Farmers from Punjab and Haryana began a march to India’s capital, Delhi, in late November 2020. The central government had unilaterally passed three controversial Farm Bill on 20 September 2020, but concerns about the bills had been building prior to this, with a Farmers Union representative stating that the government had not done any consultation. The unions had organized to raise awareness about the bill and had staged a protest to the three ordinances on 16 September 2020. On 25th September, farmers’ leaders called a Bharat bandh, or All-India general strike, in protest of the newly passed farm laws. Shortly after announcing this strike, the farmers’ leaders realized their authority as protest organizers might be contested when Punjab’s political parties – the Shiromani Akali Dal Badal, the Congress Party, and the Aam Aadmi Party – began to use their sphere of influence to stir up popular sentiment. Punjab’s actors and singers, many of whom are from farmer and labourer families, tried to assist leaders of the unions like Joginder Singh Ugraha and Ruldu Singh by using their platforms to spread awareness of the issues with the laws. These attempts to rally support for the issue were met with resistance by union leaders who claimed the protest would be diluted, or overrun, by entities with less genuine commitment to supporting a prolonged protest against the farm laws. From the initial stage of organizing there were shared concerns about the impact of the legislation from a variety of economic, political, and cultural factors which, at critical stages, would threaten the frail alliances that slowly developed after protesters arrived at the border of Delhi.
Since partition, Punjab’s governments have diligently invested in agriculture by increasing the amount of arable land, investment in irrigation, seed, fertilizer, and pesticide technologies. This strategy, not without its pitfalls, was able to ensure the state’s GDP growth year after year until about the 1990s. The economic liberalization of the 1990s in India coincided with political destabilization within Punjab. Since then, there has been a marked shift in Punjab’s prosperity. During these years, the Punjab state government invested comparatively less in its economy than other Indian states. This lack of capital investment caused Punjab’s economy to suffer a deep decline. At the same time, a number of sociocultural and health issues had been plaguing farmers and labourers for decades. The central government claimed to have penned the farm laws to address some of the challenges facing the entire agricultural sector, not just Punjab’s economy. Nonetheless, the stipulations around creating a free market led many to question whether the government was liberalizing the agricultural industry and exposing farmers directly to global market pricing. This created a sense of existential threat and anxiety around indebtedness as well as land insecurity, especially in Punjab and Haryana where government-regulated markets were seen as guarantees of livelihood for farmers with less than 1 acre of land. To some degree, the friction between farmer and larbourer interest groups, politicians, and entertainers was cemented in the economic and sociocultural context that developed after the so-called ‘Green Revolution’ in Punjab.
The protests saw the rise of a host of young individuals who helped organize and maintain the protests from a grassroots level throughout the entire year when people were gathered at the borders of Delhi. These individuals were charismatic, well-informed, and had developed a large social media following well before the farmers’ protest. For instance, Deep Sidhu, a lawyer by profession who gained fame through modeling and acting, would resort to social media on 25th September calling upon the youth of Punjab and Haryana to gather for a protest at the border between the two states (Shambu) and prepare to march to the capital – Dilli Chalo. Lakha Sidhana, a prominent social activist, also rallied to support the Shambu protest, making the Shambu border area a large youth protest. This movement was more spontaneous than the simultaneous attempt to organize a bandh by the union leaders, and it was much more successful in gathering large crowds. As such, it was quickly joined by the leaders of 31 different farmers' unions. On 26 November 2020 after facing tear gas, water cannons, and baton charges from Haryana police and other security agents, the farmers would break through barricades meant to prevent their peaceful march to Delhi and began one of the largest peaceful protests in modern history.
As the protests continued, two different types of leadership developed throughout the protest, which drew upon political, economic, sociocultural, and religious factors in dynamic ways. The ability to shift focus and adjust between these factors based on the pragmatic need for ensuring the protest’s continuity during major shifts over the year-long protest. The unions’ leadership focused on retaining the protest as a single-issue movement against the farm laws. They did so by controlling the messages being broadcast on main platforms emphasizing the economic and political aspects while exploiting the secular antagonism against religion at significant moments during the protest, such as the fallout around Republic Day 2021. The interface between the sociocultural and the political was represented in sentiments expressed by Lakha Sidhana and his supporters by drawing upon sympathies with Sikhi, however, doing so to focus primarily on social issues threatening the region and people of Punjab. Deep Sidhu represented the intersection between the religious and the sociocultural. Sidhu used his ability to convey concerns about citizenship, sovereignty, and self-determination throughout the duration of the protest to level criticism against India’s elite and the state’s systematic inequalities. One of the distinctions between Sidhana and Sidhu’s rhetoric is around an open reference to the issue of Khalistan – Sikh geopolitical sovereignty – where Sidhu was more vocal in the media and with protestors about the connection between the farm laws and a Sikh existential threat.
That being said, the protest was much more than individual interest groups or categories represented by these leaders, other important facets of the protest such as the role of the Diaspora in staging protests and counterprotest internationally as well as the presence of Nihangs to defend protestors and maintain peace are also noteworthy. Lastly, the presence of women at the protest highlighted their significant role not just in the protest but as farmers themselves. Understanding the dynamic between these groups and the productive tension they were able to maintain amongst one another was, arguably, one of the reasons the protest cut across different segments and eventually gained a level of pan-Indian and global support routinely throughout the protest. With COVID lockdowns and a dire global economic downturn, the use of violence by police against a nonviolent farmer and labour protest not only caught the interest of scholars of the region and diasporic Sikhs across the world but was also captured the attention of politicians, social activists, and entertainers internationally. In a pattern mirroring the Punjab and Haryana context, diasporic youth became interested in the politics of the protest and the refrains of a looming existential threat to Punjabi culture and to Sikhi, both of which have strong ties to farming and labour communities in the region.
