Emerging Solidarities in the Kisan Andolan: How Its Composition Makes It a Role Model
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Farmers Are Free Now : Women Celebrate Repeal of Laws – And Their Own Role in the Protest
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Movement Leaders from Harinder Kaur Bindu to Bibi Amtus Salam At the protests the menfolk cook, clean and sweep as well
One defining feature of the ongoing farmers’ movement is hard to miss: the sea of yellow chunnis worn by Punjabi women. How come this predominantly male movement has earned such participation of women?
Interestingly two young girl singers have reframed the popular song ‘Mera rang de basanti chola’ to ‘Merian rang de basanti chunnian, maye rang de basanti chunnian…’
The participation of women in social-cultural movements is not new to India. In ancient times Gargi and Maitreyi challenged Brahmanical philosophic postulates intellectually and were threatened with beheading. In medieval times there were powerful women like Noorjahan, and Razia Sultana, who proved to be a wiser queen than many kings.
Harinder Kaur Bindu, whose father Megh Raj Bhagtuana was killed by alleged Babbar Khalsa International militants in 1991, now leads protests against the new farm regime at Tikri as head of the women’s wing of the Bharatiya Kisan Union (Ekta Ugrahan).
The Jamhoori Kisan Sabha is one of the main groups at the Singhu protest. Its president Kulwant Singh Sandhu, who was part of the failed talks with the Centre, was shot in the leg and back in an ambush by suspected Khalistan Commando Force members in 1988.
Sonia Mann, a film star in south India and Punjab, has been a regular visitor to the protests and to Tihar jail where several peasants have been imprisoned following the violence during the farmers’ January 26 march in Delhi. Mann’s father Baldev Singh Mann was assassinated by suspected separatists in 1990 while he was travelling to see her for the first time, just 15 days after her birth.