Sikh Virsa Epaper Calgary Edition August 2021

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(Cont. from last edition)
If the current security
apparatus has behaved in much
the same manner as the one
serving the British Empire, the
leadership opposing it today
also finds precursors in the 1907
agitation. One of the most
prominent leaders of that
agitation was Ajit Singh, who
was then exiled to Burma for his
role in it. Released soon after,
he left India for Iran and then
Europe, and forged connections
with various Left revolutionary
organisations in Europe and
Brazil. He eventually drew
close to the Ghadar Party, a
group of Indian revolutionaries
mostly from Punjab who were
to return to India after
emigrating to the United States.
Through this period, the letters
he sent back home had a strong
influence on his nephew, Bhagat
Singh.
The Ghadar Party and
Bhagat Singh’s Naujawan
Sabha were to become the
source of many of the streams
of Left thinking that have been
part of Punjab’s twentiethcentury
politics. Several of
these lie outside the traditional
Left spanned by the CPI-CPM
combine, and their adherents
have been involved in land
struggles on several occasions.
Perhaps the most significant
of such movements in Punjab
was the Praja Mandal
Movement against the then
maharaja of Patiala the
grandfather of Punjab’s current
chief minister, Amarinder
Singh. Over a period of time,
representatives of the maharaja
had virtually taken over
proprietary rights in many parts
of Patiala state, which extended
into modern-day Haryana and
Himachal Pradesh. The
movement began in 1928 by
resisting their demands for
tenancy payments.
Both the Congress and the
Akali Dal were initially part of
this agitation, but it was
eventually left to the Praja
Mandal to carry on the fight
alone. Termed the Muzara, or
tenant, movement, it lasted till
1953, when a Tenants Rights
Act was finally passed. The
influence of this movement has
left a strong legacy of Left
protests on behalf of both
marginal farmers and the
landless in southeastern Punjab.
Many of the Left unions active
in such struggles have shunned
electoral politics and, as a
result, are not visible to
observers looking into Punjab
from the outside.
The core of the support for
the Aam Aadmi Party in Punjab
in the state’s last legislative
election lay in exactly the
region the Praja Mandal had
been active: the Malwa, which
lies near the Satluj River. The
AAP’s attempts to run its
Punjab unit from Delhi led to
its defeat and decay in Punjab,
but the impetus behind its rise
is still alive in this movement.
The support for the farm
protests takes a different form
in other parts of the state. The
ethos of the protestors from
Doaba, which lies between the
Satluj and the Beas, and the
Majha, which lies north of the
Beas, is less influenced by the
Left and more overtly Sikh.
This distinction is still visible
at the two protest sites of
Singhu and Tikri. Joginder
Singh Ugrahan epitomises the
Left history of struggle in
Punjab and, while his cadre is
predominantly Jutt Sikh, the
ethos is more austere, more
constrained. Singhu has far
more of the flavour
conventionally associated with
Punjab the musicians, the noise,
the celebration and swagger.
The two protest sites link
back to the entire state. There
is not a village in Punjab
unaffected by the protests or
disassociated from them.
Normally ridden with factions,
each village has organised itself
Hartosh Singh Bal
around the protests.
Representatives take turns to
travel to and stay at the protests,
as well as to replenish stocks of
food at the sites. Strikingly, the
movement is entirely outside the
control or influence of any
political party in Punjab.
Despite their Left
leadership, the protests at both
Tikri and Singhu draw upon the
Sikh ethos from the idea of the
langar to the largely spontaneous
and decentralised
organisation that runs the
protest sites. It is this Sikh ethos
that also explains why farmers
from Punjab were the first to
Sikh Virsa, Calgary 94. August 2021