Farmer protest exposes anti Sikh nature of liberal Punjabi Hindus

[Premi5]

 

[Premi5]

 

https://www.tribuneindia.com/news/amritsar/tarn-taran-mla-joins-protesting-farmers-in-front-of-his-house-319530

• AMRITSAR

Tarn Taran MLA joins protesting farmers in front of his house

Farmers threaten to intensify stir if procurement not started

Updated At: Oct 03, 2021 09:18 AM (IST)

MLA Dharambir Agnihotri (extreme right) sits with agitating farmers in Tarn Taran on Saturday

Tarn Taran, October 2

Expressing solidarity with farmers’ demands, Tarn Taran MLA Dharambir Agnihotri joined a dharna staged by farmers under the banner of Sanyukt Kisan Morcha in front of his residence on Saturday.

The farmers started their dharna in the morning against the delay in the procurement of paddy.

When the MLA reached his residence, he joined the protest and sat along with the farmers.

The protesters demanded commencement of paddy procurement without delay, increasing moisture content up to 20 per cent and sought guarantee for procuring the whole crop of the farmers.

The MLA assured the farmers that the government had already decided to instruct its procurement agencies to start procurement from coming Monday.The farmers lifted the dharna on the assurance of the MLA. The morcha leaders presented a memorandum to the MLA and warned that in case the procurement process was not started the farmers would intensify their agitation. 

Bhupinder Singh Pandori, Devinder Sohal were among the others who addressed the farmers on the occasion. 

 

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[Premi5]

https://indianewengland.com/2021/10/india-deports-us-based-sikh-leader-for-supporting-agitating-farmers-badal-seeks-modis-intervention/

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 India New England News

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October 26, 2021

India Deports US-Based Sikh Leader for Supporting Agitating Farmers; Badal seeks Modi’s intervention

 

Chandigarh–Reacting strongly to the IGI airport authorities sending Darshan Singh Dhaliwal back to the US after denying him entry to India, five-time Punjab Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal on Tuesday asked Prime Minister Narendra Modi to “intervene personally and effectively” to get the order vacated.

Badal also requested the PM to personally invite Dhaliwal as a “goodwill gesture which will send a great positive signal to NRIs”.

Dhaliwal was sent back from the Indira Gandhi International airport on October 23-24 night with the authorities saying that this was being done as a punishment for organizing a ‘langar’ or community kitchen for agitating farmers on Delhi borders.

Calling it as an affront to the “sacred practice of ‘langar’ started by the great Guru Sahiban”, Badal also urged Modi to take stern action against the erring officials who “brought a bad name to the country with their action”.

Badal said organising or sponsoring a sacred socio-religious work such as ‘langar’ has always been regarded as one of the highest and noblest duties for every devout follower of Sikhism.

“Doing so for the country’s ‘annadata’ (bread winners) is a noble task that needs to be emulated rather than penalized.”

Calling the on-going agitation of farmers “a national movement”, Badal said there was nothing wrong or illegal in helping those taking part in this civilized, peaceful, democratic movement.

The former Punjab CM also spelt an agenda for agriculture, which, includes revocation of three black laws, taking stakeholders on board before any legislation affecting them, setting up a panel with farmers and farm experts to advise the government on agriculture policies and enlarging of the list of crops for ensured marketing with MSP.

[Premi5]

https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/amritsar/reminder-of-blacklist-of-sikhs-visas-of-12-pio-oci-cancelled/articleshow/87360947.cms

 

 

AMRITSAR/JALANDHAR: The controversial blacklist of person of Indian origin (PIO) participating in protests abroad on farmer issues is likely to swell, with about a dozen living in Canada having already been added to it recently. According to reports, long-term visas of about 12 PIOs in Canada and Overseas Citizens of India (OCI) cardholder have been cancelled for their role in “anti-India protests”.

Sources said the ministry of external affairs had alerted its diplomatic missions to keep watch anti-India activities being spearheaded by some of the overseas Indians. “Many Indians, including students, used offensive language against India during the protests that are in our notice. A dozen such individuals have been blacklisted and they will be repatriated from the Indian airports upon their arrival,” said sources.
Majority of PIOs in Canada are reluctant to talk about the issue on record. “We have our families and relatives in India and if we are blacklisted, we wouldn’t be able to see them ever again,” said a person living in Canada on longterm visa.

