Gita Gopinath, IMF chief economist, was quoted by the media as having said that the new farm laws had the potential to raise farm income. An expert in the field, she is certainly not a ‘bhakt’; on the contrary, if she has had a close association with a government it has been with the Communist regime in Kerala, where she was the economic advisor to the current chief minister. It is also no surprise that many politicians and parties opposing the farm bills were in the past asking for the very same reforms!
In the cacophony of this discourse and shifting positions, add the Khalistani voices in the Sikh diaspora scattered between England and Canada, far-left members of the polity in the US and England, embattled PM Trudeau trying to quell opponent Jagmeet Singh and you have a khichdi of interests that have very little to do with the laws or even India. The only missing ingredient was celebrity, and that is when international pop star Rhianna, former porn actress Mia Khalifa, Meena Harris, niece of Kamala Harris and climate activist Greta Thunberg decided to jump in with tweets.
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These characters weighed in on a movement that was being chaperoned by the likes of the pro-Khalistani Poetic Justice Foundation, who were helpfully providing ‘tool kits’ to celebrity tweeters with objectives like damaging “India’s yoga and chai” image. One has to ask: how much of this movement has to do with the farm bill? Instead, these interventions are, at the very least, an anti-India defamation campaign. Unfortunately for them, Greta tweeted the ‘toolkit’ and the contents went public, laying bare a strategy that included the violent Republic Day protests.
In our interconnected world, it is but natural to be impacted by happenings in different parts of the globe. Opinion is free, but in this case, as alleged in a publication, Rihanna was paid $2.5 million for her tweet! When a disinformation campaign is funded, planned and executed it is within the targeted country’s rights to call out and counter global propaganda. Individuals from a prime minister to a porn star have commented on the farm laws. In fact, Trudeau’s government has attacked India for its support of farmers’ incomes at the WTO. Yet he supports the protests?
The bill was passed by India’s Parliament and the right to protest is a democratic right, but the scenes of violence that were witnessed at the Red Fort, from where Indian prime ministers address the nation, was reminiscent of the siege of the US Capitol on January 6. However, whilst that was called an insurrection, in India, those same voices see the Republic Day riots, in which over 300 cops were injured, as a “peaceful protest” and human rights violation. Leading this duplicity is the niece of the new American vice president, Meena Harris, already in the crosshairs of the Biden administration over her business ventures that allegedly capitalise on her aunt’s position. True to reputation, she has on Twitter managed to convert the farmers’ protests into a witch hunt against herself, with hyperboles like “I will not be silenced”. With a husband who was a former top executive with Facebook and Auntie Kamala, it is unlikely that she is in danger of social media censorship, although the Biden camp may get to her before anyone else, going by US media reports.
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It is to the government’s credit that it has pursued dialogue with the protesting farmers, who are a fraction of the approximately 150 million Indian farmers. This protest, despite the hype, is by no means an all-India farmers’ protest, but in a democracy, all concerns must be addressed. At the same time, if the country is being defamed in a calibrated and organised fashion, the government is well within its rights and obliged to counter it and put out the true facts. India is the largest democracy in the world. It is more than capable of dealing with its issues and responding to narratives that seek to seed separatism in the country and divert the protest from farmers’ concerns as well as encourage and perpetuate agrarian poverty that fatten middle men—all to serve political agenda. After all, a new India will be an India that has found its voice in the din of Western grandstanding.
(Views are personal)
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Advaita Kala, Author, columnist
