Farmers Movement Archive

The constable-turned-crusader

For months, government spokespersons and a section of the media were looking for a leader among the consortium of more than three dozen farmer unions protesting against the farm laws. On the night of January 28, they finally found one in Rakesh Tikait, the national spokesperson of the Bhartiya Kisan Union, who broke down before the media, alleging that there’s a “conspiracy against farmers”. His critics might call his emotional outburst a smart political move but Rakesh Tikait, the second son of Mahendra Singh Tikait, the mercurial farmer leader who revived the BKU in the late 1980s with a string of dramatic protests in Muzaffarnagar and Meerut against the then Congress government, provided a new spark with his tears and tenacity to the dying embers at the Ghazipur border protest site. Till January 28, the BKU was just playing a supporting role at Singhu and Tikri. In fact, when Mr. Tikait first emerged at the U.P. Gate on Ghazipur border on December 28 with scores of his supporters, the impression was that he would be used by the ruling party as a bulwark to keep the restive Punjab and Haryana farmers in check. Even those in the All India Kisan Sangharsh Committee took time to believe his commitment. After the dramatic turns of events on Thursday, the Ghazipur border became the gravitational centre pulling in support. And the 51-year-old constable-turned-farmer leader emerged as an unlikely hero. Media savvy all along, he maintained that he voted for the BJP but the party didn’t live up to its promises. In the early days of the protest, his concerns were as much about pending payment of sugarcane crop, rising prices of diesel and electricity as the farm laws. “The government is looking to privatise agriculture and is looking at farmers just as labour,” he told The Hindu in early December. He courted controversy when he asked temple trusts to donate to the farmer protest as they do during the Kanwar Yatra (an annual Hindu pilgrimage). The local BJP leaders and Ghaziabad administration failed to realise that their political clout might have reduced but the status of Mahendra Singh Tikait and Chaudhary Charan Singh clans remains intact in western U.P. The ties between the two families had become tenuous after the 2013 Muzaffarnagar riots, but on Thursday, Ajit Singh, Charan Singh’s son and leader of theRashtriya Lok Dal(RLD), was the first one to call Mr. Tikait to say that he is there for the farm leader. Support pours in Mr. Tikait’s breakdown video, along with a tweet of support by RLD vice-president Jayant Chaudhary, spread like wildfire in the sugarcane belt of U.P., Haryana and Rajasthan. His tears were seen as an insult to the farmer’s dignity and a huge crowd turned up for a farmers’ ‘Mahapanchayat’ called by the BKU in Muzaffarnagar and Mathura. More importantly, it bolstered his position as an undisputed leader of farmers in western Uttar Pradesh and Uttarakhand. After his rival V.M. Singh of the Rashtriya Kisan Mazdoor Sangathan left the protest site on Wednesday, holding Mr. Tikait responsible for the Republic Day incidents, Mr. Tikait warned against using the incident to tarnish the Sikh community. “We rushed to Ghazipur once we heard his outburst. He is our sole leader now,” said Sewak Singh Siddhu, a prominent farmer from Udham Singh Nagar, Uttarakhand. Shamim Hussain, a farmer from Bulandshahr, who reached the protest site to offer water to Mr. Tikait, saw hope in the revival of the Jat-Muslim amity that marked the region before the Muzaffarnagar riots. Interestingly, it was after the riots that the Tikait brothers, Rakesh and Naresh, gradually tilted towards the BJP. Senior BJP leader Rajnath Singh had supported Rakesh Tikait during his protest against the Congress government ahead of the 2014 Lok Sabha elections. However, Mr. Tikait didn’t completely burn his bridges with Ajit Singh. He fought the 2014 election on the RLD ticket from Amroha, finishing fourth. Rajvir Singh, a veteran BKU hand, who has worked closely with the Tikait brothers, says though the pagdi of Baba Tikait passed on to the elder brother, it is Rakesh Tikait who is the true inheritor of his father’s legacy. “While Naresh limited himself to Muzaffarnagar, the more astute Rakesh accompanied his father to the protest sites. Police detention and jail are not new to him.”

The Hindu

2021-01-31

January 31 2021 00:00 IST