This special issue of Sikh Formations, at some level, is rooted in conversations that began between community and scholars and grew into a series of conferences, and roundtable discussions that occurred while the protest was ongoing. There were three specific conferences from which the essays in this issue are drawn. Firstly, a conference panel held at the newly created Sikh Studies group at the Religions of Asia Unit at the American Academy of Religion Western Region (AARWR), entitled ‘Religion, Revolution, and Farming: The 2020–21 Indian Farmers’ Protest,’ held virtually on 21 March 2021. Secondly, a Sikh Formations Webinar event entitled, ‘Reassessing the Farmers Protest’ held virtually on 24 April 2021. And, lastly, a panel held at the Annual South Asia Conference at UW-Madison on 21 October 2021 entitled, ‘Culture’s of Protest: The Question of Democracy in South Asia.’ There were countless discussions between the community and scholars held through community advocacy groups, such as the Jakara Movement and the Panth Punjab Project, occurring through the virtual conferencing world of ZOOM and Google Meet. In many ways, the facilitation of virtual dialogue about the issues farmers faced was unprecedented, it helped the immediate global response including exchanging information but the recourse to virtual formats also led to unprecedented possibilities of surveillance – for instance when some academics were unable to present at the AARWR due to concerns that the government of India would frown on scholars who openly shared their thoughts about the protest. The surveillance and policing of academics inside the Indian state prevented some voices from engaging in the global dialogue and debate around the protest, and it also allowed for the development of an unchecked narrative created by state-friendly media outlets.
The articles in this special issue deal with different political, economic, sociocultural, and religious aspects of the protest that we have grouped thematically as articles dealing with the art and sociocultural aspects of the protest, and another group of articles that emphasize the religiopolitical aspects of the protest. An incredible amount of artistic production occurred during the protest and innumerable numbers of Sikhs were involved in humanitarian relief during the protest. In ‘Echoes of Protest: The Role of Art and Literature in the Farmers and Laborers Protest,' Amrit Deol discusses how protestors combatted the government's attempts to censor the exchange of political content by following a long historical tradition of generating and distributing protest art in Punjab. Gurbeer Singh looks at the history of protest music within the Punjabi Sikh community and cross examines that with the protest music from the Farmers' Protest. On a related note, Tejpaul Singh Bainiwal's article, ‘Historicizing and Preserving the Present: The Role of the Music during the Farmers' Protest,' focuses on five songs which preserve the movement and highlight broader topics surrounding the protest including: the question of violence, Sikh sovereignty, and the ongoing battle between Punjab and Delhi. Continuing with the theme of protest music, Kumool Abbi centers the cultural and creative responses generated during the protest as a symbol of dissent and hope. In her piece, ‘Art of the Protest: Portrayal of participation of women in the Kisan Mazdoor Andolan,’ Sonia Dhami examines two selected artworks in order to highlight the strong participation of women in the historic protest.
A number of articles consider the historical and global antecedents of the protest and its contemporary political implications. Amandeep Singh and Gurpreet Singh’s piece, ‘Socio-Political Tractions of Farm Laws and Farmer Agitation in India’ delves into the political and economic potentialities to be culled from the new laws and the [un]settling rubble of the protests. Brinder Pal Singh looks into how the Samyukt Kisan Morcha realizes the ongoing significance of regional politics and different attempts to navigate government strategy. The primacy of politics within the Farmers’ Protest is at the root of Singh’s paper. Jasdev Rai’s article seeks to look beyond the three new farm laws as he argues that there were a host of underlying issues that compelled the farmers to protest including the history of farming in Punjab, transnational organizations, and the persistent struggle between the state and federal government. Prabhsharanbir Singh explores the disconnect between the discourses of left-leaning farm leaders and Deep Sidhu, who articulated the struggle through a Sikh lens. Harjeet Singh Grewal examines how a nonviolent, democratic protest rooted in the humanist ideals of the Sikh tradition is usurped by state institutions to create a lethal phantasmagoria around the issue of Khalistan and a supposed existential terrorist threat from Sikhs in order to attempt forcefully pushing through neoliberal reforms that benefit Western bloc nations who exert coercive pressure through Imperialist structures that debilitate economies through debt. Grewal argues that the ongoing violence in Punjab since the end of the protest is connected to this phantasmagoria.
Concurrently with the special issue on the Farmers’ Protests, we are also marking the creation of a new section in Sikh Formations with this issue we are calling, Undercurrents: Activism and the Arts is a new section. In recognition of the importance of activism, the arts, and engaged scholarship in Sikh and Punjabi life-worlds, this new section aims to further the original scope of the journal to ‘open alternative horizons,’ ‘provide a venue for the emergence of new perspectives,’ and remain ‘open to multiple ways in which cultural production creates zones of profound expressive possibilities.’ In this vein, the ‘Undercurrents’ section provides a forum for thought and creativity that expresses new oppositional solidarities in light of current events as well as events that remain hidden under or counter the dissemination of current events. This section seeks to highlight alternate engagements with prevailing scholarly, social, and cultural trends by embracing sentiments and experiences of exclusion and marginalization that are too often submerged by the tide of majoritarian idealized approaches. We are particularly interested in publishing articles, artwork, photo-essays and video-essays on topics that defy easy categorization, and forms of expression that resist professionalization and rigidification of the knowledge system. Artists, activists and members of the public are encouraged to submit essays that inquire critically yet creatively into processes of subjective, social, ethico-political significance as they emerge in contemporary local and global affairs.