Could shared identity as farmers bridge communal divide in UP?
SISAULI/LAKHIMPUR KHERI: Mahendra Chaudhary, 56 and Gopal Ram Bhargava, 58 live 439km apart but have much in common. Both live in areas that have been central to the farm agitation over the past year. The former lives in Sisauli, the village of Mahendra Singh Tikait, the birthplace of the Bharatiya Kisan Union. The latter lives in Tatarpur in Lakhimpur Kheri, a district which saw a troubling but significant event in the agitation when a vehicle, allegedly carrying the son of Union minister of state for home Ajay Mishra Teni, ran over four protesters and a journalist on October 3.
Both men are farmers. This January, both men are engineers too.
It is the morning of January 27, and Chaudhary is sleep deprived. Three days ago, six stray cows entered his fields of mustard, and ran riot. His son was meant to have been on watch that night, but fell into a deep slumber in their tent just next to the fields, and failed to wake up. Chaudhary Sr then took over, and spent the next two nights, stick and torch in hand, shooing away the animals that threatened his farm again. He shouts at the four men carrying logs of wood, and a mesh of barbed wire. Will the wire be enough, he asks. He wants the wire to be both horizontal and vertical, resembling a prohibitive chessboard. “There must be no space left in between. If you leave gaps, either they will still get in, or the cows will trap themselves in the wire. Dhyaan se,” he says.
Three days later, on the side of the highway that connects Kheri to Tikunia, Gopal Ram Bhargava is working on his own solution. His field has two scarecrows, but they are designed not just for birds, but cattle. The scarecrows themselves are lifelike, the human shapes made of hay. In each arm are two protruding lathis, wielded high into the air. “I have to adjust the sticks every two days, because otherwise they fall off in the wind at night. Then every three days, I change the shirt on the scarecrow. If the shirt fades because of the dust and dirt, cattle can’t see it at night. They have to be bright colours,” Bhargava says.
A 2019 NSS report on the “situation assessment of agricultural households and land and livestock holdings of households in rural India” pegs the number of agricultural households in Uttar Pradesh at 65.4% . Of these, 70.8% households are involved in crop production in the state. With voting for the first phase of the UP assembly elections now just under 10 days away, this mass of people will be among those that vote first. And across Western and Central Uttar Pradesh, there are signs of disquiet.
The Uttar Pradesh Prevention of Cow Slaughter Act has existed since 1955. But when the BJP stormed to power in 2017, creating a broader Hindu identity as one of its central edifices, one of the primary policy pushes of the Yogi Adityanath led government was to strengthen this law, both in theory and practice, breaking age-old systems that existed. In June 2020, the Uttar Pradesh cabinet approved an ordinance amending the existing law, providing a maximum punishment of rigorous imprisonment for 10 years and a fine of up to ₹10 lakh. Crucially, the amendments targeted “illegal transportation” too, with the driver, operator and owner of the vehicle liable to be charged under the new act. In a statement at the time, the UP government said that the ordinance was aimed at completely stopping incidents pertaining to cow slaughter.
In practice, over the past five years, this has meant a sense of fear on the ground, with vigilante organisations tracking and stopping vehicles, allegations of intimidation, assault and overreach and a complete breakdown in the market for cattle. “There are no buyers, or sellers, or transporters anymore. So when a cow stops giving milk, or gets old, earlier we would sell them off, earn some money, and they would be taken away. Now people just release them, and it has become a nightmare,” Chaudhary said.
There is another common thread that binds Chaudhary and Bhargava, in their identities as farmers, and in a shared sense of grievance. Both have sugarcane fields (Chaudhary grows mustard as well), are yet to receive dues, and are in debt.
Bhargava, for instance, has three acres of land, and for two crop cycles now, has failed to receive dues from sugar mills. “From last year, I am still owed ₹50,000 , and this year, I am yet to receive ₹70,000. There is no word on when the money will come. In our village, at least 100 acres has been destroyed by cattle, and nobody has got sugarcane dues either. The price of everyday things that are connected to our profession, diesel, oil, are all going up. There is not a house you will find that is not in debt. This is not a government that thinks about farmers,” Bhargava said.
Yet, Uttar Pradesh’s complex matrix of caste and religion that have been at the centre of its politics for decades mean that this broad sense of a shared identity, or grievance, is not always a single unifying election issue, just an important element. Chaudhary is a Jat, and spent many months at the Tikri border with farmers protesting the farm laws that were finally repealed late last year. He has regard for Rakesh Tikait. But that respect is for Rakesh Tikait, the farm leader, and not the Rakesh Tikait the politician, or the media commentator. Chaudhary is leaning towards voting for the Rashtriya Lok Dal (RLD), but like many others is unhappy at what he calls Samajwadi Party (SP) candidates fighting on RLD tickets in Muzaffarnagar. And the 2013 riots, and the hatred for Muslims is still a factor too. “I want to vote for the RLD, but I know that when I do, the Samajwadi Party will come to power, and the Muslims become powerful. Sisauli seems to be voting for the RLD because of the farm protests so maybe that will swing it. But I am not happy about either choice,” Chaudhary said.
Interestingly, for Bhargava, who voted for the BJP in 2014, 2017 and 2019 the cattle menace is his first real-world break from the larger Hindu identity that the BJP has successfully forged. Even today, as Bhargava yearns for a return of the old system, where old and infirm cattle were sold off, he will not speak out loud what that inevitably means. Only a prolonged conversation causes an outburst of a man wracked by guilt, and an admission. “Haan, kat jaati thi. Par abhi bhi to katti hi hai.(Yes, they used to be slaughtered. But what happens to them now is also slaughter). The cow shelters they have built can’t hold enough animals. So now they die when they get enmeshed in our barbed wire, or are roadkill and cause accidents. The cow is our mother. But can I let my children sleep hungry at night?” he said.
Bhargava is a Paasi, counted among the Scheduled Castes, a key non-Jatav Dalit vote bank that will prove crucial in the elections. He reiterates the idea that he will vote for whoever the community in his village does.
This is a wave-less election, and there is no “hawa”, he says. But in Tatarpur, this also speaks of an intrinsic weakness in the opposition campaign.
In press conferences in Lucknow, SP chief ministerial aspirant Akhilesh Yadav has made a host of promises to farmers of the state. MSP for all crops, sugarcane arrears in 15 days, interest-free loans, 300 units of electricity free, insurance and pension. Lakhimpur Kheri goes to the polls in three weeks, in the fourth phase on February 23, and the campaign is yet to pick up.
But Bhargava is not aware of any of these promises. There has been no WhatsApp message on his phone, no party worker at his door, no creation of a broader momentum in his village on issues of agriculture. “In UP, no party ever makes farming a real issue,” he said. “They are all the same.”