Sketched from the
The ongoing farmers’ protest has inspired artists across the country. From silverpoint drawings to indigo paintings, see how they’re documenting the resistance
All those who can’t physically participate in the protest can see and understand what is happening through art works and photographs. GURDEEP DHALIWAL, photographer
Artist Umesh Singh’s father Sriram Singh used to farm in Bhojpur, Bihar, until Umesh was 18. The senior Singh left to become a security guard, first in Hyderabad and later in Bengaluru. It simply paid better. The younger Singh, now 28, isn’t likely to take up farming either. He has a Masters degree in fine arts from University of Hyderabad. His practice has addressed current affairs since his student days. This year, with the farmers’ protests in Delhi and across India, there has been plenty of inspiration for new work.
Last September, Parliament passed three bills, which were then signed into law. The new reforms, farmers fear, will do away with assured pricing at government-regulated wholesale markets, allowing private buyers like supermarket chains to hoard essential commodities for profit, and tighten regulations on contract farming.
The government believes the laws will actually help farmers, creating a larger market for their produce and freeing them from the clutches of middlemen and inefficient agricultural markets.
“Farmers’ problems are largely the result of unfriendly government policies,” Singh says. “If this continues, who will ever want to farm in India?”
In January, he spent a week in Punjab with protesting farmers, and creating more than 300 neel (indigo colour) drawings. He chose the pigment deliberately. “In Bihar, where I live, the British forced my ancestors to grow indigo, which severely impacted the growth of other crops and led to widespread protest,” Singh says. “The new farm laws are as unjust.”
Many of Singh’s drawings portray women farmers. “Even today, 60% of farm activities are done by women. So how did some ministers in the government dismiss their role in the protest?” Singh asks.
His drawings were displayed at the protest site in Singhu village and were also reproduced on banners and posters of farmers’ associations and in Trolley Times, a newsletter covering the protests.
One of the three founders of the newsletter is 27-year-old documentary photographer Gurdeep Dhaliwal. A resident of Barnala, Punjab, Dhaliwal studied English literature and creative writing at Kingston University, UK, and has been instrumental in documenting how the protests have found artistic expression at sites across India. “Art is a very strong tool. All those who can’t physically participate in the protest can see and understand what is happening through art works and photographs,” says Dhaliwal.
He drafted the artist duo Thukral and Tagra (Jiten Thukral and Samir Tagra) to create original work relating to the protest. Their illustration of farmers sitting around a brick chullah (traditional stove) and making rotis, a scene from the protest site, made it to one of the first editions of Trolley Times, on December 23.
Art, in solidarity
Dhaliwal’s own work covers hundreds of photographs, shot at protest sites, which have appeared in the newsletter’s print and online editions. They impressed 39-year-old artist Varunika Saraf enough to reach out to Dhaliwal and secure permission to reproduce his shots as silverpoint drawings. These have become part of Citizen Z (Don’t
Forget, Never Forget), a series ongoing since 2014 that includes some 300 drawings documenting key moments of our times, through images in the media. About 17 to 18 drawings, recreated from Dhaliwal’s images, depict women farmers, community kitchens run by women at protest sites and peaceful protests. Saraf has posted a few of them on her Instagram page @varunika.saraf.
Saraf’s mother’s family hails from Arvi in Wardha, Maharashtra. They were farmers until some years ago. “I have been a part of the farming community, in that sense,” says Saraf. “The idea behind the series is to make people think and contemplate on what all of us have gone through collectively and individually through a certain period.”
In addition to the protest art, Saraf also created an art work every day all through the lockdown last year. But others have struggled to create new work, breaking their self-imposed dry spell only in response to the farmers’ agitation late last year. On December 8, 50-year-old artist Mithu Sen posted an image of her hand-poke drawing on handmade paper, on her Instagram page @mithusen26. The work, which she has titled Sickle (A Brief Cancellation of Time) quite literally depicts a sickle.
“From March (2020), which is when the pandemic started becoming a reality, until December 8, I could not make any tangible artwork,” Sen recalls. “I was too low because of the unravelling situation, the news of death, violence, and inhumane apathy caused by governmental negligence and societal injustice.” When the farmers’ protest was announced in August 2020, Sen wanted to express solidarity. “When I was creating this work, I felt outrage, anger, and frustration as well as utter helplessness in the face of unrelenting, and always ongoing injustices.”
The stir is finding a voice in works big and small. Artist Arunkumar HG, 51, who grew up in a farmer’s family in Shimoga, Karnataka, has created a digital image of an Indian goddess, made up of several tiny photographs of India’s famers. His attempt is to emphasise the farmer’s role in society as annadaata (food-giver) and support their protest.