With a flag fluttering, I drove to the protests

Sangeet Toor, journalist and a farmer, was in the thick of 2020 farmers' movement for a full year. The agitation eventually forced the Modi government to repeal its farm laws. This is what it looked like from the inside.

In June 2020, my father hoisted the Jamhoori Kisan Sabha (a farmers’ union) flag on the terrace of our house in Ludhiana. “This is the only way we can protest because of Covid,” he said.

From upstairs, I could not spot another flag as far as I could see. He later participated in the July 27 tractor march, the August 8 ‘Corporations Leave India’ strike, the September 15 protest rally in Barnala and then the September 25 strike. This strike was the first major one attended by farmers and their families during Covid. 

Confined indoors

In 2020, the ruling BJP government drafted and tabled various bills in the parliament. These included bills covering farming, labour, power supply and education. People were largely confined to their homes because of the pandemic. The government had passed the bills on September 17, 2020. These are state subjects, yet none of the state governments or other stakeholders were consulted.

The All India Kisan Sangharsh Coordination Committee (AIKSCC) called the protests. While the initial AIKSCC alliance had about 10 unions, after September 17, the numbers doubled. On September 20, the bills were passed in the Rajya Sabha, and signed by the President on September 27. By September 25, the alliance grew three times within Punjab. 

I had not planned to attend any rally but the hype convinced me to participate. On September 25, my parents tied the Jamhoori Kisan Sabha flag to the front of their car and asked me to do the driving. 

Our first stop was Kila Raipur near Ludhiana. Along the way, villagers had set up tents, guiding people to various rallies. They let the cars with union flags pass through quickly. 

When we reached Kila Raipur, we came upon a stage surrounded by a sparse crowd. Turned out it was one of the parallel stages set up by a political party. We drove a little further and reached our destination — a stage set up under an old banyan tree on a main road. The large gathering was surrounded by police personnel. 

A round of speeches began. The three farm bills and the labour bills were explained in detail, as were their implications for farmers and labourers. My parents got a chance to speak on stage. My father elaborated on what the farm ordinances were. My mother emphasised the need for women to join the movement. Soon, it was time to leave.

Policeman’s anxiety

As I left the crowd to get my car, a policeman approached me. He wanted me to explain the farm bills to him. The concern on his face was not that of a policeman but of a common citizen worried about his agricultural business. He owned a small patch of land. It was not enough to make a decent income but nonetheless it meant security. 

Our next stop was Raikot. Here too the gathering was huge.

In almost every speech I heard, non-violence remained a recurrent theme. The instructions were in-depth and elaborate. “They will infiltrate the protests and instigate violence. You won’t be able to differentiate between a genuine protester and a state agent. Be clever. As soon as someone instigates violence, you should know. Remain peaceful in every situation,” is what I would often hear at these speeches. 

Violence would mean failure of the protests and consequently implementation of the three farm laws. It had to be avoided at all costs.

These speeches had historical learning embedded in them. Under the BJP regime, minority communities are conveniently othered and accused of being anti-India. More so if the people’s history has a dark chapter. Punjab is an easy target because of the Khalistan movement of the 1980s. 

I was not surprised when, during the Delhi Chalo march in November, the protesters were labelled Khalistani in the national media. Videos and pictures of protesters being brutalised made the rounds during their march to Delhi. The same evening, other pictures surfaced of the brutalised people serving langar to hungry uniformed men. Every tractor carried a banner, ‘I am not a Khalistani’. When the protesters settled down on the borders of Delhi, youth were given night duty of surveying the camps. The volunteers worked in shifts, quelling any tensions arising from within or outside. 

Just before R-Day

During the days and nights preceding the Republic Day farmer parade, a tractor mounted with a loudspeaker reminded the protesters to be wary of any strangers. “They will turn to violence tomorrow in our name. Don’t give them space in your trolley (trailer).” 

On the day of the parade, when most protesters couldn’t complete the assigned route and only a handful reached the Red Fort, I talked to a middle-aged man whose eyes were red from either tear gas or tears. He clung to his union flag. I asked why he was sad and his eyes welled up. “They raised the wrong flag at the Red Fort,” he responded.

On January 27, the disappointment was apparent throughout the camp. Religion was not the cause they were fighting for, land was. Farming and livelihood were the cause. People were leaving the camp in droves. They didn’t want their time and effort to be lost on anything unrelated to land and yield. That day, I returned home, only to return after an emotional call by Rakesh Takait, who led the 2020-2021 protests. 

The protest camps were deserted by then. As soon as the water and electricity supply shut down and rumours of a state crackdown on the protest sites grew, more and more protesters started to return. On top of the disappointment, was our collective failure. We as a people did not want to fail. This sentiment resonated across the protest sites. “Not again. If we don’t rise against our own differences, we will be pushed back into the Punjab of the ’80s,” said a protester from Tarn Taran Sahib, camping at Singhu.

A protest guide

After September 2020, the 30 farm unions drafted a common minimum programme on how the protests would be conducted. It included occupying the train stations, toll plazas, Reliance stores and gas stations, Adani silos and dry ports. 

I found it satisfying that the roads built with taxpayer money, and the tolls every few kilometres, had turned into convenient protest sites. Every toll plaza in Punjab became a protest site. Every Reliance store and petrol bunk became a protest site.

Their easy accessibility allowed women to participate. More and more women felt emboldened to go to the nearest protest sites to listen to the speeches all day long.

