Sikh Virsa Epaper Calgary September 2021

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However Modi and Shah choose to
handle the political fallout, it still
leaves open the question of the farm
laws themselves. As far as the
government is concerned, the
Supreme Court’s decision to suspend
the laws for 18 months leaves ample space
for negotiations, offers and counter-offers.
of hundreds of thousands of
protesters, the levels of violence
were low. The farm leaders,
perhaps aware of how the anti-
CAA protests had been dealt
with, themselves endorsed the
idea of a conspiracy.
Hardeep Singh Dibdibia, the
grandfather of Navreet Singh
who, the family alleges, was
killed in firing by the police on
that day, even as the police
maintains it was due to his
tractor turning turtle has not
hidden his disappointment with
the leaders. Talking to The
Caravan, he stated that these
were men born out of small
struggles who had been thrust
to the big stage and were
unprepared for it. It is
certainly an
apprehension that
survives past the
events of 26 January in
Punjab, where the
mood is more tempered,
more sombre, but no less
determined.
The Delhi police, which
reports directly to the Modi
government, has used the events
at the Red Fort to start a chain
of arrests to fulfil its own
fantasy of an international
conspiracy. This is unlikely to
impact the protests in a serious
way, but the message to the
many people across the country
who were supporting it has been
stark: assistance to the protests
in any meaningful way will be
criminalised.
A similar message has been
sent out to journalists and
institutions whose reporting
challenges the official narrative
of events. The
Caravan contributor Mandeep
Punia was arrested on the very
day he was investigating the
presence of several people
associated with the BJP who
posed as locals and attacked the
Singhu protest site as the police
watched. Charges of sedition
have been filed against our
executive editor Vinod Jose,
editor Anant Nath and editor-inchief
Paresh Nath, along with
other journalists, for reporting
what eyewitnesses had stated
about Navreet Singh’s death.
OUTSIDE OF PUNJAB, in
Haryana and western Uttar
Pradesh, where the BJP has
greater presence on the ground,
the party’s own feedback is
suggesting that it could be hurt
politically by the protests. It
seems to be advice that Amit
Shah is setting aside for now.
The Indian Express recently
reported that “Shah asked party
leaders to intensify their
campaign to explain the benefits
of the three laws and to ensure
those who are ‘misleading’
farmers get a ‘fitting reply from
the people’.”
Shah is perhaps hoping that
the caste alliance mobilised
behind the BJP and ranged
against the Jats, which brought
the party to power in Haryana,
can be replicated elsewhere in
the Jat belt as well. The strategy
succeeded earlier only because
Dushyant Chautala came to the
BJP’s aid. When the BJP failed
to secure the numbers to form a
government in the last Haryana
election, Chautala, a Jat
politician, allied his party with
it, allowing it to take power. It
is unlikely that the BJP will
again be able to find an
equivalent of Chautala in
Haryana, given the substantial
anger among the Jats.
But in the larger battle for
control of the country,
Haryana’s contribution, like that
of Punjab, is marginal. It is Uttar
Pradesh that really counts. This
is where the possible loss of Jat
support could hurt the BJP the
most. Its success in the state has
depended on taking this support
for granted since the
Muzaffarnagar violence of
2013. The coming together of
Hindu and Muslim Jats, and the
resurgence of the Rashtriya Lok
Dal, is what will bother the party
the most.
The BJP will turn its focus
to this region once it is done
with the upcoming elections in
West Bengal and Assam. The
party’s playbook leaves it with
some options. One of these
would be to try and repeat the
Haryana strategy by
consolidating other rural castes
against the Jats. With even some
Gujjar leaders coming out in
support of the agitation, though,
it is not clear how successful
such an attempt would be. The
second option would be to do
what the BJP was aiming for in
any case: make the next election
in Uttar Pradesh about the Ram
Mandir, raising a communal
frenzy where secular issues such
as the farm laws become
irrelevant. This is likely to work
to an extent, as the Jats of
western Uttar Pradesh are today
more susceptible to the pull of
Hindutva than their fellows in
Haryana.
The third option and this is
not to suggest that these options
will not be tried in tandem is to
try and either weaken or wean
away the Tikaits. Both Rakesh
and his brother Naresh have
been close to the BJP, and have
Sikh Virsa, Calgary 94. September 2021