Running On Jat Fuel

Time is a great healer, they say. On January 29, many in western Uttar Pradesh’s Muzaffarnagar stood witness to a moment of rapprochement that could inflect India’s political history—or not. It’s vital to offer that caveat right at the outset. For, the unseen undercurrents of our politics do not necessarily submit to neat surface syllogisms. Contrary pulls make up our political psychology to such an extent that its effects often seem irrational. And yet, when leaders of two communities—Jats and Muslims—came together to address a mahapanchayat in Sisauli village, no one could be faulted for seeing in that event a kind of tectonic shift. The ground itself moving...but back to its original, organic whole. Towards a suture, towards healing.

This needs the backstory. Healing presupposes a wound, and this one was of the order of a mini Partition. The death toll in the Muzaffarnagar riots wasn’t high—only about 60—but the incidents spoke of a complete social amputation. Over 50,000 Muslims found themselves wrenched away from their old homes, like uproo­ted trees, never able to go back to their soil. It happened in 2013—a year before the Modi era began formally. Muzaffarnagar’s Jats—the same land-owning farmers who have now edged their way to the centrestage of the farmer protests—­violently sundered their old ties with local Muslims. Economic ties, as much as social—­typically, the Muslims were landless and worked on the Jats’ farms. That whole eventscape had underlined one fact in blood: the Jats, a socially cohesive rural community spread over a continuum in north-western India, but somewhat outside the classic Hindu varna order, had been won over by Hindutva. This applied nearly ­unfailin­gly across western UP, Haryana, Delhi and Rajasthan: the Jats became one of the most reliable social bulwarks for the BJP in the years to come. Jat leaders from the Congress moved over or threatened to; young Dushyant Chautala, of Jat patriarch Devi Lal’s lineage, splintered from the INLD and is in alliance with saffron, as Haryana deputy CM; others like the promising Jayant Chaudhary, grandson of the iconic Chaudhary Charan Singh and RLD leader, found the going tough. Even the wounds of demonetisation couldn’t make the Jats budge from their new ­affiliation.

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That deep sense of membership is what showed signs of being loosened when, sharing the stage with local Jat satraps, prominent Muslim leader Ghulam Mohammed Jaula spoke about the deep scars inflicted on the commun­ity by the 2013 riots. Soon, as several thousand people listened in silence, Jat farmer leader Naresh Tikait—brother of Rakesh Tikait, whose tears gave a fresh impetus to the movement, and both sons of Mahendra Singh Tikait, who has a legend-like status in the community—admitted it was a mistake to associate with the BJP. The crowd included thousands of Muslims, an unpreceden­ted participation, the first time after 2013, which had shattered the historic bond between the two communities in the region. As the leaders vowed in public to alleviate the pain and anguish caused over the past seven years, what we saw was an attempt to revive an old symbiosis. Common sense had dawned later: as Outlook has reported earlier, the local Jats have for years been ruing the idiocy of driving away a stable source of labour and making reparative attempts.

Will this script a new chapter of Jat-Muslim unity? We don’t know yet. The Tikait story shows no consistent politics except that which brings advantage—Rakesh’s chequered political career is proof (enough voices warn against letting him off the hook too easily for his acquiescence in 2013). And the neo-Hindu nationalism of the BJP, as a way of thinking, has percolated deep in rural India via modern forms of dissemination. But to see the sons of Mahendra Tikait, who founded the Bharatiya Kisan Union (BKU), speaking thus in public is a sign of a deep stirring. Of the language shifting from politics to economics, where both the victim and perpetrator of 2013 find a common ground of victimhood and betrayal, a common foe. In Haryana, that resonant old phrase, ‘hukka paani band’—meaning a cessation of the basic courtesy of offering hookah and water, essentially a social boycott—was deployed by the Phogat khap against Dushyant Chautala for being on the other side of Rakesh Tikait. (The name Phogat, via wrestler-turned-BJP politician Babita Phogat, should tell you how deep this comes from within an evangelised community.) Jayant Chaudhary issued the same ‘hukka paani band’ call at the Muzaffarnagar mahapachayat against BJP leaders. That’s the power the Tikait name wields. Jats are showing a willingness to boycott community leaders who stand against them, while rekindling tangible old ties. Jaula, for instance, was Tikait Sr’s close aide in the BKU and quit only in the wake of 2013.

