01-02-2021 The Asian Independent

22 01-02-2021 to 15-02-2021 NEWS
www.theasianindependent.co.uk
In Solidarity with the Farmers Movement
We call out the State Conspiracy Against the People of India, We Condemn
the Governments Attempts to Criminalize Legitimate Protest
Today at the Press Club in Delhi a
group of senior academics, activists
and lawyers, stood in support of the
on-going farmers movement, to
strongly condemn the government s
attempt to criminalize and break a
legitimate people s movement.
Despite the clear, unequivocal condemnation
by farmers leaders, of any
violence on January 26, the government
has activated the criminal justice
machinery to lodge FIRs against them
under a range of criminal laws,
including shockingly an anti-terror
law, the UAPA. This is now becoming
a familiar playbook of the ruling
establishment, last seen in the winter
of 2019, when the equal citizenship
movement against the CAA-NRC,
and its young leadership, was similarly
vilified, terrorized, charged under
UAPA, and arrested. The speakers
demanded an unconditional withdrawal
of these motivated FIRs
against the leadership of the farmers
movement, calling it a brazen misuse
of the police and the law to silence
people s legitimate democratic
expression.
The fake State narrative of the
farmers movement as a violent conspiracy
against India, is an exact
copy-paste of the narrative we saw
last year around the anti-CAA movement,
once again being spun to try
and tar and supress the democratic
Mission 2022, U.P.
Bahujan Samaj Party or
Aazad Samaj Party
Uttar Pradesh elections will be held in 2022.
After facing several defeats will Bahujan Politics change its
course or keep going
downhill ? After Aazad
Samaj Party and its
leader, Advocate Chandra
Shekhar s announcement
of fighting elections, this
question has resurfaced.
To make the Bahujan
Samaj ruler of the country,
Babasaheb Ambedkar
formed RPI, which unfortunately failed after him. Second major
attempt was made by Saheb Kanshi Ram on 14th April, 1984
through BSP. After he passed away, it met the same fate as RPI.
Now, Advocate Chandra Shekhar is on a new endeavour with ASP.
After RPI and BSP will ASP provide alternative to Bahujan
Politics ?
There are different views on this.
According to some, ASP s decision to fight elections will further
split Bahujan Samaj, which is already divided between SP-
BSP in Uttar Pradesh.
Advocate Chandra Shekhar is accused of being in a haste. Some
suggest, that he should stick to social movements and leave the
arena of politics to BSP.
His struggle for Bahujan Samaj is getting recognition. Will it
get converted to votes, people are apprehensive.
But if ASP doesn t fight elections, will BSP be able to stop
RSS-BJP in U.P ?
In 2017, when BSP fought alone; RSS-BJP swept the U.P elections.
BSP won only 19 out of 403 MLAs.
In 2019, it allied with Samajwadi Party but they still won 62 out
of 80 MPs. So, whether BSP fights 2022 elections alone or in
alliance; won t be able to stop RSS-BJP.
In all this political upheaval, the majority Bahujan Samaj with
85% population is pushed to the margins; while the minority
Savarn Samaj(Brahmin, Baniya, Thakur) with only 15% population
has seized power. According to some, the sudden rise of RSS-
BJP is not due to the failure of Bahujan parties and leaders but
hacking of EVM machines. But the real reason for RSS-BJP s success
is its grassroot leaders; while almost all opposition parties are
caught in nepotism. Their Prince-Princess have become a laughing
stock against RSS-BJP cadres. Whether elections are held in States
or at the Centre today are fought more on the image of leaders
than parties. The more powerful and charismatic leader any community
has, the more chances it has of forming government.
In these circumstances, will Bahujan Samaj head towards
establishing a new political outfit through ASP and Advocate
Chandra Shekhar ? Only 2022 election results can answer this.
For now Bahujan Politics, which is caught in a dilemma for
sometime, seems to be making an effort to finally come out of it.
– Satvinder Manakh
Attempt to vilify and intimidate the
farmers movement will fail. The modus
operandi of those guiding the north block is
amply known to all who have followed
their actions since 2002. First try to intimidate
a protest followed by efforts to prolong
it deliberately, then create disturbance
among them by infiltrating anti social elements
in these movements. The shameless
loudspeakers will then build up a national
anti national narrative seeking strong
action against the anti national . The party
goons will then be sent as locals to raise
slogans against the movement. The media
will be in full swing to cater the demand
for action. Police and paramilitary will be
mobilised and then when the movement is
discredited than intimidate leaders and
brutally suppress the movement.
