For the last six months, farm­ers from Pun­jab and Haryana are on the roads bor­der­ing In­di­a’s cap­i­tal city Delhi. Re­cently, ace Pun­jabi ac­tivist-jour­nal­ist Hamir Singh was out on the road, as is of­ten his wont, meet­ing some of the char­ac­ters in this farm­ers’ ag­i­ta­tion who rarely make it to even news head­lines, what to talk of his­tor­i­cal chron­i­cles of any move­ment. This is a story of such char­ac­ters – peo­ple who make his­tory in which our fu­ture gen­er­a­tions will live, but who will be un­known to them for­ever. The au­thor in­vites you to walk with him and meet the char­ac­ters who will never be in your his­tory books.

HAVING NUR­TURED FOR DECADES AN ED­U­CA­TIONAL SYS­TEM in which kids find the sub­ject of his­tory bor­ing and punc­tu­ated with dates and years. His­tory then be­comes a list of events re­lated to kings and queens and those who chal­lenge them to be­come kings and queens them­selves. So, peo­ple’s un­der­stand­ing of his­tory is re­duced to when some­one be­came a king, at­tacked an­other king, pro­duced a child who be­came a prince and was then des­tined to be­come the next king, or what hap­pened when a king died and his sons fought over the king­dom.

This is the most preva­lent, and the most stu­pid, clas­si­cal no­tion of his­tory. It ex­cludes the peo­ple. This ap­proach does not tell us how the farm­ers lived dur­ing king X’s pe­riod, or how many lit­tle kids died of which dis­eases dur­ing king Y’s pe­riod, or how women suf­fered pa­tri­archy un­der all the kings and even un­der the regimes of queens.

Not his­tory, but a peo­ple’s his­tory could have given an­swers to these rel­e­vant ques­tions, but alas, we lag in the tra­di­tion of writ­ing peo­ple’s his­tory. His­to­ri­og­ra­phy re­mains a pris­oner of kingly and queen-ly tales, but every era, every war and every move­ment throws up its he­roes who do not find a place in our his­tory books but who are real he­roes of the peo­ple.

His­to­ri­ans and pen­push­ers ig­nore them, but they live on in peo­ple’s minds, in folk songs, in myths and tales that de­fine us. These he­roes do not work with an eye to­wards get­ting into your NCERT books, nor do they han­ker af­ter Padma Awards. They don’t even want to be­come a Tik­Tok sen­sa­tion or a Twit­ter trend.

And they are much eas­ier to meet and talk to than any leader. They are not VVIPs you try and get close to for a sin­gle selfie. Nei­ther do they have a posse of gun­men to im­press upon you their stature. But they are cre­at­ing his­tory. They are re-writ­ing his­tory. They are de­cid­ing his­tory. So com­mit­ted are they to their mis­sion that they are ready to sac­ri­fice their life for their goal.

While many in In­dia and abroad are try­ing to fash­ion cer­tain peo­ple into he­roes of the on­go­ing Kisan An­dolan —wag­ing cam­paigns on so­cial me­dia, pool­ing in funds and not just ap­pear­ing on TV chan­nels but also launch­ing some chan­nels of their own —some of our singers, artistes, writ­ers, in­tel­lec­tu­als and those with self-serv­ing po­lit­i­cal agen­das are also dy­ing to get them­selves anointed as the biggest bene­fac­tors of the farm­ers’ move­ment.

But amid all of this ca­coph­ony, work­ing in their own silent and ded­i­cated ways, are the real he­roes of the An­dolan.  Travel along the his­tor­i­cal road built by Chan­dragupta Mau­rya, im­proved by Sam­rat Ashoka and re­built by the likes of Sher Shah Suri, the Mughals and the British, and you will run into these he­roes every few miles.

But amid all of this ca­coph­ony, work­ing in their own silent and ded­i­cated ways, are the real he­roes of the An­dolan.  Travel along the his­tor­i­cal road built by Chan­dragupta Mau­rya, im­proved by Sam­rat Ashoka and re­built by the likes of Sher Shah Suri, the Mughals and the British, and you will run into these he­roes every few miles.

