Notes on the Farmers Protests sanhati.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from sanhati.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
Setting Aside 2013 Riots, Farmers Protest Reviving Jat-Muslim Political Alliance (Image by NewsClick)
The 2013 Muzaffarnagar riots led to the break-up of a crucial political alliance of Jats and Muslims forged by Chaudhary Charan Singh; the current farmers protest is uniting them again.
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Is aandolan men Hindustan hai; Hindustani bane raho; Hindu-Musalma mein mat batna (India is participating in this movement; continue to be an Indian; don’t fall into the trap of Hindu-Muslim divide),” Mahendra Singh Chaudhary, district president of the Bharatiya Kisan Union (BKU) in Uttar Pradesh’s Gautam Budha Nagar, asked the youth from the stage at the Ghazipur border protest amid thunderous applause from the huge crowd.
(This note has been written by Kasturi and translated by the Sanhati Collective)
There are some things about Western UP that should be said at this juncture, to see things properly in their dialectical light. And to make sure that in the haste to construct heroes, we do not forget history.
The first image that comes to mind is from 2013, in the wake of the Muzzaffarnagar mass killings. It is the image of a hundred murdered people, mostly non-Jat Muslims. And of 80,000 Muslims in a relief camp, small farmers and farmworkers who had been displaced and rendered homeless by the riots. Riding on the back of this massacre, Narendra Modi would go on to sweep UP and come to power in 2014.