Silence comes as no surprise in response to the Farmer's Protest
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Trigger warning: contains references to suicide and sexual abuse.
The pandemic has not caused the world to stop. In fact, amidst the past year’s stagnation, the number of protests that have taken place means the world feels more mobilised than ever. India, a country of 1.4 billion people, has been no exception. Since September 2020 farmers participating in vast and, until earlier this February, peaceful protests have been met with police brutality, yet Westminster’s response has been mute. There are many factors that can be used to dismiss the silence: it is easy to cite the pandemic and or brush off what happens in India as none of Britain’s business. However, these excuses cover up the real reason: it would be hypocritical for the British government to support the protests without recognising Britain’s brutal treatment of Indians under Empire.
In September 2020, Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his government, the right-wing Hindu Nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) passed three farming bills deregulating the decades-old structure of trade in the agricultural sector. These contentious reforms allow corporations to trade with farmers outside the mandis, regulated state markets, which buy crops at assured floor prices. As such, these reforms no longer protect India’s farmers from an unfettered free market. The mandis are not a perfect system, but they do enshrine sale, pricing, and storage of farm produce. The loosened laws threaten farmers with the devaluation of their crops and exposure to exploitation from corporate monopolies.
Agriculture constitutes over 40% of India’s labour force, but farming is no longer a financially viable form of income. The agricultural industry was almost half of India’s economy in the Sixties and Seventies—now it accounts for barely a sixth of India’s GDP. Most farmers own small plots of land which they rely on to survive, with the average household earning just Rs 6,427 (approximately £63) a month. The shrinking agriculture industry means millions of farmers are struggling to make ends meet, with over half of them in debt. All this has contributed to the grim reality of a suicide crisis amongst the farming community—an emergency that has been making headlines for years. In 2020, an average of 48 agricultural employees committed suicide every day. Farmers’ unions have been demanding change for some time now, but evidence suggests the recent reforms have only exacerbated problems, as the deregulation reforms have already caused the prices of wholesale crops to fall in the mandis. Instead of meeting the needs of farmers, Modi’s government has done the opposite, tearing apart a functioning system rather than striving for a better one, placing the profits of large corporations above the needs of farmers.
Unsurprisingly, farmers have finally snapped. The marginalisation and disregard of farmers by successive governments have generated an anger which fuels the most recent protests we see today. Originating in the predominantly Sikh, agriculture-heavy northern states of Punjab and Haryana—the former known as the ‘bread-basket’ of India due to the sheer size of its food production industry—farmers, including members of my family, began protesting in September. When their voices went unheard, a 300,000-strong march headed to Delhi, on foot and in tractors. On November 26th, one-fifth of the population, an estimated 250 million workers, participated in a nationwide strike—the largest in history. Hundreds of thousands of farmers are still protesting, with tens of thousands living in sprawling camps on the outskirts of Delhi. These camps function as quasi-towns. Having vowed not to move until the laws are repealed, protestors have constructed libraries, kitchens, and medical tents, ensuring they can survive for however long it takes the government to meet their demands. However, instead of being met by a government willing to negotiate, peaceful protestors have been confronted with police brutality, facing gas, water cannons, and ruthless beatings.
The governmental treatment of protestors is a violation of human rights. Unfortunately, police brutality has not been the only violence protestors have faced. Electricity and water sources to the protestor’s camps have at times been cut off, rendering protestors exposed and vulnerable to illness and harsh weather conditions. The Internet is temporarily shut off in areas of Delhi and Haryana, often coinciding with strikes and rallies, preventing the spread of information across India. Journalists and activists have been arrested, with accusations of violent and sexual assault in prison; no doubt the aim being to deter individuals from speaking out and to prevent figureheads of the movement from being established. In March 2021, According to Samyukat Kisan Morcha, a United Front of 40 farmers’ unions, 248 protestors have died. There has been no clear death toll since, but it is a figure that we can only assume has continued to climb. By denying the farmers media coverage, it is clear Modi’s government wants to silence the protestors, preventing them from attracting the attention of the wider world.
Judging by Westminster’s hushed response, the British government seems happy to comply with Modi’s desires.
On December 9th, when Labour MP Tanmanjeet Singh Dhesi asked Boris Johnson to comment on the demonstrations in India during Prime Minister’s Questions, Johnson showed an appalling level of ignorance, responding: ‘Our view is that of course we have serious concerns about what is happening between India and Pakistan, but these are pre-eminently matters for those two governments to settle.’ Fluctuating tensions over territorial disputes between India and Pakistan are a wholly different matter—one also rooted in colonial rule and Partition, but that is a conversation for another day. Johnson’s response caused frustration in Parliament, with MPs including Sharon Hodgson, Afzal Khan, and Zarah Sultana voicing support for Dhesi when he subsequently labelled Johnson ‘absolutely clueless’. But Johnson’s response did not only provoke anger in Parliament. When questioning Johnson, Dhesi spoke on behalf of the ‘many constituents, especially those emanating from Punjab and other parts of India’ who have been impacted by the ongoing protests. I can affirm this. Being of Sikh Punjabi heritage, I come from a long line of farmers; my family in India still farm the ancestral land. The welfare of my family members who are participating in the protests is much cause for concern amongst my family in the UK. But it is not only my family and Dhesi’s constituents who are invested in the development of events in India. Indians constitute the largest ethnic group in the English and Welsh population, meaning our concerns are shared throughout the country, as proven by the thousands of British Asians who participated in December’s global protest of diasporas in solidarity with those in India.