Hardly any­one pays at­ten­tion to these he­roes, even though they are the foun­da­tion on which a mam­moth Kisan An­dolan is piv­oted to­day. The en­tire ed­i­fice of this chal­lenge to the regime rests on this foun­da­tion. They bear the bur­den of an ag­i­ta­tion, keep­ing it alive, ro­bust and throb­bing with en­ergy, but with­out mak­ing noise or head­lines.

Meet Harb­ha­jan Kaur. Look at her face in this pic­ture. No­tice the sym­bols of Sikhism hang­ing as a pen­dant from her neck. Do not miss the black rib­bon of protest tied to a bam­boo pole be­hind her head. The lit­tle plas­tic bot­tle tied with a string. Browse through the other pic­tures of Harb­ha­jan Kaur. No­tice the po­lit­i­cal ide­ol­ogy scrib­bled on the home­made buntings. Let your eye rove over the thatched bam­boo-straw roof. Stop and stare at the 6 x 3 feet fold­ing bed that re­mains bare. Mar­vel at how much of the world do they need as you see all the stuff they re­quire in the two im­pro­vised bas­kets that hang from the ceil­ing. Please do not skip notic­ing their so­cial con­nec­tiv­ity –the news­pa­pers, the most ba­sic of the non-smart­phones, and their readi­ness to wel­come even more guests into their king­dom. That’s why there’s a spare fold­ing bed stacked next to the bam­boo pole. 

So much to no­tice in just these quickly snapped pic­tures. And you see an in­vi­ta­tion to your­self. Tikri Aao. Come to Tikri, says a pen­nant in the string. A poster nailed to a bam­boo brings Saf­dar Hashmi into Harb­ha­jan Kau­r’s king­dom, pro­claim­ing:

किताबें करती हैं बातें बीते जमानो की,
दुनिया की, इंसानों की,
आज की कल की, एक-एक पल की,
खुशियों की गमों की,
फूलों की बमों की,
जीत की हार की, प्यार की मार की,
सुनोगे नहीं क्या किताबों की बातें।
किताबें, कुछ तो कहना चाहती है, 
तुम्हारे पास रहना चाहती है। 

Of course, in Harb­ha­jan Kau­r’s king­dom, these lines are in the Gur­mukhi script. She un­der­stands Hindi but can read the Pun­jabi script. 

And when you are notic­ing and read­ing all of that, there’s still some­thing more im­por­tant that you just can­not miss: the ten thou­sand wrin­kles on Harb­ha­jan Kau­r’s face. Her bare-bones threat­en­ing to tear their way out of her flesh. Her frail phys­i­cal be­ing. Her fiery eyes. Her sharp gaze. Her clear un­der­stand­ing of what is hap­pen­ing, how is the war front shap­ing up, and what might be­fall the Kisan An­dolan.

And she knows it all de­pends upon her. And upon many oth­ers like her.

Harb­ha­jan Kaur comes from the grass that grows in Bar­nala’s coun­try­side.
‘Pas­sen­gers will ask the bus con­duc­tor / ‘Where are we? Drop us at Bar­nala / Where the green grass grows thick.’ 

Hail­ing from Bar­nala’s Mehal Khurd vil­lage, Harb­ha­jan Kaur has seen 80 sum­mers and 80 win­ters, and in­nu­mer­able rulers promis­ing to change the face of agri­cul­ture and turn Pun­jab into Cal­i­for­nia but is too rooted to fall for any of it. When the Kisan An­dolan be­gan, Harb­ha­jan Kaur must have in­stinc­tively known that it will be dif­fi­cult to fight all of it on Twit­ter. She knew the An­dolan needed her. So she, along with her friend Ra­min­der Kaur of the same vil­lage, landed up at Del­hi’s Tikri bor­der. She brought along very lit­tle stuff, but a big de­ci­sion: she won’t go back with­out a vic­tory.

