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A picture of Jagjit Singh Dallewal getting treatment
We express our solidarity with Jagjit Singh Dallewal, a farmer leader of Samyukta Kisan Morcha (SKM) Non-Political, whose hunger strike to death has now passed 60 days. We support his pursuit of a legally guaranteed implementation of a universal Minimum Support Price (MSP) and other demands of the farmer strike that restarted in February last year. He began his hunger strike on a day marking 9 months since a "Quit WTO" mobilisation that his branch of the SKM union was part of - highlighting how the Indian farmers' movement is struggling against the global neocolonial trade regime. We call for others across the world to continue to learn about, amplify and actively support both his hunger strike and the farmers struggle of which he is one part, as well as the various other ongoing struggles against the neoliberal and Brahminical agendas of the Indian state. We have included some introductory resources for understanding this struggle below.
We do welcome that the Indian government has very recently finally agreed to talks, leading 121 protesting farmers (111 from Punjab and 10 from Haryana) to end their own hunger strikes which they began in solidarity with Jagjit Singh Dallewal . He, however, while now accepting medical care is still continuing his hunger strike until the government issues a legal guarantee on the MSP. We are sure the movement will be approaching these talks with great caution given the betrayal of prior agreements.
Given the risk to his individual life, and the wider agrarian crisis (leading to suicides, debt, migration) in Punjab and across India, urgent action is needed to save his life and that of thousands of peasant farmers across the Global South.
The 2021 farmers strike ended with historic victory against neoliberalism's global assault on small producers in the Global South. But resistance to the three neoliberal farm laws that were successfully repealed did not come from a stance that India's existing system was working. As such, some Panjabi farmers reinvigorated the strike nearly a year ago to focus on unfulfilled but agreed-upon demands that aimed at fixing the Indian agriculture system and other issues such as land rights of indigenous communities. They are also seeking justice for those killed during the 2021 strike such as the Lakhimpur Kheri massacre. We hope to see success in the efforts for unity among other unions that both are and currently aren't part of this renewed campaign.
Only now agreeing to talk and still not agreeing to demands, the Indian government has otherwise been consistently responding with well-documented and increasingly violent repressive measures at the Punjab-Haryana border.
On this point, we must mention that this repression has been influenced by India's deepening alliance with Zionism, as Azad Essa revealed for the Middle East Eye that "the Haryana police department's use of drones to both create a database of protesters and launch tear gas were directly informed by a visit by the Haryana's chief minister along with a delegation of senior police officials to Israel in 2018." It is important to recognise also that Punjab's farmers in the Kirti Kisaan Union last year donated financial aid to Palestine (stating that “farmers would love to donate wheat, rice and maize for the Palestinians” if the Palestinian Embassy was accepting these) and reportedly became the first set of farmers in India to extend their solidarity with the people of Palestine. They stated that Israel is committing “the most terrible genocide in the history of human civilization” with US-backing and said it also reminds Punjab of the displacement of the partition and the anti-Sikh violence of 1984. This kind of global solidarity is essential when fighting global imperialism and we must work to deepen, extend and amplify such connections. As the KKU statement said, “only the justice loving people of the world can stop the oppression of the Israeli government which is following the path of Hitler”.
Members Kirti Kisan Union donating aid to Palestinian Embassy officials
As mentioned earlier, farmers also demand India's withdrawal from the neocolonial World Trade Organisation. We echo Sukhwinder Kaur's words that the WTO’s Agreement on Agriculture (AoA) "caters only to the interests of imperialist monopolies, while depriving India of its economic sovereignty, and ensnaring us, farmers, to lose our autonomy as agricultural producers".
Sukhwinder Kaur, State General-secretary of the BKU Union
She is the state general-secretary of the BKU (Krantikari) union and was one of those whose house has been raided by the National Investigation Agency in an ever-escalating wave of repression by the Indian government.
As Prashant Rahi pointed out for the Polis Project, previously the striking farmers were accused of being Khalistani separatists due to the predominantly Sikh makeup of the moment - now the accusations seems to have shifted to the union leadership being Maoists linked to the Naxalite insurgency. Either way, the spectre of "terrorism" is being used as designed - to depoliticise political issues and crack down on opposition to the state and capital's agenda.
While it is mainly Panjabi farmers and workers on strike, this struggle doesn't relate only to them. The movement and it's demands put Panjabi farmers in firm, material solidarity with not only the rest of India's rural producers but also it's indigenous and Adivasi populations. In fact, this struggle is part of the broader Global South struggle against capital's erosion of people's sovereignty through the WTO's unfair neocolonial rules on agriculture. Punjab's farmers have hence continued to receive statements of solidarity from unions across India (and the world), and mobilisations from neighbouring Haryana have supported them.
It should be noted also that agricultural and industrial labourers from Punjab state and elsewhere are also active parts of the movement and/or have expressed their solidarity with the farmers. The same is the case regarding the active involvement of women as both individual and organised agents of resistance, solidarity and production. It must also be acknowledged that caste oppression remains a key contradiction in Panjabi rural society/economy and needs addressing in its own right. It is being organised against by organisations such as the Zameen Prapti Sangharsh Committee and, importantly, these same organisations have been crucial parts of the farmers struggle and have repeatedly expressed that interests align in the agrarian struggle.
This is one thread in a fabric of oppression and resistance in the region. While engaging in a reactionary and Brahminical nationalism, the Indian state hypocritically collaborates with local and global capital to erode the people's sovereignty. The enforcement of neoliberal, Brahminical and colonial agendas engenders resistance across the region by the working classes and by Kashmiris, Manipuris, adivasis and tribal/indigenous populations, by India's religious minorities and, of course, by the ongoing and historic resistances of the oppressed castes.
As Navyug Gill has noted, the farmers' movement is significant not only in its immediate aims regarding the MSP, but also in challenging "the central logic of nearly three centuries of capitalist expansion which insists that large private corporations should invariably triumph over small-scale producers, and that the state should facilitate this foregone displacement." Also, given the social and environmental harms of the over-reliance on agrarian production and the wheat-rice cycle that Panjab has been locked in by central policy-making since the Green Revolution, today's central demand for a universal MSP challenges the "unspoken principle of Indian nationalism that renders distinct regions as nothing more than exploitable components of a sacred whole".
We call for action to save his life and, as we said in February 2024, "we call again for the immediate suspension of UK-India trade talks and demand the UK government raise the question of human rights abuses of India’s own citizens including its farmers."
UArticles
Navyug Gill, Virtues of Impatience
https://positionspolitics.org/navyug-gill-virtues-of-impatience
Beyond Farm Laws: How Punjab’s farmers are building a new agricultural resistance
Learnt from Israel, Indian forces deploy drones against protesting farmers
Caught between debt and landlessness, Punjab’s protesting women assert fight for rights
https://caravanmagazine.in/commentary/farmers-protests-women-punjab-singhu-tikri-delhi-farm-bills
'Plight of Gazans Akin to the Trauma of Partition': Punjab Farmer Union Donates Funds to Palestine Embassy
‘We Are One’: Why Punjab’s Landless Dalits are Standing with Protesting Farmers
https://m.thewire.in/article/caste/punjab-landless-dalit-farmers-protest
Videos
MSP, WTO & Farm Debt: Sukhwinder Kaur of BKU (Krantikari) breaks down why farmers are protesting | 36:20
https://youtu.be/Uv9Wy8i6tAY?si=cDaftqrNTVXxEVfx
Hunger Striking against “Free Trade” | 4:36
https://youtu.be/IC-rYtufIE8?si=fHakQlGo0bQmQ1eB
Written for ILS by Karthik Singh, an activist based in West Midlands
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