INDIAN FARMERS’ MOVEMENT
‘It’s Time We Speak up For Each Other’: Farmers’ Group Supports Political Prisoners
The Wire | December 08, 2020
Farmers in solidarity with incarcerated activists. Photo: Ajoy Ashirwad Mahaprashasta
Bahadurgarh (Haryana): A day after farmers’ unions rejected an elaborate proposal by the Union government to address multiple concerns related to the three contentious farm laws, the Bharatiya Kisan Union (Ekta-Ugrahan), the biggest group among the 32 organisations, marked Human Rights Day by demanding the release of several democratic rights activists and intellectuals who are lodged in prison.
In an indication that the group may only intensify its protests against the Centre by espousing a broad-based agenda, the BKU (Ugrahan), which is camped near Delhi’s Tikri border at Bahadurgarh, hosted a function to show its solidarity with other democratic and human rights movements. In a full-fledged attack on what it called an “authoritarian” Central government led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, the farmer leaders asserted that it was time to stand with different democratic movements of the country, as their larger struggle was against “corporatisation” of Indian agriculture, and not merely against the contentious farm laws.Read More »