This is how real his­tory is made; peo­ple like Harb­ha­jan Kaur bring along a re­solve to over­turn the de­ci­sions of regimes led by the likes of Naren­dra Modi. When his­tory will be writ­ten, you will read about Modi, but NCERT books won’t tell you about Harb­ha­jan Kaur: mother to three sons and a daugh­ter; hail­ing from a well-off rural fam­ily; a son set­tled in Canada.

She does not need any Sarkari dole. She does not need Mod­i’s mercy. Her kids have 15 acres of land each. She has been to Canada twice. She keeps a phone by her side be­cause her son some­times calls. “Mother, you’ve marked your pres­ence at the An­dolan. Now, you should go back home. Stay in the vil­lage.” He is wor­ried. Mod­i’s is not a very peo­ple-friendly regime, and there’s Covid in the air. Harb­ha­jan Kaur is old and frail. But her spirit is­n’t. 

“I am stay­ing put here only, in this hut­ment on the Tikri bor­der. Any­one who wants to meet me is most wel­come to come here, but don’t tell me to go back. This is my new vil­lage. My Mehal Khurd – bang on the Tikri bor­der!”

Modi can’t un­der­stand this re­solve, but Pash will very eas­ily find this new Bar­nala vil­lage on Del­hi’s bor­der. Re­solve is grow­ing, some green grass, too. And Harb­ha­jan Kaur now lives here – the soul and spirit of what peo­ple’s his­tory looks like. 

When rel­a­tives ex­erted too much pres­sure, she did make an ex­cep­tion and went back to her vil­lage. It was her grand­son’s Lohri. Fam­ily mem­bers tried to pre­vail upon her to stay back, but Bebe Harb­ha­jan Kaur picked up some Rs 10,000 in cash, gath­ered a few more uten­sils and stuff she might need, and was back in her new vil­lage to chal­lenge the regime run by ma­cho men. This time, she felt even more re­lieved.

“I have given every­one my bless­ings.”

‘ਸਭ ਦੇ ਸਿਰ ਪਲੋਸ ਕੇ ਆਈ ਹਾਂ। ਅੰਦੋਲਨ ਜਿੱਤ ਗਿਆ ਤਾਂ ਸਨਮਾਨ ਕਰ ਦੇਣਾ, ਨਹੀਂ ਤਾਂ ਅਰਥੀ ਨੂੰ ਕੰਧਾ ਦੇ ਦੇਣਾ… ਇਹ ਹੁਣ ਇੱਜ਼ਤ ਦਾ ਸੁਆਲ ਹੈ।’

“I placed my hand on every­one’s head. If the An­dolan wins, fe­lic­i­tate me, or stay ready to be my pall­bearer…From here on­wards, it is a ques­tion of ho­n­our.”

She said she has worked too hard in her life, and it is not easy for any­one to leave be­hind the com­forts and a happy, pros­per­ous ex­tended fam­ily and spend her fag years in bit­ing-cold or scorch­ing sun, sleep­ing with mos­qui­toes buzzing in the hu­mid air, but it’s a ques­tion of iz­zat, of ho­n­our.

“I have given every­one my bless­ings.”
‘ਸਭ ਦੇ ਸਿਰ ਪਲੋਸ ਕੇ ਆਈ ਹਾਂ। ਅੰਦੋਲਨ ਜਿੱਤ ਗਿਆ ਤਾਂ ਸਨਮਾਨ ਕਰ ਦੇਣਾ, ਨਹੀਂ ਤਾਂ ਅਰਥੀ ਨੂੰ ਕੰਧਾ ਦੇ ਦੇਣਾ… ਇਹ ਹੁਣ ਇੱਜ਼ਤ ਦਾ ਸੁਆਲ ਹੈ।’
“I placed my hand on every­one’s head. If the An­dolan wins, fe­lic­i­tate me, or stay ready to be my pall­bearer…From here on­wards, it is a ques­tion of ho­n­our.”

