Why Participants and Supporters of Farmers' Protests Should Not be Stereotyped as Khalistanis

Very recently, an Indian-origin Sikh gentleman, Dr. Swaiman, was heckled by Khalistanis in New York. Why? Because Dr. Swaiman, a Sikh himself, had displayed the tricolour during the farmers' protests. This busts the myth that the farmers' agitation was only by Khalistanis.


The way the BJP pushed the farm laws, which, at least in part, clearly favoured cronyists, gave an opening to the Khalistanis to push their agenda on Indian soil (in which unfortunately, the Khalistanis did not entirely fail) and the manner in which some from the BJP and some prominent personalities from its support-base sought to, in a baseless fashion, demonise all the protesting farmers as Khalistani terrorists and/or agents of belligerent foreign powers, as you can see here, here, here, here and here [and some BJP-leaning Twitterati have repeated the pattern with the Minimum Support Price (MSP) protests, other than in another context, a BJP politician having slurred a Sikh policeman with whom he had some disagreement on an unrelated-to-religion matter as ‘Khalistani’, as you can see here, though there was also fake news of another such incident], or the fatally mowing down of four Sikh farmers in Lakhimpur Kheri in UP by a BJP minister’s son did not help matters either, and may have won the Khalistan movement some new recruits. There were genuine concerns with the farm laws, such as a clause about not allowing farmers to raise their grievances in civil courts, but allowing a bureaucrat, not necessarily following formal legal procedures, to exercise his/her discretion to adjudicate disputes between farmers and big corporations and the very definition of 'farmer' including big corporations, other than there being a dearth of enough vegetable-market infrastructure for farmers to directly access on their own terms, concerns articulated with nuance even by the Swadeshi Jagran Manch of the RSS, and inserting such problematic clauses and pushing these laws without proper parliamentary debate clouded any objective discussion about the merits, if any, in the other provisions of these controversial laws. Also, steps similar to these farm laws had been tried but failed to deliver in Bihar. Many poor farmers died of the cold in the protests against the farm laws in 2020-2021, thus invalidating the contention that those protesting against these laws were only rich middlemen in the agrarian sector, and farmers from not only Punjab, Haryana and Uttar Pradesh but also other parts of India, like Gujarat, Maharashtra and Tamil Nadu, across religious lines did participate in the protests against the farm laws. While it is indeed very problematic that the proponents of the Khalistan movement also infiltrated the protests (see, for example, this and this) as also that some Sikh protesters (including even some who may not have necessarily been supporters of the Khalistan movement) unnecessarily made a show of religious identity over non-religious legislations for the whole of India and resorted to unlawful modes of protest, that does not mean that there were no genuine grievances or that all or even most of the protesters were anti-India. While very many of the protesters were Hindus, it should also be acknowledged that very many Sikhs themselves are vocal critics of the Khalistan movement (indeed, many Sikhs have had a stellar track record in our Indian security forces, even against Khalistani terrorists), such Sikhs even having been its targets (as you can see, for example, here, here, here and here), and many Sikhs in the farmers’ agitation too very openly distanced themselves from the Khalistan movement.


Indeed, Prime Minister Narendra Modi, while withdrawing the laws, himself conceded that the farmers of India as a whole largely did not support the controversial farm laws, which makes sense, for if they did, they constitute a far greater number of voters than some agrarian middlemen or some extremists from a minority religious grouping, and the laws would not have had to be withdrawn. So, sections of the BJP ecosystem having demonised all protesters, many Sikhs among whom were also Indian military veterans, may have also definitely contributed to a spike in Khalistani sentiment in Punjab (something the BJP ecosystem should be careful about as farmers again protest for Minimum Support Price guarantees), which has also been seen by the hype given to some pro-Khalistan Punjabi language singers and a Golden Temple guard having the gall to refuse entry to a woman with a tricolour painted on her cheek, saying that Punjab is not a part of India!


As I have discussed at some length in this Twitter thread (worth perusing in full), since 2016, there has been a pattern of Khalistani terror strikes on Indian soil (even if low-intensity), taking Indian citizens’ lives (no, not just some diaspora verbal diarrhoea), other than Amritpal Singh’s followers (many of whom, by the way, got arms licenses from the BJP government-appointed LG’s administration in J&K, which took very long in revoking them as well) having stormed a police station in Punjab to until then have terrorists released and physical attacks on our embassies and consulates as also on Hindu temples overseas, also because of the appeasement and thus emboldenment of Sikh communalism by the Modi sarkar (as against its firm denunciation by Manmohan Singh, as pointed out in the Twitter thread). The Twitter thread cited also gives clear examples of the appeasement of Sikh communalism by the Modi sarkar, such as declaring non-Khalsa Sikhs (who have been brutally targeted by Khalistani terrorists) as being ineligible to vote in gurudwara elections, seeking to commute the death sentence of a Khalistani terrorist Balwant Singh Rajoana and openly declaring that the PM has a special relationship with the Sikhs (over other Indian citizens - imagine the reaction had a Hindu leader from the Congress brought out such a book vis-a-vis Muslims or even Christians!).