The mahapanchayat took place a day after Rakesh Tikait made an ­emotional appeal for support at the Ghazipur border, where kisan unions have been protesting against the ­Centre’s new farm laws. His teary appeal shook western UP, and won hearts in ­neighbouring ­Haryana and Punjab too. Braving ­inclement weather and a hostile ­administration, scores of villagers set out for Ghazipur that night, Jaula tells ­Outlook—mouthing slogans such as ­‘aansu ka badla khoon se’ (blood for tears). Chaudhary Birender Singh, iconic Jat leader Sir Chhotu Ram’s grandson and one of those who had shifted with the winds of change (joining the BJP in 2014 after being a Congressman in ­Haryana for 42 years), says there wasn’t much participation from UP before that Tikait episode. In fact, the Ghazipur ­protest site was almost empty, with under 500 people left, who too were in ­retreat mode. “Yogi Adityanath is ­counted among the most important and successful CMs. Thodi si galti kar di ­unhone (he made a small mistake),” he says. Police was deployed in large ­numbers to evict the farmers. The BJP MLA from Loni, Ghaziabad, Nand Kishore Gujjar, is also believed to have landed up at the site with 100-odd supporters, to offer more of that gentle persuasion. That was when Tikait changed his mind about leaving and broke down. “That was the turning point, and brought in farmers from western UP in droves,” says Birender Singh. And suddenly, the Jats from Haryana and UP stood united, recalling their strong socio-cultural ties of ‘roti-beti ka rishta’.

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A spirit of unity among Jats—not to speak of an entente with Muslims—can have implications in UP and Haryana, both states with non-Jat CMs—­Adityanath and Manohar Lal Khattar. The farm anger is not convenient for the BJP: UP, Punjab and Uttarakhand go to polls next year. The prospect of Jat consolidation and Jat-Muslim unity can cast a shadow on 2022. “Haryana’s elections are still three-and-a-half years away, but the impact is already visible. BJP leaders are hesitant to go to villages. They know they are not welcome there. There’s too much anger against them,” says Birender Singh. “UP is an important state for us. We can’t afford to lose it. The government should try and resolve things through dialogue. Hukumat ka dil bada hona chahiye (the regime needs to have a big heart). Peasant movements should never be taken lightly or ignored. History would stand witness. Jats and Muslims used to be together since Charan Singh’s time till 2013 divided them. Western UP’s population is about one-third Muslim and seven per cent Jat. The Jats are socially prominent and politically aggressive. Their coming together will certainly be problematic for the BJP.”

In 2017, the BJP won three-quarters of western UP, a swathe that also has Gujjars, Yadavs, savarna castes and, prominently, Dalits. That last element, if it comes together in an axis, would be a real event. Dalit rights activist Dr Satish Prakash, who was at the Muzaffarnagar meeting, says he hasn’t seen mobilisation on this scale before, and that anger against the government is palpable. “UP decides who should rule India. The hukka paani band call at the meetings will create a psychological impact among the public,” adds Prakash, an associate professor at Meerut College.

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Political analyst Sudhir Panwar says Jats won the BJP three elections in UP—the big ones in 2014 and 2019, and the 2017 assembly polls. “They have no historic affinity towards the BJP. They went with saffron only due to the polarisation caused by 2013. Now the situation is different. Many villages have put banners warning the BJP leaders to stay away,” he tells Outlook. Getting votes by inciting passions is one thing, but fulfilling people’s aspirations is another, says Panwar, a former member of the UP Planning Commission. He says the government has done little for farmers in the past six years. “That disaffection has found an expression in this outburst. In the past four years, sugarcane price has gone up only by Rs 10 per quintal. No payment since last year. UP mills currently owe cane farmers over Rs 11,000 crore, including Rs 1,850 crore from last season. The youngsters who went with the BJP hoping for a better future are now all part of the agitation,” adds Panwar, who contested the 2017 elections from Thana Bhawan in western UP on a Samajwadi Party ticket. The Hathras case, he says, became another turning point when Jayant was lathicharged by police.