Bebe Harb­ha­jan Kaur and her friend Ra­min­der Kaur tell tales that bring alive con­tem­po­rary his­tory. One of Harb­ha­jan Kau­r’s fel­low vil­lagers was a man called Mas­ter Dar­shan Singh who later shifted to nearby Mehal Kalan. Mas­ter Dar­shan Singh’s daugh­ter Ki­ran­jit Kaur, a stu­dent of 10+2, did not re­turn home one day in July 1997. Later, it came to light that she was way­laid, kid­napped, raped and mur­dered by goons who had po­lit­i­cal in­flu­ence and links. Her body was ex­humed from the fields where it was buried, trig­ger­ing an An­dolan that re­de­fined what a col­lec­tive peo­ple can achieve.

The Ki­ran­jit Rape and Mur­der Case made his­tory. The move­ment it trig­gered was a rev­o­lu­tion of sorts, turn­ing into a clar­ion call to fix what is wrong with our democ­racy. A quar­ter-cen­tury later, the Ki­ran­jit Kaur Mehal Kalan Tragedy Protest Ac­tion Com­mit­tee con­tin­ues to do its work even to­day.

If your idea of the his­tory of Pun­jab has re­mained lim­ited to what they teach you in his­tory books in schools, then you might pos­si­bly have not heard of Ki­ran­jit Kaur Rape and Mur­der Case or the move­ment in its wake that took Pun­jab by a storm. But Harb­ha­jan Kaur and Ra­min­der Kaur did not learn his­tory from text­books. They were busy mak­ing it.

Both of them were part of that move­ment, ac­tively par­tic­i­pat­ing in the protests -dhar­nas, ral­lies called by the Ac­tion Com­mit­tee. Ra­min­der Kaur came to Tikri with Harb­ha­jan Kaur, and since then, has­n’t vis­ited her vil­lage even once. She had got­ten mar­ried in vil­lage Rama of Ni­halS­ingh­Wala in Moga, but her hus­band passed away af­ter eight years of mar­riage. The in-laws re­fused to ho­n­our her right to any prop­erty, and she re­turned to her par­ents in Mehal Khurd. 

She did not need to learn the no­tions of pa­tri­archy from text­books of so­ci­ol­ogy. Pa­tri­archy had de­cided her life’s course. She knew a young Ki­ran­jit very well. “Ki­ran­jit Kaur of Mehal Kalan was our nephew’s daugh­ter. Till 10th grade, she and my daugh­ter Man­jit Kaur were class­mates.”

When Ki­ran­jit Kaur was raped and killed, she be­came part of the move­ment. Later, when one of the lead­ers of the ag­i­ta­tion, Man­jit Dhaner, was em­broiled in a case and sen­tenced to jail, she re­mained in the fore­front of the protests, sit­ting in front of the Bar­nala courts all day to de­mand that his sen­tence be com­muted.

“We are not peo­ple who will go back with­out the gov­ern­ment tak­ing a de­ci­sion,” she said.

She knows how they write his­tory in a dis­hon­est man­ner; she is adamant about mak­ing some with hon­est di­rect peo­ple’s ac­tion.

The day I vis­ited them in their make-shift hut­ment with the Pash poster, fold­ing beds, rev­o­lu­tion­ary buntings and Hi­malayan re­solve, they were the only two women from Mehal Khurd. The men had re­turned to their vil­lage to look af­ter the wheat har­vest and were still to re­turn. A young man, Balkar Singh from San­grur’s Eal­wal (ਈਲਵਾਲ) vil­lage, has be­come their handy­man, a com­rade-in-arms.

Balkar Singh has left be­hind his wife and two kids, apart from his brother in his vil­lage, and is stay­ing put in the tent city that Tikri Bor­der of Delhi has be­come in six months. He says he will be look­ing af­ter the safety and se­cu­rity of Harb­ha­jan Kaur and Ra­min­der Kaur till their own peo­ple from Mehal Khurd re­turn to the bor­der. “The An­dolan is re­sult­ing in new re­la­tion­ships, new ties of kin­ship. Peo­ple find peace and con­tent­ment in be­com­ing use­ful to each other. The loss feels less­ened,” Balkar Singh told me.