It is no coincidence that I am one of such a large community. As members of the British Empire, and therefore British citizens, the Indian community have had a presence in Britain for centuries. An increasing number settled permanently after the First and Second World Wars, when men from India, and what is now Pakistan and Bangladesh, were conscripted to fight in the wars, and then aid the reconstruction of Britain after the wars ended, helping to resolve labour shortages. Given this, it is a poor excuse that Johnson’s Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office labelled the protests as ‘a matter for the government of India’ in response to a letter signed by 36 MPs, which urged his government to voice support of the peaceful protests. However, this is the government that is led by a Prime Minister who boasts that India’s economic progress is a ‘continu[ation of the] legacy of Britain’ and that former colonies ‘had the benefit of British rule’. If Johnson and his government are so concerned with continuing the legacy of British rule in India, then why are they not taking a stand against an Indian government that is directly opposing the right to peaceful protest, one of the British values that they supposedly hold so dearly?
The answer, I would say, is because Modi’s response to the protests is steeped in British legacy, just not the rose-tinted legacy of Empire that Johnson drools over. Modi’s actions have been almost verbatim imitations of the extreme abuses of power employed by Britain during colonial rule. At the start of the 18th Century, India’s share of the world economy was 27%, almost equivalent to the share of the entire European continent. Under the rule of the East India Company followed by the British Crown, India’s share of the world’s economy had fallen to just 3% by the time it gained Independence in 1947. The reason is simple: Britain exploited India for its own prosperity. British colonial rule in India was one of massacre, famine, oppression, and deprivation, with India’s resources and labour force substantially financing Britain’s economic rise and imperial global dominance. Therefore, abuse of power is hardly a new phenomenon in Indian history.
Upon hearing of Modi’s government’s handling of the protestors, I was reminded of the treatment of Indians, particularly Indian farmers, under British colonial rule, and I am not alone in this sentiment. Back in September, the Indian National Congress Party politician Randeep Singh Surjewala slammed the contentious reforms, labelling Modi as ‘acting like the East India Company’. This is not simply an attention-grabbing soundbite, but an expression of frustration and anger that has been growing throughout India. The Farmer’s Manifesto, published in 2019, opens: ‘seven decades after India won Independence from British colonial rule, the largest section of our population, the farmers, have remained bound by the chain of laws and regulations’. For centuries, Indians have protested for the right to be heard and again, we have been silenced.
While silence has been forced upon Indians, it has undeniably been a choice for the British government. To say Britain is uncomfortable with the realities of its colonial past is an understatement, with the truth about Britain’s feelings towards Empire lying in not what is said, but what is unsaid. Time and again, the discussion of reparations and apologies has been raised and then side stepped, most notably, the Queen’s refusal to apologise for the Jallianwala Bagh massacre on its centenary in 2019. This silence is an invisible thread holding together a patchwork of lies which defines Colonial countries as being lucky to have ‘the benefit of British rule’, a mantra which runs through all elements of our society. It starts with an education system which deliberately avoids all mention of Empire, resulting in a population which for generations has passed through the system with a gaping hole in their knowledge of British history, therefore taking pride in ‘giving India the railways’, but unable to credit the manual labourers who died in the process. We walk around London and admire the grandeur and aesthetic of colonial-style buildings without realising that it was built on the wealth generated by India. We eat basmati rice without acknowledging that it is the farmers in India, the ones protesting on the streets as I write, that are feeding us from across the world. These are only some of the many ways in which the legacy of Empire touches our daily lives. The more I learn about colonial rule in India, the more I realise that this silence is deafening, and there is one large Indian elephant in the room.
That is the problem with threads—when unpicked, the whole salwar kameez falls apart. Voicing support for the Indian farmers’ rights to peacefully protest would in turn condemn the violation of human rights instigated and allowed by Modi’s government. Denouncing these abuses of power in India would entail an admittance of centuries of Indian oppression under the rule of the East India Company and the Crown. Britain’s colonial legacy is alive and well in this country, as well as in India, and the British government cannot comment upon the atrocities allowed under Modi’s government without recognising how they mirror those of Imperial Britain. The silence of the Johnson government is the clearest indication that Britain is still unwilling to admit their mistakes, nor recognise the ways they still benefit from them.
It is not unreasonable to ask our Prime Minister to voice support for the protestors. Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau did so in November, stating ‘Canada will always be there to defend the right to peaceful protest,’ assuring Canadian Indians, the majority of whom being Sikh, that ‘we have reached out through multiple means directly to the Indian authorities to highlight our concerns’. Trudeau’s comments angered Modi, but they resonated throughout Canada and the farming community in India. Despite a strained and complex relationship with Modi, Trudeau took a stand on behalf of his constituents, citing that Sikh values are Canadian values. But it is not only Sikh and Candian values that are being threatened by the treatment of the protesting farmers —it is the fundamental principles of human rights, named so in order to be universally enshrined and upheld. Therefore, it is frustrating when, with a simple tweet, Rihanna and Greta Thunberg do more to uphold them than our own government.
Of course, it is possible for the British government to express support for the protestors without recognising the truths of their colonial past in India. In fact, I would rather they did this than nothing at all. However, while the two may appear to be separate issues—a sentiment of separation exaggerated by Modi’s government lashing out at anyone who voices opposition to them—they are not mutually exclusive. Without embarking on a true recognition of Britain's colonial rule in India, any expression of solidarity with the protesting farmers will feel like hot air, as empty of sincerity as our curriculum is of Empire. Britain’s position on the world stage has changed dramatically since the days of Empire. Much of our nationalist rhetoric rests on the supposed laurels of Imperial Britain, but it is time to move on from this outdated self-importance, and re-evaluate what it is our country stands for—is it shying away from the truth? Or facing it head on, and protecting human rights? If Britain wants to be a player on the world stage, it needs to acknowledge the true actions of its past and their lasting implications on the present, in order to move forward into the future.