Recently, US businessmen Darshan Singh Dhaliwal, who had flown in from Chicago, was sent back after he landed in Delhi, allegedly for his support to farmers’ agitation. Former CM Parkash Singh Badal had written to the Prime Minister, expressing his ‘pain and anguish’ on the treatment meted out to Dhaliwal and his wife upon their arrival on October 23. Dhaliwal is the brother of former Punjab minister Surjit Singh Rakhra and has been supporting langar at farm protest sites.

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https://www.indiatimes.com/news/india/three-women-farmers-killed-by-speeding-truck-near-tikri-border-protest-site-552736.html

Three Women Farmers Killed, Two Injured By Speeding Truck Near Tikri Border Protest Site

2 min read 122 Shares

 

Bobins AbrahamUpdated on Oct 28, 2021, 12:04 IST

In a shocking incident, three women farmers were killed and two others injured after a truck hit them near the Tikri border in Haryana's Bahadurgarh early Thursday.

Twitter

After participating in the farmers' protest against the Centre's agri laws at the Tikri border, the women were returning to their village in Mansa district of Punjab.

The accident took place at Pakoda chowk, where the women were waiting for an autorickshaw to go to Bahadurgarh railway station.

They were sitting on the divider when the speeding truck hit them.

The truck driver fled from the spot after the accident, the police said.

The deceased were identified as Chhinder Kaur (60), Amarjeet Kaur (58) and Gurmail Kaur (60). They belonged to Kheeva Dyaluwala village in Mansa district. The injured persons were rushed to PGI Rohtak, the police said.

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Hundreds of women have been participating in the ongoing farmers' protest on the outskirts of Delhi.

 

[Premi5]

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/22/world/asia/india-farmers-protests-modi.html

Violence Strikes, and India’s Farmers Want You to See It

Saumya Khandelwal for The New York Times

LAKHIMPUR KHERI, India — The jeep plowed into the protesters, sending bodies tumbling, the windshield cracking against bone. The son of a prominent politician was then accused of murder. Rifle-toting security personnel flooded the area. Tempers flared so hotly that local officials shut down the internet.

With that series of events, a yearlong protest by farmers against the Indian government escalated into a dangerous new phase.

Frustrated at what they see as intransigence by Narendra Modi, India’s prime minister, over a series of new agricultural laws, the farmers have taken a more confrontational approach with the country’s top leaders. They are now shadowing top officials of Mr. Modi’s government as they travel and campaign, ensuring their grievances will be difficult to ignore.

The farmers blame government supporters for the jeep incident in early October, which left four of their number dead and killed four others, including a local journalist. But the incident shows that farmers who have camped outside the Indian capital of New Delhi for months are increasingly prepared to take their protest directly to government officials’ doorsteps.

 

 

 

 

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Jagdeep Singh talking about his late father, Nachhattar Singh, in Namdar Purva.Credit...Saumya Khandelwal for The New York Times

 

 

 

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One of the two vehicles set ablaze after a convoy rammed into protesters.Credit...Saumya Khandelwal for The New York Times

“This is now a fight for those who died,” Jagdeep Singh, whose 62-year-old father was among those run over by the jeep, said from the family farm. “And those who are living, this is now a fight for all of us until we die.”

Elsewhere, under the harsh light of an LED lamp in an unfinished brick farmhouse, Ramandeep Kaur wept over the loss of her cousin, Lovepreet Singh, a 19-year-old who was studying English in hopes of getting an education and living in Australia.

“Until they take back those laws,” she said, “the farmers’ agitation will continue.”

The deadly incident took place in a remote corner of Uttar Pradesh, India’s most populous state and a prize in elections to be held early next year. The protesters were shadowing top members of Mr. Modi’s Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party, or B.J.P., as they began to campaign.

The farmers’ goal is not necessarily to defeat the B.J.P., whom polls suggest will cruise to an easy victory. The party’s top elected leader, Yogi Adityanath, is a Hindu monk and protégé of Mr. Modi who is popular with the party’s Hindu base, and the opposition is fragmented. Instead, the farmers aim to draw more national and international attention to their plight.

The protesting farmers think that Mr. Modi’s market-friendly overhaul last year of the nation’s agricultural laws will put them out of business. India’s Supreme Court has suspended implementation, and the government has proposed a series of amendments. The farmers balked, saying they would settle for nothing less than their full repeal.

Further action could take years, given the court’s full docket, but the farmers fear the suspension will be lifted if they let up.