Panwar also cautions against seeing the farmer agitation as a ‘Jat’ thing. “The government is trying to give it a casteist colour. They even tried to turn it into a Jat vs Gujjar issue, sending Nand Kishore Garg to Ghazipur. What the BJP doesn’t realise is, if it continues like this, the agitation will influence the whole rural ecosystem. It won’t take too long for it to be converted into a full-fledged rural agitation,” says Panwar. Jaula too sees this as a turning point in history, with the potential to change social equations.

Journalist Dr Ravindra Rana, who has covered Muzaffarnagar for decades, says the BJP is aware of the risks. “That’s why the PM made his mollifying statement after the border fracas,” he says. Like Panwar and Jaula, Rana too thinks agrarian politics moving ­centrestage is historically momentous. “After all, this region gave a PM to the country, Charan Singh,” Rana adds. The change in mood and flavour tips things in favour of the RLD, say observers. “When Rakesh Tikait cried, he wasn’t in a position for a mass mobilisation,” Rana claims. “It was Ajit Singh’s call that did it.”

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Ajit Singh, son of Charan Singh and father of Jayant, was an early IITian who went to the US and worked with IBM as a computer scientist in the 1960s—­hardly your average Jat farmer. He has also been on all sides of politics—including as a minister under A.B. Vajpayee. One could even say Jayant—seeking in inclement weather to shore up the old legacy, including with his latest mahapancha­yats that really do exhibit his pull—struggles against a history of fairweather politics. But that the ownership of a movement is deemed desirable is itself a sign of its value. Ajit Singh, now 82, says the BJP subsumed the Jats under its ‘Hindu’ votebank. Speaking to Outlook, the former Union agriculture minister places them at the centre of a politics governed by agri-economics. “Chaudhary Charan Singh’s most important contribution is that he made the farmer a votebank. After that, every party started talking about farmers. Modi made that a Hindu-Muslim issue,” says Ajit Singh. He recalls the words of a 90-year-old farmer at the protest site, who was asked why the new laws weren’t good for farmers. “The old man said if the laws were good for farmers, Charan Singh would have made it 70 years back.” Surinder S. Jodhka, professor of sociology, JNU, sees here a consolidation of multiple groups with a common source in farming—including, especially, a mass participation of young people on the cusp of moving away from it. That connects these protests with streams beyond the farm crisis, feels Jodhka, who has done extensive studies among Jats and other caste groups in Haryana and UP. “When the young speak, they don’t speak about agriculture. They speak about Modi. They speak about how the regime is anti-‘us’. They don’t relate to agriculture, they don’t have that kind of landholdings, they are fluid. And now they have militantly organised against the BJP,” says Jodhka. He has his finger on a mobile landscape. “The Jat today is different from the Jats of 20 years back. They look for a different kind of democracy. Then, their position in rural society was unquestioned. My empirical work in rural Punjab and Haryana shows the growing ­fragmentation of agriculture, its general decline as an ethos or aspirational space,” he says. Still, it makes ­connections. Like that between Punjab’s ‘Jatt’ Sikhs and Haryana’s Jats. ­“Haryana will lose as much as Punjab. It’s just that Punjab farmers understood it much before others. It’s not simply caste or religion,” adds Jodhka.

Haryana is the untold story. The BJP is truly in the dock here, as opposition to the bills from inside government and outside gathers momentum. Haryana, with a 27 per cent Jat population, has been on the edge since the protests erupted at the Delhi borders. The Khattar-led coalition has been walking a tightrope; seven MLAs of Dushyant Chautala’s Jannayak Janta Party (JJP) have raised the banner of rebellion. Ram Kumar Gautam, a vocal JJP MLA, says the government failed to gauge people’s sentiments. “The CM had to cancel a public programme, people are very angry. It happened in a non-Jat belt. Imagine if it had happened in a Jat area,” says Gautam, who adds for good measure that Dushyant runs the party like a business house. “I’m waiting for the right time to get out. Dushyant is enjoying power alone, though our party has 10 MLAs.” Dushyant isn’t having a good time. His uncle, Abhay Chautala, leader of the rump INLD, who quit as its lone MLA, says he resigned to protect Devi Lal’s legacy. “Dushyant should have resigned and sat with the farmers. But he only cares for power,” says Chautala.

