The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has redoubled efforts to distance the farmer protests from the farm issues ahead of elections in states such as Punjab and Uttar Pradesh, where the demand from a section of farmers’ for repealing the farm laws enacted last year has dominated the discourse and is expected to sway the electoral outcome.
Functionaries aware of the matter said the BJP leadership has explicitly instructed the cadre to reinforce that the ongoing farm protests are “motivated” and an attempt to “destabilise” the country. The party has consistently tried to attribute the opposition to the three farm laws to “provocation” by politically motivated groups. It has alleged the protestors, who have been camping near the Delhi borders since December last year, have been “infiltrated by anti-national elements.”
BJP general secretary Dushyant Gautam last year cited alleged pro-Pakistan and pro-Khalistan slogans shouted at a protest site as examples of the agitation having been “hijacked by terrorists and anti-national forces”. Similar sentiments have been expressed by other BJP leaders at various public events.
After Sunday’s violence in Uttar Pradesh’s Lakhimpur Kheri during a protest by farmers that left eight dead, BJP’s national secretary Y Satya Kumar tweeted, “…The manner in which the goons posing as so-called farmers are carrying out violent agitations in Uttar Pradesh, seems to be not a coincidence but a well-planned experiment. Jihadi and Khalistani chaotic elements want to spread unrest in the state.”
BJP leaders in Delhi, who spoke on condition of anonymity, asserted Sunday’s violence was an indication of farmers being used “as surrogates” by those who “want to destabilise the nation.”
“The government has held 11 rounds of meetings with the farmers and tried to address their concerns. However, a section of the so-called farmers has been protesting and creating a false narrative about the laws. The protests are limited to Punjab, parts of Haryana, and Uttar Pradesh. Sunday’s violence is a conspiracy by those who want to create trouble,” said a party leader, requesting anonymity.
Union minister of state for home affairs Ajay Mishra Teni has been in the eye of the storm after farmers alleged that his son’s car mowed down some cultivators protesting against the laws and triggered the violence in Lakhimpur Kheri. Teni has also demanded a probe into the violence.
In a statement, the minister said his son was not involved and blamed farmers for stoking violence in Lakhimpur Kheri. He called the incident a conspiracy and said that some “miscreants” from among the agitating farmers started throwing stones and injured the driver, causing the car to lose its balance.
The opposition has demanded Teni’s dismissal. Former Uttar Pradesh chief minister Akhilesh Yadav, who was detained by the police in Lucknow on Monday as he sat on a protest outside his residence after being stopped from going to Lakhimpur Kheri, has demanded the resignation of Teni. Yadav said atrocities on farmers have exceeded what happened during the British rule. The Congress too has criticised the government for Sunday’s violence.
BJP’s Uttar Pradesh spokesperson Chandra Mohan blamed the opposition for provoking the farmers. “When one examines the events that led to the farmers’ protest, it becomes clear that this is a political conspiracy. Our government has been sensitive to the concerns of farmers. We have cleared the dues pending for years, increased the price of sugarcane among several other measures. But the opposition is misleading the farmers and using them.”
Not all in the BJP see the agitation as motivated. A few lawmakers from Uttar Pradesh, who also spoke on condition of anonymity, said the government needs to make more efforts to break the logjam with the farmers. “The use of force against farmers will have far-reaching consequences…the government has to be sympathetic to the farmers,” said a lawmaker.
Varun Gandhi, the BJP Member of Parliament from Pilibhit, has demanded action against the perpetrators of Sunday’s violence. He cautioned against using “derogatory and pejorative terms” for farmers. In an interview with HT, he said: “…The farmers need to feel that they are equal stakeholders in the government, in shaping the national agenda and in setting the narrative on issues that concern them. Today, if they feel they are not equal stakeholders, then we must work doubly hard to reinvigorate this relationship.”
The BJP is also banking on the Uttar Pradesh government’s announcement that it would pay ₹45 lakh and offer a government job each to the kin of the eight people who lost their lives in Sunday’s violence to prevent the situation on the ground from worsening.
Ajay Gudavarthi, a political science professor at New Delhi’s Jawaharlal Nehru University, said the tendency to dub all opposition as anti-national may not work for the party anymore. “There is a core constituency that will buy the anti-national justification, but a larger group of people have now begun to see through the pattern of labelling anyone who opposes the BJP as anti-national.”
