To make matters worse, in spite of India’s economic boom from the 1990s onwards, good jobs in the non-agricultural sectors are few and far between. Agriculture has become less profitable and nearly all farmers are forced to combine farming with work outside agriculture. In 2015-16, a whopping 86% of farming households had less than two hectares of land and 68% of all farmers made do with less than one hectare. Farmers had not been happy with their economic conditions for a long while. Tens of thousands of Muslims fled the area, never to return.Īgriculture has become less profitable and nearly all farmers are forced to combine farming with work outside agriculture.īut this successful divide and rule politics papered over economic discontent. The riots led to the killing of 66 people, mainly Muslims.
This culminated in riots in the Jat heartland of Muzaffarnagar in 2013, instigated by groups of BJP activists and Jats. As elsewhere in India, the BJP’s mobilisation strategy amongst that Jats has included the stoking of anti-Muslim sentiment. The BJP’s anti-minority nationalism has played well with the Jats. Most of the Jats have been solidly behind the BJP since the late 1990s, and this has been an important ingredient of the electoral strength of the BJP. For the farmers, this has become a struggle about the very future of farming in India - and the future of the farmers themselves. It has turned the protest against the farm laws into a fight for the future of this government and its pro-business agenda which farmers and others view as anti-farmer and anti-people. The ham-fisted government action in attempting to dislodge protesting farmers in January has transformed Jat farm leaders into heroes of the protest action. Across western UP, local BJP politicians find themselves socially boycotted by their caste and farmer brethren.įor the farmers, this has become a struggle about the very future of farming in India - and the future of the farmers themselves. Worryingly for the government, Rakesh Tikait and his brother Naresh, their BKU farmers union, as well as many Mahasabhas have pledged to vote out the BJP in upcoming state elections. The Jat farmers had enough of what they see as their humiliation by the government. It showed that farmers, including the Jat farmers, could be ridden roughshod over by a government that, they felt, listened to big capital and not to them, the sons of the soil. The final nail in the coffin was the humiliation of the Bharatiya Kisan Union (BKU) leader Rakesh Tikait, a prominent Jat figure, at the protest camp at the Delhi borders in January as the government prepared to dislodge farmers. The pushing through of the laws without any consultations with farmers has challenged the very perception they hold of their position in society. The Jats - as many other farmers across India- have always viewed themselves as central to what India is.
Rightly or wrongly, the Jats see the farm laws as a direct threat to their continued existence as independent farmers. The ferocity of the Jats’ engagement has been unexpected for the powers-that-be. The Jats - as many other farmers across India - have always viewed themselves as central to what India is.
When the Hindu Jats, otherwise strong supporters of the BJP, joined in huge numbers that illusion could no longer be maintained. It was the mainly Sikh farmers from Punjab that first spearheaded the protests, leaving the movement vulnerable to smears that it was limited to well-off farmers from a particular religious minority. The ruling Bharatiya Janata Party never thought that the farmers – let alone the Jat farmers – would become its main problem. In enormous Mahasabha s across north, east and central India, farmers have pledged to continue the fight until the laws have been repelled. The protests are still spreading across India and have turned into the most serious challenge to what many see as an increasingly authoritarian government of India. Since September 2020, hundreds of thousands of Indian farmers have been in a continuous protest action against three new farm laws. It has been labelled the largest farmers’ protest in the world.
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