No one disputes that the current system, which incentivizes farmers to grow a huge surplus of grains, needs to be fixed. The protesters fear the speed — the laws were passed in mere weeks — and the breadth of the changes will send the price of crops plunging. Mr. Modi’s government argues that introducing market forces will help fix the system.

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One vehicle in a convoy that mowed down protesters in Lakhimpur Kheri, India. It was subsequently set afire by an angry crowd.Credit...Saumya Khandelwal for The New York Times

 

Violence Strikes, and India’s Farmers Want You to See It

One vehicle in a convoy that mowed down protesters in Lakhimpur Kheri, India. It was subsequently set afire by an angry crowd.Credit...Saumya Khandelwal for The New York Times

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Saumya Khandelwal for The New York Times

 

 

One vehicle in a convoy that mowed down protesters in Lakhimpur Kheri, India. It was subsequently set afire by an angry crowd.Credit...Saumya Khandelwal for The New York Times

 

 

A year on, protesters against the country’s agricultural laws are taking an increasingly confrontational approach with the country’s leaders.

LAKHIMPUR KHERI, India — The jeep plowed into the protesters, sending bodies tumbling, the windshield cracking against bone. The son of a prominent politician was then accused of murder. Rifle-toting security personnel flooded the area. Tempers flared so hotly that local officials shut down the internet.

With that series of events, a yearlong protest by farmers against the Indian government escalated into a dangerous new phase.

Frustrated at what they see as intransigence by Narendra Modi, India’s prime minister, over a series of new agricultural laws, the farmers have taken a more confrontational approach with the country’s top leaders. They are now shadowing top officials of Mr. Modi’s government as they travel and campaign, ensuring their grievances will be difficult to ignore.

 

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The farmers blame government supporters for the jeep incident in early October, which left four of their number dead and killed four others, including a local journalist. But the incident shows that farmers who have camped outside the Indian capital of New Delhi for months are increasingly prepared to take their protest directly to government officials’ doorsteps.

 

 

 

 

Image

Jagdeep Singh talking about his late father, Nachhattar Singh, in Namdar Purva.Credit...Saumya Khandelwal for The New York Times

 

 

 

Image

 

One of the two vehicles set ablaze after a convoy rammed into protesters.Credit...Saumya Khandelwal for The New York Times

“This is now a fight for those who died,” Jagdeep Singh, whose 62-year-old father was among those run over by the jeep, said from the family farm. “And those who are living, this is now a fight for all of us until we die.”

Elsewhere, under the harsh light of an LED lamp in an unfinished brick farmhouse, Ramandeep Kaur wept over the loss of her cousin, Lovepreet Singh, a 19-year-old who was studying English in hopes of getting an education and living in Australia.

 

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Continue reading the main story

 

“Until they take back those laws,” she said, “the farmers’ agitation will continue.”

The deadly incident took place in a remote corner of Uttar Pradesh, India’s most populous state and a prize in elections to be held early next year. The protesters were shadowing top members of Mr. Modi’s Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party, or B.J.P., as they began to campaign.

The farmers’ goal is not necessarily to defeat the B.J.P., whom polls suggest will cruise to an easy victory. The party’s top elected leader, Yogi Adityanath, is a Hindu monk and protégé of Mr. Modi who is popular with the party’s Hindu base, and the opposition is fragmented. Instead, the farmers aim to draw more national and international attention to their plight.

The protesting farmers think that Mr. Modi’s market-friendly overhaul last year of the nation’s agricultural laws will put them out of business. India’s Supreme Court has suspended implementation, and the government has proposed a series of amendments. The farmers balked, saying they would settle for nothing less than their full repeal.

Further action could take years, given the court’s full docket, but the farmers fear the suspension will be lifted if they let up.

No one disputes that the current system, which incentivizes farmers to grow a huge surplus of grains, needs to be fixed. The protesters fear the speed — the laws were passed in mere weeks — and the breadth of the changes will send the price of crops plunging. Mr. Modi’s government argues that introducing market forces will help fix the system.

 

 

 

 

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Mr. Modi has responded to the protesters by waiting them out, a strategy apparently driven by the calculation that their movement does not represent a coherent political threat. Many of the protesters come from India’s minority Sikh community, while the B.J.P. draws its political power from rallying the country’s Hindu majority.

“‘Farmers’ is not a category that the B.J.P. uses,” said Gilles Verniers, a political science professor at Ashoka University. “They talk about the poor and they speak the language of caste and obviously the language of religion.”

