Farmers Movement Archive

Balli Cheema’s poetic appeal: Don’t ditch morcha for votes

Bathinda: Uttarakhand-based revolutionary poet and farmer leader Balli Singh Cheema has penned a poem to air his anger against farm leaders who are aspiring to become politicians. Concerned by the political actions of a farmer leader who is asking other farm unionists to take the political plunge, Cheema’s poem reads: “Morcha chadd ke vota wale raah te turio na; bhole bhale loka naal dhokha kario na; morche de modhe te chad ke neta banio na; masah masah taan ik hoye han, paada paio na (don’t leave the protest for votes; don’t deceive innocent people; don’t use the protest to become a political leader; we have united after long, don’t create divisions now).” Cheema (69), who is popular for his poems, had got the prestigious Gangasharan Singh Puraskar for outstanding contribution in Hindi literature in 2012, from then President Pratibha Patil. Only recently, he was taken into the five-member ad-hoc committee formed by farm organisation BKU (Ekta Ugrahan) while setting up Uttrakhand unit of the organisation. Haryana-based farm leader Gurnam Singh Charuni had lent support to newly formed party Bhartiya Arthik Party (BAP), which has declared Charuni as its CM face. Earlier, Charuni had been asking Punjab-based farm leaders to contest elections. Cheema said when a farm leader started talking about politics, he felt hurt and now that leader had gone ahead and made his political intentions clear. “Concerned, I have penned down the poem; it is the voice of many who want the kisan morcha to focus only on getting its core demands met. The morcha should not have anything with politics,” he said. Balli said the farm struggle was not a platform for fulfilling the political aspirations of any leader, but the entire nation was looking towards the morcha and even people from many other countries too were looking towards the morcha and its achievements.

The Times of India

2021-08-12

Chandigarh