Nearly 200 stu­dents, trade union­ists and ac­tivists of a slew of left-ori­ented bod­ies and in­de­pen­dent cit­i­zens staged a dharna in the heart of the buzzing of­fice ar­cade of Mandi House as they were bar­ri­caded by the Delhi po­lice from march­ing to Jan­tar Man­tar. Ap­pre­hend­ing trou­ble, the Delhi Po­lice, now un­der pres­sure for in­ac­tion had de­puted spe­cial forces and had also kept tear gas units and wa­ter can­non ve­hi­cles on standby. Gurmeet Singh of WSN Delhi desk re­ports.

All roads around Mandi House and Jan­tar Man­tar were blocked, yet the pro­tes­tors man­aged to sit-in and voice the con­cerns of the farm­ers, de­spite the po­lice threat­en­ing use of force to dis­perse them say­ing that Sec­tion 144 IPC was in place. At­tempts by this re­porter to ask the po­lice as to why they were im­pos­ing re­stric­tions against the peace­ful protest did not elicit any re­sponse.

Armed with hope in their minds and hearts, the pro­tes­tors sat in groups, sang, danced and shouted slo­gans against Prime Min­is­ter Naren­dra Modi and his gov­ern­ment. The ac­tivists car­ried ban­ners, posters, plac­ards against the farm laws, against the tyrant gov­ern­ment. They sang songs for the sol­i­dar­ity of farm­ers and against the fas­cist regime. The en­ergy was spell­bind­ing and every­one par­tic­i­pated with pas­sion and en­thu­si­asm.

A lady with her 5-year-old child be­came the cen­tre of at­trac­tion. All par­tic­i­pat­ing groups con­demned the ar­rests of farm­ers and their sup­port­ers by the Delhi po­lice. They sought the re­lease of those ar­rested, swift ac­tion for trac­ing those who are miss­ing and puni­tive ac­tion against goons who had beaten up farm­ers un­der po­lice pro­tec­tion and cover. Speak­ers sought the re­lease of Nodeep Kaur who has been il­le­gally ar­rested by the Haryana Po­lice for many weeks.

Many Union lead­ers and cadre came from as far as Peo­ple also joined in from the states of Ma­ha­rash­tra, Ut­tar Pradesh, Ra­jasthan and Bi­har. Speak­ing to WSN, a trade union leader from Bi­har said, “This is a de­ci­sive bat­tle and they will leave no stone un­turned.”

Stu­dent ac­tivists spoke about the di­vide and rule pol­icy and how the state po­lice and ad­min­is­tra­tive ma­chin­ery tag peo­ple as anti-na­tion­als to po­larise their sup­port. They said that this was an old tac­tic of right-wing ul­tra-na­tion­al­is­tic forces.

He added that the Modi Gov­ern­ment has used all its re­sources but they have been fail­ing time and again. They first failed to con­vince the farm­ers in talks, then they failed in their false pro­pa­ganda, now they will fail in their pseudo-pa­tri­o­tism weapon.

The crowd over­whelm­ingly ac­knowl­edged that they will fight to save the land of the farm­ers and the poor of In­dia. The pro­tes­tors were un­afraid of any po­lice bru­tal­ity and ig­nored the an­nounce­ments of va­cat­ing the area.

The fire­brand ac­tivists were zeal­ously singing “Hum Honge Kamyaab, Ek Din” -We will suc­ceed one day. Sooner than later.