Though it came as a sur­prise to many, it was ac­tu­ally with an eye on the forth­com­ing Ut­tar Pradesh and Pun­jab elec­tions that early morn­ing to­day in a tele­vised ad­dress to the peo­ple, In­dian Prime Min­is­ter Naren­dra Modi an­nounced the re­peal of the three farm laws af­ter a pro­longed sit-in by farm­ers that con­tin­ued for 450+ days at the pe­riph­ery of the na­tional cap­i­tal and other cities and states in the coun­try. Jamia Mil­lia Is­lamia Alumni and Com­mu­ni­ca­tions ex­pert Daud Arif pre­sents his views of how this hap­pened and the lessons to be learnt by the Mus­lim com­mu­nity and the CAA pro­tes­tors.

FARM­ERS STOOD DE­TER­MINED AMID­STS THE SUM­MERS, WIN­TERS, sec­ond wave of the Covid19 pan­demic, with over 600+ lives lost dur­ing the ag­i­ta­tion. While we hail this as a vic­tory of peo­ple’s move­ment, satya­graha and democ­racy, there is more that needs to be looked at than just bi­na­ries. Also, this is a learn­ing mo­ment for the cit­i­zens en­gaged in the ag­i­ta­tion against the Cit­i­zen­ship Amend­ment Act (CAA), which pre­ceded the farm­ers’ protest.

The farm­ers’ mor­cha, notwith­stand­ing all its short­com­ings, un­der­lined the Im­por­tance of com­ing across as a united pres­sure group, dis­solv­ing in­her­ent ide­o­log­i­cal and re­gional dif­fer­ences.

Im­por­tance of com­ing across as a pres­sure group, dis­solv­ing dif­fer­ences:
The farm­ers, de­spite their dif­fer­ences, con­tin­ued to protest as one en­tity, with blurred dif­fer­ences and uni­fied lead­er­ship. The re­solve to come across as a pres­sure group has been a key high­light of this protest, some­thing that was miss­ing dur­ing the ear­lier held CAA protests. In the case of farm­ers, there was less urge and min­i­mal ef­fort to de­fend the al­le­ga­tions thrown at them, whereas, dur­ing CAA, the young pro­test­ers ended up fo­cus­ing more to de­fend al­le­ga­tions posed by the pro­pa­gan­dist Godi Me­dia and the peo­ple in power over time.

As­ser­tion of iden­tity
Farm­ers as a group at no point in time shied from own­ing up their iden­tity. There was some re­sis­tance by some diehard ra­tio­nal­ists, but gen­er­ally, the farm­ers wore their cul­tural iden­tity on their sleeves while they con­tin­ued to protest on the ground.

Farm­ers from the Sikh com­mu­nity had their flags and sym­bols dis­played promi­nently at the protest sites. While the na­ture of the protest stood to be eco­nomic, there was no shy­ing away from em­brac­ing and proudly ex­hibit­ing the re­li­gious and cul­tural iden­ti­ties de­spite the foul na­ture of the me­dia and the state ma­chin­ery bad mouthing them.

Cut to the CAA times -pro­tes­tors, groups, time and again were warned against us­ing re­li­gious slo­gans, sym­bols dur­ing the protest. The in­stance when the ‘Say it on the Bar­ri­cade, La Ilaaha Ilal­lah (Say it on the bar­ri­cade, There is No God But Al­lah) was once used by a group of pro­tes­tors dur­ing a march around Jamia, other fel­low or­ga­niz­ers, lead­ers, sym­pa­thiz­ers took no minute to dis­tance them­selves from the slo­gan. Some even went on to con­demn the same.

The en­tire gov­ern­ment ma­chin­ery re­sorted to sus­tained pro­pa­ganda that the pro­tes­tors sit­ting on protests are paid ac­tors, the ac­tual farm­ers aren’t here, the pro­tes­tors here are anti-na­tional, and for­eign play­ers are fund­ing the protests.

More fo­cus on the cause, less on per­cep­tion war
Farm­ers con­tin­ued to stay fo­cused on their cause of get­ting the farm laws re­pealed and gave fewer ef­forts and im­por­tance on fight­ing the per­cep­tion war.

Dur­ing protests, peo­ple from all walks of life joined in for the cause, and there were chances of in­ci­dents tak­ing place which might not fall in line with the cause. Farm­ers were ma­ture to make sure these in­ci­dents did­n’t end up shad­ow­ing the move­ment.

Cut to the CAA times when there was con­stant pres­sure among pro­tes­tors to make sure the per­cep­tion war is fought fiercely.

Ob­serv­ing the farm­ers’ protest with a close lens, one would re­al­ize that farm­ers came forth with a voice of their own and went all lengths to am­plify it through their ac­tions, me­dia pres­ence and strat­egy.

Farm­ers from the Sikh com­mu­nity had their flags and sym­bols dis­played promi­nently at the protest sites. While the na­ture of the protest stood to be eco­nomic, there was no shy­ing away from em­brac­ing and proudly ex­hibit­ing the re­li­gious and cul­tural iden­ti­ties de­spite the foul na­ture of the me­dia and the state ma­chin­ery bad mouthing them.

Find­ing your own voice, am­pli­fy­ing the same
While sym­pa­thiz­ers and sup­port­ers did join from time to time, their role was lim­ited to be­ing sup­port­ers. For in­stance, each time Yo­gen­dra Ya­dav tried to hack ground, (some­thing which he is good at and is seen of­ten do­ing in the past protests as well), the farmer lead­ers were ma­ture to con­vey that he is an ad­di­tional voice as a sup­porter and farm­ers con­tin­ued to have a voice of their own, protest­ing the cause. Swara Bhaskar and Anurag Kashyap phe­nom­e­non did not hap­pen much at protest sites here.

Flash­back to the CAA times, when a sec­tion of the pseudo-lib­eral groups, in­tel­lec­tu­als and acad­e­mia were en­cour­aged to come and voice while the lead­ers were forced to take a back­seat.

Flash­back to the CAA times, when a sec­tion of the pseudo-lib­eral groups, in­tel­lec­tu­als and acad­e­mia were en­cour­aged to come and voice while the lead­ers were forced to take a back­seat.

Re­joic­ing over small vic­to­ries is fine, es­sen­tial to stay fo­cussed on the end-goal
When the Union Agri­cul­ture Min­is­ter started invit­ing the farmer lead­ers for talks, it was an early sign of vic­tory. It sig­nalled that the gov­ern­ment was open­ing up for a di­a­logue. While this was in a way big, the pro­tes­tors here did­n’t go all or­gas­mic and made sure they stood firm, want­ing the re­peal of the laws. This is prob­a­bly an­other sign of a ma­ture group of pro­tes­tors, some­thing that the CAA pro­tes­tors lacked.

While the na­ture of protests stands dis­tinct and there are other dy­nam­ics in play, for in­stance, farm­ers as a group form for a larger voter group and the gov­ern­ment want­ing to ap­peal to this vot­ers base than the mi­nori­ties which were protest­ing the CAA, who are any­way not on the good voter list for the gov­ern­ment, an analy­sis can come in handy to un­der­stand the mod­ern-day protests.

Daud Arif is alumni of An­war Ja­mal Kid­wai Mass Com­mu­ni­ca­tion and Re­search Cen­ter -the of­fi­cial Mass Com­mu­ni­ca­tion Cen­tre at Jamia. He works as a Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Ex­pert on dif­fer­ent na­tional and In­ter­na­tional Me­dia Pro­jects.