In the last 100 years, Pun­jab has won and lost many a bat­tle on the so­cial, re­li­gious and po­lit­i­cal front by launch­ing Mor­chas -peo­ples’ cru­sades for achiev­ing a mis­sion for pro­tec­tion and preser­va­tion of the lan­guage, civil and po­lit­i­cal rights of the peo­ple of Pun­jab.  The Shambu Mor­cha -so-called as it is in the Shambu vil­lage bor­der­ing Pun­jab and Haryana is grad­u­ally turn­ing into a sym­bol of Pun­jab’s strong op­po­si­tion to new leg­is­la­tion to bring in crony cap­i­tal­ists into agri­cul­ture to the detri­ment of the poor, land­less and the mar­ginal farmer.

THE PAR­TIC­I­PA­TION OF YOUNG AC­TIVISTS, MEN, WOMEN AND CHIL­DREN -WITH EVERY­THING LIVE ON SO­CIAL ME­DIA, has added a new di­men­sion to the strug­gle. The Shambu Mor­cha is grow­ing from strength to strength. The em­bar­rass­ment of the Kisan lead­ers at the hands of the BJP gov­ern­ment at New Delhi, where a low-level gov­ern­ment bu­reau­crat was asked to talk to the farm­ers’ rep­re­sen­ta­tion, re­sult­ing in they boy­cotting the talks, has fur­ther strength­ened the re­solve of the par­tic­i­pat­ing or­gan­i­sa­tions of all hues and shades.

Shambu has wit­nessed a lot in the last decades. The state of Haryana, act­ing un­der or­ders from the In­dian Union has em­bar­rassed and ha­rassed in­no­cent trav­ellers from Pun­jab un­der one pre­text or an­other. Lest you for­get the hu­mil­i­a­tion to Sikhs, in­clud­ing high-rank­ing mil­i­tary per­son­nel trav­el­ling to the Asian Games dur­ing the Asian Games, 1982.

The pro­lif­er­a­tion of new ideas -Am­rit­sar as a trad­ing cen­tre, Am­rit­sar as the gate­way to the east as a dry port -as it was a cen­tury or more back, the open­ing of the Indo-Pak bor­der for trade, war cries for stop­ping the flow of wa­ter from Pun­jab to neigh­bour­ing states of Haryana, Ra­jasthan and Delhi, re­con­sid­er­ing the Rabi and Kharif crop cy­cle has given im­pe­tus to the sov­er­eign right of the peo­ple of Pun­jab and par­tic­u­larly the farm­ers to de­cide their crop and de­ter­mine the price of their pro­duce.

The search for al­ter­na­tive farm­ing and the throw­ing up of al­ter­na­tive lead­er­ship at the Shambu Mor­cha is up­set­ting many an es­tab­lished po­lit­i­cal norm and is a com­ple­ment to the tenac­ity of the par­tic­i­pants and or­gan­is­ers that the Shambu Mor­cha is no longer a par­ti­san strug­gle for farm rights but pre­sents the por­tents of eco­nomic, so­cial and po­lit­i­cal lib­erty of the peo­ple of Pun­jab.

The calls for a boy­cott of Re­liance prod­ucts, petrol pumps, in­clud­ing Jio Sim cards, the protests against Adani’s Si­los, the pass­ing of res­o­lu­tions against the farm laws by the Gram Sab­has of the 12,000-plus vil­lages of Pun­jab

The search for al­ter­na­tive farm­ing and the throw­ing up of al­ter­na­tive lead­er­ship at the Shambu Mor­cha is up­set­ting many an es­tab­lished po­lit­i­cal norm and is a com­ple­ment to the tenac­ity of the par­tic­i­pants and or­gan­is­ers .

The Rail­way traf­fic to Pun­jab has been halted by the ag­i­tat­ing farm­ers. The Pun­jab gov­ern­ment seems to be at its wit’s end in han­dling the sit­u­a­tion. One day, it wants a res­o­lu­tion in a spe­cially con­vened ses­sion of the Pun­jab As­sem­bly and then the next day it backs out.

The Pun­jab unit of the Bharatiya Janata Party, af­ter its di­vorce from the Shi­ro­mani Akali Dal, had started day-dream­ing about rul­ing Pun­jab on its own, with its lead­er­ship flam­boy­antly de­clar­ing that it will con­test all 117 seats in 2022. The BJP Pun­jab chief Har­jit Singh Gre­wal be­laboured a lot on satel­lite me­dia to show that they are pu­ri­tans and the Badal Dal is the guilty party as far as new farm laws are con­cerns.

The man­ner in which the Pun­jab BJP was shown the door by the peo­ple at a re­cent func­tion, what­ever hap­pens, it is safe to say that the BJP dream of be­ing in power in Pun­jab has been smashed to smithereens. The BJP has no part­ner and singly it can­not face the farmer, the farm labour and the trader. The rank and file of the party are in hid­ing.

The man­ner in which the Pun­jab BJP was shown the door by the peo­ple at a re­cent func­tion, what­ever hap­pens, it is safe to say that the BJP dream of be­ing in power in Pun­jab has been smashed to smithereens.

Will farm­ers from other states con­verge at Shambu to ex­press sol­i­dar­ity and be part of the strug­gle or would they like to reap the ben­e­fits of fed­er­al­ism af­ter the Anand­pur Sahib res­o­lu­tion but at the same time see Pun­jab with a dif­fer­ent eye?

There is grow­ing re­sis­tance amongst farm­ers in Haryana and Ma­ha­rash­tra, still it ap­pears that Pun­jab is lead­ing the bat­tle straight from the front on be­half of the farm­ers of In­dia.

Will Shambu Mor­cha be­come the Sha­heen Bagh for its re­sis­tance, dis­sent and op­po­si­tion to the farm laws of In­dia?