A lit­tle ahead I ran into a young man from Mo­ga’s vil­lage Na­hal Khote. He has a strange name — Jagga Kan­haiya. Every­one with even a pass­ing ac­quain­tance with Pun­jabi or Sikh his­tory knows about Bhai Kan­haiya. When cops were rain­ing lathis and gov­ern­ments wel­comed the cit­i­zens ask­ing for their rights with tear gas shells, there were some who were seen serv­ing lan­gar and wa­ter to even the po­lice – the per­son­i­fi­ca­tion of the ide­ol­ogy of Bhai Kan­haiya.
                      

Jag­tar Singh was some­one like those youth, al­ways ready to help. Jagga Kan­haiya is a name he earned at the Tikri bor­der. Af­ter his sol­dier broth­er’s death, Jag­tar, who was run­ning his shop in Ma­ha­rash­tra’s Nag­pur, wrapped up his busi­ness and came back to look af­ter his par­ents in the vil­lage. Then the Kisan An­dolan hap­pened. There was no Bharti Kisan Union unit in his vil­lage. The Ekta-Ugra­han left­ist BKU now has a unit. A lot of wa­ter has flowed in the Ya­muna since the fate­ful No­vem­ber 26th of 2020 when a sea of hu­man­ity had landed up at Singhu and Tikri bor­ders, but Jag­tar Singh-turned-Jagga Kan­haiya has not looked back.

His brother-in-law (sis­ter’s hus­band) passed away; then his cousin died, then an­other rel­a­tive, but Jagga Kan­haiya has re­mained at Tikri bor­der. He is alone these days, along with the trol­ley. Sewa is his mis­sion. Much of his time is spent mak­ing arrange­ment for wa­ter for oth­ers nearby. I am sure he knows he will not be there in any fu­ture his­to­ri­an’s ac­count. No list of In­di­a’s he­roes will have his name or pic­ture. But I saw him there –a hero in peo­ple’s un­writ­ten but lived his­tory.

They come by the dozen on the bor­ders of Delhi these days. Some­times with a stetho­scope dan­gling around their necks. Meet Dr Swaiman Singh. His first name lit­er­ally trans­lates into ‘self-re­spect.’ When the re­ver­ber­a­tions from the Kisan An­dolan crossed the In­dian and At­lantic oceans and hit the United States of Amer­ica, Dr Swaya­man Singh re­sponded to his in­ner be­ing’s call. He re­alised the An­dolan needed the hands of a pro­fes­sional doc­tor.

A car­di­ol­o­gist by train­ing, he knew what life on the bor­ders un­der open skies and fight­ing against el­e­ments of na­ture amid a rag­ing pan­demic can do to hu­man bod­ies. He landed at Tikri, and im­me­di­ately went about set­ting up a vil­lage called – hold your breath – “Cal­i­for­nia.” It was an un­der-con­struc­tion bus stand at Ba­hadur­garh. 

             

Now, it boasts of a team of more than 30 vol­un­teer doc­tors, and hun­dreds of para­medics ready to help. He does not keep him­self lim­ited to mat­ters of car­di­ol­ogy; he knows dil da maamla goes much be­yond an­gio­plas­ties and an­giogra­phies. He is here with a heart. When the trol­leys no more served the in­tended pur­pose, he came up with the idea of rais­ing struc­tures built around re­in­forced an­gle-irons or bam­boos. So far, he has made 1,100 such struc­tures, and 400 more are in the works.  

                                  Dr Swaya­man Singh backs the vac­ci­na­tion drive but op­poses manda­tory test­ing for the virus. He knows the mo­tives are not med­ical, but po­lit­i­cal. “The gov­ern­ment will use the tests as a tool to claim that pan­demic was rag­ing be­cause of the An­dolan and it can go to any ex­tent. If they want to vac­ci­nate peo­ple, they should in­volve us and we will do the need­ful,” he said.

When asked when he plans to re­turn to the United States, where he has spent 24 years, he said: “That ques­tion does not arise till the An­dolan is here. How can I leave these peo­ple in need and go back to my cushy life? I have enough life left to earn the moolah, let me do some sewa here first.”

