When Rakesh Tikait — the now de facto leader of the Bharatiya Kisan Union — broke into tears in front of the media last week, he infused a new life into the farmers’ protest following the Republic Day violence. But Tikait, while becoming the latest leader in Indian politics to discover the effective use of ‘art of crying’, succeeded in doing something else too. He made India’s desperate liberals forget all about his controversial role in the 2013 Muzaffarnagar riots and became their new champion in the ideological and democratic struggle against Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his Bharatiya Janata Party government at the Centre.
Through his tearful act, not only did Tikait wipe away popular memories of the 2013 riots but he also managed to turn a movement being led by Sikh farmers into a Jat-led rebellion with the chutzpah to stand up to the Yogi Adityanath government in Uttar Pradesh.
A protest that rose from the fields of Punjab has suddenly made inroads into the wild wild west of Uttar Pradesh, the newly found bastion of the BJP, which reaped massive political and electoral dividends from the August 2013 mahapanchayat that led to communal riots following tensions over three killings a few weeks earlier in Muzaffarnagar district. The Bharatiya Kisan Union (BKU) and several BJP leaders had actively participated in the mahapanchayat, while Tikait and his elder brother Naresh were among the many named in the FIRs filed after the riots.
But all that seems a forgotten memory now as Rakesh Tikait leads the farmers, and the Indian liberals’ cause, in the protest against the Modi government’s three farm laws.
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Politics doesn’t hate tears
A visibly helpless Tikait cried in front of the media reiterating that he would rather kill himself than bow down to the iron-fisted government if it doesn’t repeal the farm laws. That brought the farmers’ protest, which seemed to be losing public support after the parallel ‘tractor parade’ on Republic Day ended in large-scale violence in Delhi, back on track. The protest is more intense and visibly more diverse now. People from Meerut, Baghpat, Bijnor, Muzaffarnagar, Moradabad and Bulandshahr soon began to throng to Delhi’s Ghazipur border to join the farmers’ struggle.
The last politician I remember who shed tears and moved public sentiment like this is Narendra Modi. In fact, Modi has perfected the art of making himself look earnest, relatable and true to any cause he undertakes just by crying. Be it demonetisation in 2016, when he cried asking people to trust him and deal with the hardships. Or when he cried after a paralysed woman called him “God” for providing medicines at subsidised rates. By shedding some tears on camera, one can make even disastrous policies look so much better.
While demonetisation did nothing to purge black money or make India a cashless economy, the Janaushadhi scheme had glaring irregularities and lapses in its accounting and misappropriation of interests raised from fixed deposits of the government grants.
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The liberal dilemma
But the comparison isn’t between Rakesh Tikait and Narendra Modi’s crying prowess. It is about Tikait’s ability to bring the horribly gone-wrong farmers’ protest back on track. And about people, like me, saying that a new leader is on the block.
So, is Rakesh Tikait, one of the accused in the Muzaffarnagar riots that left 66 people dead, most of them Muslims, and rendered more than 60,000 people homeless, the new leader in our fight against the majoritarian politics led by Hindu nationalist leaders?
And herein lies the liberal dilemma.
How desperate are we for an alternative to the BJP’s Modi-Yogi-Shah trinity that a constable-turned-politician once hand in glove with the BJP should now be hailed as a revolutionary who would challenge the current power holders? Perhaps he can be accepted now because he has expressed his regret for supporting the BJP.
As award-winning documentary filmmaker Nakul Singh Sawhney notes, “After 2019 (Lok Sabha election), there were many protests in Muzaffarnagar and Shamli districts led by BKU. What was interesting was the presence of many Muslim farmers… It was evident that Rakesh Tikait was trying hard to revive BKU.” On 29 January 2021, two days after Tikait’s tearful speech, a mahapanchayat in Sisauli village was attended by thousands of people.
According to Sawhney, when BKU leader Ghulam Mohammad Jaula got on stage and reminded Tikait of his “two biggest mistakes” — of “killing Muslims” and getting “Ajit Singh defeated” — “there was no booing, no attempts at shutting him up. There was pin drop silence. Introspection.” At the mahapanchayat, Sawhney writes, “A very rare decision was taken — to boycott the BJP.”
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The answer is simple
There is nothing called a ‘perfect leader’. And it is only someone like Rakesh Tikait who, with his advantage of being perceived as a ‘bharat-mata-ka-saput’ (son of the soil), and who probably knows the workings of the BJP, understands what it takes to bring the mammoth down.
In fact, for the longest time, Tikait was considered a ‘stooge’ of the BJP in the current farmers’ protest. But when he stood ground in the wake of several kisan morchas and leaders, especially Rashtriya Kisan Mazdoor Sangathan chief V.M. Singh, withdrawing from the protests fearing sedition charges, Tikait gave the farmers a reason to rally behind him. His resolve to not leave Ghazipur despite the UP government’s eviction orders catapulted him from a doubtful character to a national hero.
That doesn’t mean the end of all challenges and obstacles on Tikait’s path to become the new liberal hero. Farmers at the Ghazipur border have reportedly turned away Muslim students from Jamia Millia Islamia who had come to extend their support. But the uniqueness of the farmers’ protest is that it isn’t about religion and will never become one, regardless of some protesters unfurling the Nishan Sahib at Lal Qila. And this has been made possible largely due to Rakesh Tikait. If larger sections of the Indian public start judging the Modi government for its policies as opposed to just Hindutva, it will be a huge advantage for the country’s absentee opposition to present itself as an option to the voters.
Farmers will always have people’s sympathy. You may call Sikh protesters ‘khalistanis’ and Muslim protesters ‘jihadis’ but you can never make the country’s citizens see farmers as ‘anti-national’. And if Tikait manages to keep the protest roaring and eventually make the Modi government cave in to the farmers’ demands, the greener pastures of the BJP-led central government will soon start turning arid. For now, shouldn’t India’s liberals then take what they get and leave other fights for another day?
The author is a political observer and writer. Views are personal.