The main opposition party, Congress, is staying curiously aloof and risk-averse. Speaking to Outlook, both Congress Rajya Sabha member Deepender Hooda and state Congress chief Kumari Selja say the party is averse to playing politics. No unconstitutional means, says Selja, putting the ball in the other court. “The JJP MLAs have been talking…this is the right time to stand up and get counted. We wish they listen to their own conscience, to people’s voices, and come out openly,” she adds.

In Rajasthan too, the BJP will have to pay a heavy price in the upcoming bypolls, says Ram Jat, president, Kisan Mahapanchayat. The Jats comprise an estimated 12-19 per cent of the state’s population. “They have moved away from the BJP. That’s why their ally Hanuman Beniwal left the NDA. Jat ire will impact the BJP. Mahapanchayats are happening in every district,” he says. Beniwal, leader of the Rashtriya Loktantrik Party, claims he couldn’t go along with the anti-farmer stand anymore. “I was given assurances about a solution, but the government is adamant,” he says. He has planned his own tractor rally in Rajasthan on February 5—the mood is clearly spreading. On the things being done at Delhi’s borders, like securing the highways with pits, nails and barbed wires, he says these can’t crush the agitation. “It is alright to adopt such means on the LoC, but not for farmers,” he adds.

The leaders speaking thus is an index of what’s happening on the ground—from Baghpat, Mathura, Bijnore in UP to Sonepat, Rohtak and Bhiwani in Haryana, and Nagaur, Sikar and Churu in Rajasthan. The BJP leaders on ground are frustrated and hope the leadership will resolve the issue at the earliest.

Veteran Rajasthan Jat leader, Col Sonaram Chaudhary, says the farmers have a genuine problem. “The BJP will suffer if it doesn’t address it. They should not make it a prestige issue,” he tells ­Outlook, letting on a ‘personal opinion’. A four-time MP from Barmer, he shifted to the BJP from the Congress in 2014—because he had “some issues” with Ashok Gehlot. Chaudhary is in Delhi, trying to meet PM Modi and party chief J.P. Nadda. “I want to apprise them of the ground situation. There is a lot of anger. People are telling me to go back to the Congress since they say they are not going to vote for the BJP anymore,” he says. Other BJP leaders are still ­sanguine. “The PM himself has reached out to farmers. Even they have to meet us halfway. Or some way at least,” says a senior party leader. BJP’s Kisan Morcha chief, Raj Kumar Chahar, a Jat leader himself, claims there is a political conspiracy against Modi. “He is so popular that they can’t make a dent,” he says, claiming that 60 per cent of the farmers support this bill. “Only some farmer organisations are opposing it. We will soon handle them.”

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Jats In The Agitation

Organisations & Platforms

• Sanyukt Kisan Morcha A united front of over 400 Indian farmers unions­—the bulk of them from Punjab and Haryana—it was part of the team that held talks with the government. This group is also coordinating the farmers’ protests in and around Delhi, and charting plans for agitations across the country.
• All India Kisan Sangharsh Coordination Committee (AIKSCC) An umbrella of over 250 farmer groups, it came into being after the action against farmers in Madhya Pradesh for seeking better remuneration and freedom from indebtedness.
• Bhoomi Adhikar Andolan It represents around 300 farmer groups that came together in 2015 to fight for protection of land rights, including forest rights. It is part of the groups staging protests in Delhi and across different states.
• All India Kisan Sabha The farmers’ wing of the Communist Party of India is among groups at the forefront of the agitation. It has a presence in all states.
• All India Kisan Sabha The farmers’ group affiliated with the CPI(M) is also part of the protests. This group too has a pan-India presence.
• Rashtriya Kisan Mazdoor Sangathan Led by V.M. Singh, former convenor of the AIKSCC, it did not fully back plans for staging protests. Formal parting of ways came after the Republic Day tractor parade by farmers and the violence thereafter.
• Consortium of Indian Farmers Associations (CIFA) It is not part of the farmers’ protests as its members believe that the farm sector needs reforms to become globally competitive.
• All India Progressive Farmers Association It too is not part of the protests as its members believe in raising productivity through innovation and adoption of new technology for growth and marketing.
• Bharatiya Kisan Union (Bhanu) It is among the groups that sought the Supreme Court’s intervention to break the impasse.