Jayanta Bhattacharya February 04, 2021 00:00 IST Onward Ticket outlookindia.com 2021-02-10T16:20:34+05:30
In October 1988, an 18-year-old boy watched intently as his father organised a sit-in protest with close to five lakh farmers in the heart of Delhi. The stretch between Vijay Chowk and India Gate was full of farmers and their tractors, buffaloes, carts, ploughs, and cattle were all parked on the adjacent lawns. A mini village had suddenly taken shape at Boat Club, so called as visitors could row flat-bottomed boats in the shallow tanks on both sides of the road.
The demonstration was organised by Bharatiya Kisan Union (BKU) chief ‘Baba’ Mahendra Singh Tikait, who would sit with his trademark hookah, supervising the protest demanding higher remunerative prices for sugarcane produce, waiver of water and electricity dues and concessions in their tariff. This was an extension of an earlier dharna at the office of the divisional commissioner in M
Photographs by PTI outlookindia.com 2021-02-10T16:20:04+05:30
Time is a great healer, they say. On January 29, many in western Uttar Pradesh’s Muzaffarnagar stood witness to a moment of rapprochement that could inflect India’s political history or not. It’s vital to offer that caveat right at the outset. For, the unseen undercurrents of our politics do not necessarily submit to neat surface syllogisms. Contrary pulls make up our political psychology to such an extent that its effects often seem irrational. And yet, when leaders of two communities Jats and Muslims came together to address a mahapanchayat in Sisauli village, no one could be faulted for seeing in that event a kind of tectonic shift. The ground itself moving.but back to its original, organic whole. Towards a suture, towards healing.
First, they targeted those from Punjab, the Sikhs. Then they spread canards about farmers from Haryana, then it was the turn for those from western Uttar Pradesh, says Rakesh Tikait