When asked when he plans to re­turn to the United States, where he has spent 24 years, he said: “That ques­tion does not arise till the An­dolan is here. How can I leave these peo­ple in need and go back to my cushy life? I have enough life left to earn the moolah, let me do some sewa here first.”

A par­tic­u­lar struc­ture has come up for a lot of dis­cus­sion in the me­dia, at­tract­ing vis­i­tors from re­gions far and wide. A 25 feet x 15 feet mud house, with an at­tached bath­room, with some graf­fiti-style art­work on its outer walls em­balmed with some cow dung and mud, it now be­comes the back­drop for a lot of self­ies and photo shoots. Jatin­der Pal Singh was vis­it­ing home from New Zealand where he had em­i­grated some ten years ago, look­ing for a job and bet­ter op­por­tu­ni­ties.

On his visit home to Mo­hali, he en­coun­tered the Kisan An­dolan. It was not dif­fi­cult for him to un­der­stand that the An­dolan was ac­tu­ally for him. The An­dolan was try­ing to pro­tect a way of life and the vo­ca­tion of agri­cul­ture, and if it did not suc­ceed, then fu­ture gen­er­a­tions will lose what­ever they have and will be­come eter­nal em­i­grants like him.

This was his fight. He was not go­ing back to New Zealand any­time soon. The An­dolan was mak­ing his­tory and he was to play a role in it. Of course, it will not be in the text­books that your chil­dren will read un­less his peo­ple won and re-wrote the very ap­proach to his­tory. 

Jatin­der joined some oth­ers to take up the re­spon­si­bil­ity of se­cu­rity of the pro­tes­tors at the bor­der, then got into con­ceiv­ing and de­sign­ing the mud house that could give some respite to his peo­ple. The em­i­grant/​im­mi­grant is at home now – it’s just a mud house, but it is mak­ing some his­tory.

Jatin­der joined some oth­ers to take up the re­spon­si­bil­ity of se­cu­rity of the pro­tes­tors at the bor­der, then got into con­ceiv­ing and de­sign­ing the mud house that could give some respite to his peo­ple. The em­i­grant/​im­mi­grant is at home now – it’s just a mud house, but it is mak­ing some his­tory.

The much-famed li­brary at the Kisan An­dolan is also do­ing the same. Ini­tially, it was just a bunch of books placed on a cot. Some bright minds knew the An­dolan would need a strong, cere­bral di­men­sion. They saw the crowds pulling out bar­ri­cades as peo­ple try­ing to break through the shack­les in search of a re­nais­sance — so they brought books to the move­ment. The li­brary is now a sort of think tank at the An­dolan. It is a place for some se­ri­ous brain­storm­ing, lec­tures, work­shops, a read­ing cen­tre. It does the same thing that Pash’s poster is do­ing in the hut­ment of Harb­ha­jan Kaur and Ra­min­der Kaur.

किताबें करती हैं बातें बीते जमानो की,
दुनिया की, इंसानों की,
सुनोगे नहीं क्या किताबों की बातें।
किताबें, कुछ तो कहना चाहती है, 
तुम्हारे पास रहना चाहती है। 

Sukhvin­der Singh from near Anand­pur Sahib and his friends are keep­ing alive the great tra­di­tion of Pun­jabi ‘satth’ (ਸੱਥ) where de­bates and dis­cus­sions hap­pen all the time. Every night at 8, an hour and a half long en­gaged struc­tured talk about a topic to un­der­line how the An­dolan un­der­stands its place in his­tory and is alive to how fu­ture his­to­ri­ans will see it. Sukhvin­der’s team in­vites aca­d­e­mi­cians and schol­ars to come and talk to them and spread the word about any vis­it­ing in­tel­lec­tual.

As you drive along the Na­tional High­way 44, which ear­lier used to be called NH1, you can­not miss the tent on your left-hand side just next to the Pa­ni­pat Toll Plaza. This is the long-run­ning Lan­gar for the pro­tes­tors and all those who care about the his­tory in the mak­ing. The bat­tles fought in Pa­ni­pat have de­cided the fate of this coun­try for cen­turies. This one is no less. The lan­gars are cru­cial to the bat­tle, and peo­ple like Balvir Singh of nearby Farid­pur vil­lage know it. He owns eight acres of fer­tile land, but much of his time is spent do­ing sewa at the lan­gar.

