matter” of India could have on New Delhi’s ties with London.

“Coming back to the point about your politics is our politics to an extent. My observation more generally is that as the Indian diaspora grows and is very successful in many countries of the world you are going to see more of this,” he said, adding: “I think that as India grows and becomes more international and ever more significant in the world, there will be more debate about Indian issues.”

The agitating farmers, mostly from Punjab, Haryana and western Uttar Pradesh, have been camping at the entry points of the national capital since November 8, demanding the repeal of the three new agricultural laws introduced by Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government and a legal guarantee on Minimum Support Price (MSP) for crops.

Thirty-six members of the UK parliament in early December wrote to British Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab and asked him to take up with the Modi Government the issue of protest by the farmers in India.

The UK MPs, who signed the letter, are mostly from the Labour Party but included some from the Conservative Party and the Scottish National Party. The move was coordinated by Tanmanjit Singh Dhesi, a Sikh representing Slough in Berkshire at the UK House of Commons.

They wrote to the British Foreign Secretary that the new laws introduced by the Modi Government had triggered widespread protests across India as the new legislations failed to ensure protection of the farmers from exploitation and fair prices for their produce.

Dhesi and Preet Kaur Gill, another Sikh member of the UK House of Commons, earlier took to Twitter, criticizing police actions on the agitating farmers.