Farmers have sought to get not only the B.J.P.’s attention, but the attention of the nation. A series of confrontations with B.J.P. leaders since September may not sway the election in Uttar Pradesh, but it could revive support across India and even globally for a protest movement that appeared to have been running out of steam, Mr. Verniers said.

Though the protests have been largely peaceful, they have spurred occasional bouts of violence. In January protesters and the police clashed after some farmers drove their tractors into New Delhi. Protest leaders have distanced themselves from a shocking incident earlier this month at the farmer protest camp outside New Delhi, in which a group from a Sikh warrior sect killed and cut off the hand of a lower-caste Sikh, a Dalit, who they accused of desecrating a holy book.

The B.J.P. needs the campaign in Uttar Pradesh to go without a hitch, despite the party’s lead in the polls. The party is trying to bounce back from the coronavirus’s second wave, which hit after Mr. Modi declared victory over the pandemic and showed the country’s lack of preparedness. Uttar Pradesh was hit particularly hard, with bodies of suspected victims washing up on the banks of India’s sacred Ganges River.

 

 

 

 

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Police officers standing guard outside the house of Raman Kashyap, a journalist who was killed in the violence in Lakhimpur Kheri.Credit...Saumya Khandelwal for The New York Times

 

While Mr. Modi, normally voluble, has said little about the farmers, other leaders in his party have embraced a language of force to rally supporters against them.

In Haryana, a state neighboring Uttar Pradesh that is also governed by the B.J.P., a local official was captured on video ordering the police to use violence to break up one gathering. Farmers responded by breaking through police barricades outside a government office. The tensions eased only after the government agreed to investigate the official’s conduct.

A week later, in Uttar Pradesh, Rakesh Tikait, a 59-year-old farm union leader, rallied tens of thousands of farmers, declaring an all-out campaign against the B.J.P.

Earlier this month, farmers gathered again in Haryana and surrounded the site of a planned visit by the state’s top elected official, forcing him to cancel.

Days before the incident in Uttar Pradesh, Ajay Mishra, Mr. Modi’s junior minister of home affairs, warned farmers in a speech to “behave, or we will teach you how to behave. It will take just two minutes.”

Outraged, a group of farmers stood on a one-lane road in the village of Tikunia, carrying black flags they planned to wave at Mr. Mishra, who was visiting his constituency with his son, Ashish Mishra, and other party members.

Farmers protested by driving their tractors toward New Delhi in January.Credit...Dinesh Joshi/Associated Press

 

 

 

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Rakesh Tikait, a leader of the protesting farmers and spokesman for the Bhartiya Kisan Union, met with supporters in February to discuss the farm reforms proposed by India’s government.Credit...Saumya Khandelwal for The New York Times

The farmers received word that Mr. Mishra’s plans had changed and started to disperse when Ashish Mishra’s convoy came hurtling at them from behind, according to video footage and police officials. After the jeep rammed into the crowd, the farmers attacked the convoy with bamboo sticks and set two of the vehicles ablaze. By the end of the day, eight people were dead, including three people in the convoy.

The farmers claim that they saw Ashish Mishra, known to villagers as Monu, in the convoy and blamed him for the incident. The minister has denied his family’s involvement. The police arrested Ashish Mishra, saying he failed to cooperate with the investigation, along with nine others in the murder case.

The victims’ families said they have little hope of justice. “Long live Monu,” village walls proclaimed in graffiti next to a brightly painted lotus flower, the B.J.P. symbol. The Mishra family home, a sprawling compound hidden behind high walls and flowering bougainvillea, hovers over shanties.

Opposition leaders have tried to capitalize on the moment, but many were prevented or delayed from reaching the victims’ families. Some, including Priyanka Gandhi Vadra, a leader of the Congress party, were detained.

“All I can say is if, as a nation, we have a conscience,” she said, “then we cannot forget this.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Jassu]

I've been wondering long and hard about this: what will happen when the halt by the Supreme Court is lifted and the central government goes ahead with the laws anyway? Will there be mass riots and attacks? I worry about our farmers. They're definitely not going down without a fight.

Let's be real though, pro-Khalistan sentiment has increased by a lot during this whole ordeal. What this farmers' protest has unearthed is the knowledge what a lot of Hindus (both liberal & rightwing types) think about Sikhs and Punjab. I don't think things will be looking good in the future.

[Premi5]

 

 

[Jacfsing2]

8 hours ago, Premi5 said:

 

 

Sometimes pick something that’s relevant to the actual conversation.