Kings and queens will oc­cur in school syl­labi and your chil­dren will find them dead and bor­ing and will ig­nore them. The likes of peo­ple I met on the road and at Singhu and Tikri bor­ders are those whose tales, songs, sto­ries and dreams will shine a light in our lives.

Af­ter the con­tro­ver­sial in­ci­dents of Jan­u­ary 26 this year, the po­lice had shut down the lan­gar for one day, but bat­tles in Pa­ni­pat are fought hard and bit­ter. The lan­gar was soon back to play its role in his­tory.

I ran into many or­di­nary peo­ple sucked in by the ag­i­ta­tion. I met Mukhtiar Singh Waraich, Mukhtiar Singh Virk, Jogin­der Singh Waraich, Kuldeep Singh, who all told me how many farm­ers have har­vested wheat and do­nated a ma­jor chunk of it for the An­dolan. Then there is a Shah Fam­ily that came from Nankana Sahib in 1947. They have given the farm­ers a carte blanche that any time ra­tion is needed, they can buy it in the fam­i­ly’s name. Chaud­hury Varinder Shah’s fa­ther has re­mained an MLA for five terms. His el­der brother, too, was an MLA. Varinder Shah, pop­u­larly known as Bulleh Shah, says his fam­ily has every­thing by the bless­ings of Guru Nanak. They haven’t put up a ban­ner, haven’t af­fixed their pic­ture any­where. Like Harb­ha­jan Kaur, they are also not look­ing for a place in your his­tory books.

But they are mak­ing his­tory — the peo­ple’s his­tory. One in which our fu­ture gen­er­a­tions will live.

Kings and queens will oc­cur in school syl­labi and your chil­dren will find them dead and bor­ing and will ig­nore them. The likes of peo­ple I met on the road and at Singhu and Tikri bor­ders are those whose tales, songs, sto­ries and dreams will shine a light in our lives.

The Kisan An­dolan is never been his­tory. It will al­ways keep re­defin­ing his­tory. His­tory is hap­pen­ing right in our times. It is no more a tale from the past. It is our pre­sent, and it is your fu­ture. It is en­trenched at the bor­der, and Delhi is still to make its mind af­ter more than six months, or per­haps many decades too late. 

The bat­tle is rag­ing, and Harb­ha­jan Kau­r’s name will be in the lead­ing cav­alry. A cell phone in hand, the khanda-kir­pan pen­dant around her neck, the thou­sand wrin­kles criss­cross­ing her face and her gaze straight at the goal. It is a ques­tion of self-re­spect. And that has of­ten turned his­tory around.

Trans­lated and adapted by Se­nior Jour­nal­ist SP Singh from the au­thor’s orig­i­nal Pun­jabi it­er­a­tion pub­lished in the Pun­jabi Tri­bune on June 1, 2021. This ver­sion has been au­tho­rised, vet­ted and ap­proved by the au­thor. — Ed­i­tor

Se­nior jour­nal­ist Hamir Singh is widely read and re­spected for his grasp of the eco­nomic, po­lit­i­cal and so­ci­etal as­pects of Pun­jab’s rural coun­try­side as well as skewed pat­terns of what is of­ten re­ferred to as ‘vikas’ -progress, in our times. Months back, he was among the first ones to per­ceive the threat in­her­ent in the three agri­cul­ture-re­lated pieces of leg­is­la­tion rammed through in Par­lia­ment by the Modi gov­ern­ment. Hamir Singh has since writ­ten in­nu­mer­able ar­ti­cles, done ground re­port­ing from the grass­roots, made sev­eral vis­its to the bat­tle­fronts along Del­hi’s bor­ders be­sides con­tin­u­ing with his work among the masses. With his jour­nal­ism, ac­tivism and role as a cit­i­zen of­ten en­meshed with each other, his is a voice that is of­ten taken as a de­fin­i­tive one on the is­sue.