Accept SC’s advice, don’t underestimate farmers
The fact that the protests against the Centre’s farm reforms are led by farmers from Punjab lends them extra muscle and the movement, historicity. Official interlocutors need to take into account the staying power of the Sikh community, the agitation’s main driving force, while seeking to break the protracted logjam.
The optics of the stir lend it a pre-bifurcation pan-Punjab dimension as farmers with differing political predilections have forged a joint front with their counterparts from the adjoining agrarian state, Haryana. Besides Himachal Pradesh, Haryana was part of the undivided Punjab till the adoption of the 1966 Reorganisation Act. Lending shoulders to the wheel they have set into motion are groups from Rajashtan, Uttar Pradesh and Maharashtra.
Around 40 different farm unions under one umbrella have laid siege to Delhi. They are supported by a range of political parties, but are led by none. Having them jointly and severally on one negotiating table is an unwieldy exercise, driving home the utility of the Supreme Court’s suggestion that an “impartial and independent” committee of experts be constituted to hear both sides. The ambience for a structured dialogue could be made congenial if the government puts on hold the laws the farmers want undone.
Pressing the pause button on the legislations will be a face-saver for the agitators, who want a repeal, and the Centre, which is loath to roll them back. Observers point to the availability of a reservoir of jurists, retired generals, academics, agriculture experts and bureaucrats who can inspire trust on either side.
The top judiciary’s advice to the government makes eminent sense also because it will be difficult to get the farmers to repose trust in the current dialogue format. As observed by the Court, the interface thus far between the two sides has failed to yield results. The renewal of talks through a credible, bipartisan mechanism might stand a better chance to persuade farmers to reciprocally defer their radical “scrap the laws” stance towards a workable middle ground that addresses their concerns.
A point widely overlooked or ignored is that the Centre’s counter-narrative, after the talks hit a dead end, has had negative implications for its parallel offers of a dialogue. Be it studied or incidental, the dichotomous messaging has queered the pitch rather than prepared ground for a fruitful engagement.
If the intent is to tire out the agitators, the history of Sikh movements would be a good reference point for the official side. Their struggle to free their shrines from the control of the British-appointed mahants ran from 1920 to 1925. It coincided with the formation of the Shiromani Gurudwara Prabandhak Committee (SGPC) and the Akali Dal. Jawaharlal Nehru was jailed when he joined the Sikh morcha at Jaito in Faridkot. The British ultimately bowed to popular pressure, ushering in the 1925 Gurudwara Act that made SGPC the custodian of all historic Sikh places of worship. Mahatma Gandhi termed it the first victory of the freedom movement when the keys to the Golden Temple’s toshakhana were handed over to Baba Kharak Singh, the first president of SGPC.
Thereafter, in 1949, Akali veteran Master Tara Singh became the first political detainee of post-Independence India. He was the one to lay the basis of the Punjabi Suba movement — for a Punjabi-speaking state — which reached fruition 15 years later, in 1966. His arrest led to the Dal’s break-up with the Congress, its partner in the freedom movement. The schism widened with Punjab’s post-reorganisation claim on Chandigarh. The high point of this agitation was the demise of Darshan Singh Pheruman in a fast-unto-death. In that limited sense, the alleged suicide by a Sikh priest near the farmers’ protest site at Singhu border appears a leaf out of history.
The Akali Dal of today is but a shadow of its record of yore. Undeterred by the incarceration of their top leaders, jathas of Akali workers and supporters courted arrest each day during the 1975-77 period of the Emergency. The party is now on the margins of the farmers’ movement which has kept politicians at arm’s length. That’s also the reason why the protesters have no paramount leader — or a small set of leaders — for a compact with the government.
At the height of the separatist surge in Punjab, Balwant Singh, a non-Jat Sikh Akali who served as finance minister in Punjab, had explained to this writer his relevance in the Dal: “Sikh politics is the politics of agitation which cannot succeed without negotiations. I’m their negotiator.” He later played a key role in the 1985 Rajiv Gandhi-HS Longowal accord. But the pact reached by excluding such weighty leaders as SGPC chief GS Tohra and Parkash Singh Badal, failed to find popular endorsement. It also led to the assassination of Longowal and Balwant Singh.
The ongoing farmers protest is peaceful. But the unraveling of the Punjab accord is a lesson that agreements reached at the cost of genuine leaders never work. That should lead the government away from the futility of engaging with marginal players — and towards accepting the Supreme Court’s valuable counsel.