Indian Farmer Protests from the Prism of Caste Politics in Northern India
The debate of the 'Bourgeois' and 'Proletariat' in the context of
India transcends 'class' and for many, it never goes beyond 'Caste'. The
'Bourgeois' is understandably mostly 'Savarna'[i]
but the 'Proletariat' leadership too is primarily 'Savarna'. It is through
this frame that I intend to look at the nuances of Jat caste politics and the
ongoing Farmer Protests primarily which seems to be restricted to the northern
belt which is dominated by Jats.
Historically, the Jats are a community who primarily indulge in
agriculture but along with the Khatris, which is another sub-caste within the
Jat community – they are considered to be the second-highest in the ‘varna’[ii]
order – the Kshatriyas, who are supposed to be the kings and the fighters. This
debate of the ‘varna’ is a very old debate – while the system was put in place
to organize society and was supposed to be based on one’s qualities and yet
through time as it happens in any decaying society – nepotism restricted the
social mobility giving credence to the hereditary caste system.
The Jat community is not limited to one religion and spread across Northern
India and Pakistan. They constitute Sikhs, Hindus, and Muslims. In contemporary
times, the Jats, through their Khaps[iii]
have exercised considerable power and influence. While many debate that the
Khaps have managed to preserve the cultural practices and social order among
the Jat community, the khaps have also been infamous for regressive
ethnocentrism. The khaps have time and again been in news over the practice of
honor killings and vehement suppression of women's’ rights. It is these same khaps that are now being used to mobise the crowds for the ongoing farmer protests.
Consequently, the protests are not as simple as they seem to be. While
some sections of intellectuals seem to suggest that the issue has an element of
religion, I see this protest knit by caste. The ground-up mobilization has a number of
factors and while right-leaning media outlets have also suggested a Khalistani
hand, I refuse to believe it. Yes, the Khalistani hand is plausible with
reference to the social media mobilization and among certain mischievous elements
within the protests. There are much more pressing fault lines that seem to be exposing
themselves and one among them is the non-representation of any prominent Jat
leader in the cabinet of the incumbent Indian Government. To add some
historical perspective, the incumbent government led by the Bharatiya Janata Party
(BJP) does not have any leader of the aura of Chaudhary Charan Singh and
therefore lacks the capability to sway opinion in its favor.
It is here that I cannot stop myself from comparing the Jats with
the Russian Kulaks[iv]. The Jats are a powerful
landowning community who have a caste-pride of being a martial race and so
believe that they should be in power yet their culture of khaps point towards
their anti-progressive stance just like the Kulaks who were infamous for being
anti-progressive and even regressive enough to prefer the reinstating of the
feudal system. To put things into perspective - Rakesh Tikait is a Jat and his
father Mahender Singh Tikait (who was also a farm leader) was arrested by UP
police in 2008 because he had passed casteist comments against Mayawati (a
Dalit). That said, I recognize the ‘dekulakization’[v]
as one of the most inhuman actions by the Soviet Bolshevik regime and hence
will never endorse such an action.
The collective angst over social media on the Farm Bills is again
another matter altogether. While the year 2020 was clouded by the woes of the
Covid-19 pandemic around the world, the Indian response started with the
clearing out of Shaheen Bagh protestors after fears of the spread of the virus
in huge gatherings. As the normalcy was only returning, the Government of India
resolved to pass three laws which they claim would bring about reforms in the
farming sector. Interestingly, it was these same reforms that Sharad Pawar, who
was an Agriculture Minister in an erstwhile UPA (United Progressive Alliance)
government had initiated. The present NDA (National Democratic Alliance)
Government, on the other hand, only claims to have pushed a reform that was
long overdue. These three new laws encourage the participation of the corporate
sector in the procurement of food grains and therefore provides an open market
for farmers to sell their produce which is at the moment monopolized by the
Food Corporation of India (FCI).
The problem with this is – it snatches away a profit-making
ecosystem from affluent land-owning farmers, primarily Jats, in states such as Punjab and
Haryana, the states, where Government subsidizes the growth of food grains and
procures it through Minimum Support Price (MSP). This corporatization is also
opposed by idealists on the left of the ideological scale as they believe that
it would only lead to crony capitalism. It is this mix of vested interests and ideological
idealism that has turned into a narrative that vehemently opposes any kind of
reform. Social Media which has a different political economy has become a
tool for the spread of various narratives for and against the government. The
greatest casualty of this Social Media disruption has been the ‘mundane’
moderate opinion. Unfortunately, the design implications of social media have
enabled the amplification of only extremist points of view which most often
than not might not be the representative opinion.
To answer the question as to why the Government seems to be on the back foot on these Farmer protests is probably because the bills were passed in the Rajya Sabha through a voice vote and such an action does undermine democratic dialogue. That said non-resolution of the debacle with shifting goalposts at every meeting, even after 11 rounds of talks also points to the vested interests at play. I only hope the resolution comes soon and as Dr. Subramanian Swamy, as well as Dr. Makarand Paranjape, have suggested, it might be wise to have a decentralized implementation of the bills instead. As far as the Social Media mobilization is concerned, even with all the disruption – I believe Social Media is a force for good but it’s essential that the medium does not remain limited to scotch drinking savarna socialists masquerading as bahujans[vi] shaping the discourse with their prowess over the English language. Let’s hope this discourse is not limited to English speaking intellectual elite who mostly have nothing to do with farming or farm laws and are only flowing in the post-modernist rhetoric without any effort to find solutions to existing problems. We must remember that intellectual capacity cannot be determined by mastery of the English language. In India, issues are about ‘caste’ and not ‘class’ and while ‘class’ transcends communities, ethnicities, nations, etc., ‘Caste’ is Indian in origin and Indian in practice. If the Indian left is to be relevant in the times to come, it has to move away from the scotch drinking savarna socialists.
[i] The historical power elites of the Indian sub-continent.
[ii] Varna system is the social stratification based on the Varna, caste. Four basic categories are defined under this system - Brahmins (priests, teachers, and intellectuals), Kshatriyas (warriors, kings, and administrators), Vaishyas (agriculturalists, traders, farmers) and Shudras (workers, laborers, artisans).
[iii] A Khap is a community organization representing a clan or a group of related clans. They are found mostly in northern India, particularly among the people of Western Uttar Pradesh and Haryana.
[iv] According to Marxist–Leninist political theories of the early 20th century, the kulaks were class enemies of the poorer peasants. It was a term used towards the end of the Russian Empire to describe peasants with over 8 acres of land.
[v] Dekulakization was the Soviet campaign of political repressions, including arrests, deportations, or executions of millions of kulaks (prosperous peasants).
[vi] The
Bahujans primarily include (but are not limited to) Dalits and Backward Classes
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