If you see the administrative efforts by
bringing thousands of police to the protest
sites and look out notices against the
farmer leaders and vilifying them as criminals,
it is the same chronology that we saw
in Shaheen Bagh which was one of the
finest forms of protests that democratic
India saw in recent years. These protests
are definitely event managements too yet
they come through new ideas. Of course, a
prolonged protest help the government to
create divisions and then act once violence
happen.
In democracy, the ruling party has to
show its willingness to understand what the
people want and not work day and night to
vilify them just to please the few cronies
who might be funding them.
In the last few years we are witnessing
this trend of criminalising activists and
demonising them. The victims are being
victimised. FIRs in most of the cases are
filed against everyone making work of
police more difficult as they look like
sarkari Babus then managing the law and
order. Law has become new tactics in the
hands of those who never cared for it when
they were in the opposition or when Babari
Masjid was demolished.
I have seen those period of Mahendra
Singh Tikait in the Western Uttar Pradesh,
his first protest at Shamli in the early 1980s
when the sarkari officials would not go to
collect Bijali bills from the farmers. The
movement established Mahendra Singh
Tikait and slowly diluted the leadership of
voices of our people. Violent mobs are
being deliberately incited, to target
individual farmers leaders and at
protest sites. Again, a page from the
familiar playbook of last year.
The speakers drew attention to the
section of a subservient media that is,
once again, pushing these lies.
Several speakers spoke of the completely
peaceful nature of large sections
of the farmers rally on January
26th, where with pride and the tricolour
aloft their thousands of tractors,
farmers made their way into the
capital city of their republic. This
vision of a people s democracy on display
was entirely obliterated by the
mainstream media, and only the discordant
violence by some, was made
the dominant story. Any individual
striking even a marginally different
note to the dominant state-sponsored
narrative, is now been targeted.
Speakers expressed alarm at how senior
journalists and public figures, have
been charged with sedition among
other criminal sections of the IPC,
simply for a tweet, that was retracted.
The Press conference was
addressed by Senior Advocate
Prashant Bhushan, Secretary of the
Gandhi Peace Foundation - Kumar
Prashant , Activist Shabnam Hashmi,
Economist Atul Sood, Scientist and
Co-Convener of the Nation For
Farmers Dinesh Abrol. The speakers
the Chaudhuary Charan Singh family.
Political parties play these games deliberately
to weaken the established opponents.
Congress did it during the Anna movement
as many of them felt that it will help them
but it boomeranged. Now, Uttar Pradesh
saw the same.
Rakesh Tikait is at the moment, the
biggest leaders of the farmers movement
here and efforts to intimidate him through
criminal actions only backfired as farmers
from all the western Uttar Pradesh districts
started moving towards Ghazipur border as
per newspaper reports. Now, reports are
coming that excessive police presence is
removed as Rakesh Tikait has called to
strengthen the cause of the farmers. It is
heartening to see that farmers have realised
the sinister game plan to break their movement
and malign it.
During emergency time people use to
call Akashwani and Doordarshan as dirty
trick department but today the loudspeakers
in the media houses have played worst
than what we saw during the emergency.
All of them, funded by the cronies, in the
heart of their heart wanted that government
show strong will to crush the movements.
They were doing every bit to delegitimise
the movement as all through the years
appealed to all Indians to organize day
long fast, All Religion Prayer
Meetings, in their respective towns and
cities, at 5. 17 pm or protest on January
30, on the occasion of Shaheed Diwas,
the day Gandhiji was assassinated, in
solidarity with the farmers movement.
In Delhi the prayer meeting will be
held at the Gandhi Peace Foundation,
near ITO. On Behalf Of Concerned
Citizens of Delhi.
In solidarity
Sanjeev Kumar
Secretary
Dalit Adivasi Shakti Adhikar
Manch (DASAM)
Convener National Alliance of
People s Movements (NAPM)
Understand the chronology
Vidya Bhushan Rawat
accept the Ram Temple movement, they
opposed every movement by people and
build narrative to criminalise the opponents
of the Sarkar.
As I said, in democracy, we do not speak
of victory or loss but our common goal,
shared heritage. Farm leaders have shown
great strength and called out for action
against those who instigated violence and
went through a different rout but in the
garb of that you can not blame the entire
movement which has remained absolutely
peaceful so far. Those who unleashed violence
should be booked but that does not
mean that the demands of the farmers are
wrong.
Indian agriculture need serious
thoughts. We need laws which can be helpful
to farmers and not to the cronies who
want to control the entire sector. The government
need to consult all particularly the
farmers as well as farm workers. We
demand land reforms so that landless people
can get land and engage in family farming
as the UN has declared the entire
decade that of family farming. We do not
seem to have an agenda for the same. It is
time the government show its magnanimity,
repeal the laws and sit with all the stakeholders
to draft a new law which help all.