Youth handled the logistics. They transported the supplies needed for the permanent sit-in. This prepared the protesters for the long haul on Delhi’s borders. 

Having travelled across Punjab during October, I learnt in detail about farmers’ and labourers’ problems. During my initial visits, women would point towards the men when asked questions. However, with what they had grasped after a month of regular visits to the toll plazas, they could hold their own. By the time they reached Delhi, they featured on the front page of a prominent national daily.

Because of Covid-19, the youth of Punjab were not attending college or university. The ones who had graduated were grappling with unemployment. They actively participated in the protests. 

Roping in singers

Union leaders, who mostly make long and winding speeches, got creative to tap into the energy of the youth. They found the key to their heart — Punjabi singers. Several rounds of meetings were held between the union leaders and singers. Some singers put their commercial interests aside and decided to help out. 

Kanwar Grewal and Harf Cheema took the lead. Their music and songs drove youth to the Delhi borders. One of the songs released in December 2020, which made my eyes well up, reminded us of the sacrifice and shahaadat (martyrdom) of Guru Teg Bahadur and Guru Gobind Singh. There was no way anyone could stay away from the borders after listening to those tunes. By early January, heading to the protest sites became more of a pilgrimage. 

History inspiration

I reached Fatehgarh Sahib on the morning of November 26, 2020, to talk to a few women who had come all the way from Amritsar on a tractor trolley. The city was packed with tractor trolleys during the early morning hours. 

Protesters coming in from the west end of Punjab had started their journey a day in advance. They took refuge at the historical Gurudwara Shri Fatehgarh Sahib anticipating the long journey ahead. I accompanied the women protesters to the gurudwara. The hall was full of farmers seeking blessings. Guru Gobind Singh’s two younger sons were martyred here. 

During the first week of protests, I talked to Gurmail Kaur from Gharachon before she left for the Delhi Chalo march. She became the first woman to die in the protests. In the course of the protests, over 600 farmers reportedly died from the cold, from heart attacks, and from accidents. 

In December, a plethora of pictures documented the farmers spending chilly days and nights in the open. On the inside, the long days were spent retelling the story of the two younger sons of Guru Gobind Singh, imprisoned in a place called Thanda Burj in December 1704. Their martyrdom on December 26, 1704 is marked by a Sikh pilgrimage to Fatehgarh Sahib. It is called Shaheedi Jor Mela. During the farmers’ movement, this pilgrimage extended in time and place. 

During my stay at the Singhu border protest, I would walk around and talk to the people, come back to the trolley, and write notes. One day, I complained about the cold and how I was unable to type. This led to a discussion on the challenges faced by those working the fields. Two farmers shared their experiences. Sowing wheat in November requires them to wake up early every day in cold December. In waist-deep frozen water, they block the flow from one field and divert it to another.

Original protest sites

National and international media focused heavily on the protests on the borders of Delhi. In reality, the original protests at toll plazas, Reliance stores and petrol bunks, Adani silos and dry ports continued. The villagers were assigned days for remaining at local protests and for heading to Delhi’s borders. This way, both protest sites remained alive and kicking. 

Women not ‘allowed’ to go to the Delhi protests organised their own marches. One such march was held in Kila Raipur where, before the Sanyukt Kisan Morcha’s (SKM) tractor march, the women organised another — the “learn to drive a tractor” march. About 40 women practised in the empty grain market on their family tractors. They announced a confidence building march a week later. It saw them marching through the villages and small towns. They eventually participated in the tractor procession. A few women later began helping out their husbands and sons in the fields.

The local protest sites were a great success. They won the hearts of the common, urban people since toll taxes are a huge drain on their income. And in August 2020, Adani’s Multimodal Logistics Park in Ludhiana was shut down after a long sit-in protest under the banner of one of the farmers’ unions. Women took turns in running this site three nights of the week as well. 

Final victory

On November 19, 2021, the three farm laws were repealed. Prime Minister Narendra Modi made the announcement once the decision was taken. Farmers had earlier said, “Do you think he will take the laws back? People say that it is unlike him to budge.” 

A major element of this win was the disintegration of the authoritarian image of the current regime. When the victory procession was on its way back, people came out to welcome their fellow citizens with flower garlands, sweets and slogans.

In the Punjab assembly elections held in March 2022, in the wake of this movement, two legacy parties were wiped out, with 92 of 117 seats being won by the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP). At the national level, SKM fulfilled the role of an effective opposition party to the ruling BJP government for over a year. 

The protesters lived for months on the banks of filthy streams, rivulets and ponds at Singhu and Tikri. In the subsequent protests in Punjab, following the repeal of the three laws, the environmental cause took centre stage. 

Farmers protested at a large liquor distillery in Jira near Ferozepur. It had been causing land, air and water pollution. The distillery had zero waste management in place and had started to drill into the water table. Nearby villages started getting brown-hued water from the pumps. One year after the sit-in protests, the Bhagwant Mann government announced the closure of the factory. 

In another incident, the AAP government planned a textile plant in Mattewara Jungle near Ludhiana, threatening its biodiversity. After months of protests, people forced the government to scrap this textile park.

Another round of farmer protests began in February 2024 demanding guaranteed Minimum Support Price, justice for the victims of the Lakhimpur Kheri car rummaging violence, a debt waiver and more. The protesters were met with greater repression and not allowed to pass through Punjab/Haryana borders. Since then, they are camped at Shambu border.

Nevertheless, the original movement culminated in reinstating faith in the political power of the organised masses.