[News] India's Farmers - We Are Grass. We Grow on Everything

[Anti-Imperialist News]

https://www.thetricontinental.org/newsletterissue/49-general-strike-india/ We
Are Grass. We Grow on Everything: The Forty-Ninth Newsletter (2020).
December 3, 2020 - Vijay Prashad
------------------------------

[image: Kruttika, Susarla, All India Farmers Protest, 2020]

Kruttika Susarla (India), *All India Farmers Protest*, 2020

Dear friends,

Greetings from the desk of the Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research
<https://thetricontinental.org/>.

Farmers and agricultural workers from northern India marched along various
national highways toward India’s capital of New Delhi as part of the
general strike on 26 November. They carried placards with slogans against
the anti-farmer, pro-corporate laws that were passed
<https://mronline.org/2020/11/03/how-indias-modi-is-changing-laws-to-help-imperialists-dominate-the-countrys-agriculture/>
by India’s Lok Sabha (lower house of parliament) in September, and then
pushed through the Rajya Sabha (upper house) with only a voice vote. The
striking agricultural workers and farmers carried flags that indicated
their affiliation with a range of organisations, from the communist
movement to a broad front of farmers’ organisations. They marched against
the privatisation of agriculture, which they argue undermines India’s food
sovereignty and erodes their ability to remain agriculturalists.

Roughly two-thirds of India’s workforce derives its income from
agriculture, which contributes to roughly 18% of India’s gross domestic
product (GDP). The three anti-farmer bills passed in September undermine
the minimum support price buying schemes of the government, put 85% of the
farmers who own less than 2 hectares of land at the mercy of bargaining
with monopoly wholesalers, and will lead to the destruction of a system
that has till now maintained agricultural production despite erratic prices
for food produce. One hundred and fifty farmer organisations came together
for their march on New Delhi. They pledge to stay in the city indefinitely.

[image: Aswath (India), Lenin met India, 2020]

Aswath (India), *Lenin met India*, 2020

Around 250 million people across India joined
<https://peoplesdispatch.org/2020/11/27/250-million-people-participate-in-nationwide-strike-in-india/>
the general strike on 26 November, making it the largest strike in world
history. If those who struck formed a country, it would be the fifth
largest in the world after China, India, the United States, and Indonesia.
Industrial belts across India – from Telangana to Uttar Pradesh – came to a
halt, as workers in the ports from the Jawaharlal Nehru Port (Maharashtra)
to the Paradip Port (Odisha) stopped work. Coal, iron ore, and steel
workers put down their tools, while trains and buses stood idle. Informal
sector workers joined in, and so did health care workers and bank
employees. They struck in opposition to labour laws that extend the working
day to twelve hours and strike down labour protections for 70% of the
workforce. Tapan Sen, the general secretary of the Centre of Indian Trade
Unions, said
<http://citucentre.org/694-salutes-to-the-toiling-masses-on-the-warpath-congratulations-for-massive-general-strike-on-26th-november-2020>,
‘The strike today is only a beginning. Much more intense struggles will
follow’.

The pandemic has deepened the crisis of the Indian working class and
peasantry, including the richer farmers. Despite the dangers of the
pandemic, out of a great sense of desperation, workers and peasants
gathered in public spaces to tell the government that they had lost
confidence in them. The film actor Deep Sindhu joined the protest, where he
told
<https://theprint.in/india/english-speaking-protester-in-viral-farmer-protest-video-is-punjabi-actor-deep-sidhu/553937/>
a police officer, ‘*Ye inquilab hai*. This is a revolution. If you take
away farmers’ land, then what do they have left? Only debt’.

[image: Nehal Ahmed (India), Cold Nights, High Spirits. Farmers from Punjab
who have joined the movement against the farm laws passed by the Modi
government. Delhi-Haryana border at Singhu, India, November 2020.]

Nehal Ahmed (India), *Cold Nights, High Spirits.* Farmers from Punjab who
have joined the movement against the farm laws passed by the Modi
government. Delhi-Haryana border at Singhu, India, November 2020.

Along the rim of New Delhi, the government positioned police forces,
barricaded the highways, and prepared for a full-scale confrontation. As
the long columns of farmers and agricultural workers approached the
barricades and appealed to their brethren who had set aside the clothes of
farmers and put on police uniforms, the authorities fired tear gas and
water cannons at the farmers and agricultural workers.

[image: Dharampal Seel, a senior Kisan Sabha leader from Punjab, uses his
Red Flag to push a tear gas canister, 27 November 2020.]

Dharampal Seel, a senior Kisan Sabha leader from Punjab, uses his Red Flag
to push a tear gas canister, 27 November 2020.

The day of the general strike of farmers and workers, 26 November, is also
Constitution Day in India, which marks a great feat of political
sovereignty. Article 19 of the Indian Constitution (1950) quite clearly
gives Indian citizens the right to ‘freedom of speech and expression’
(1.a), the right to ‘assembly peaceably and without arms’ (1.b), the right
to ‘form associations or unions’ (1.c), and the right ‘to move freely
throughout the territory of India’ (1.d). In case these articles of the
Constitution had been forgotten, the Indian Supreme Court reminded the
police in a 2012 court case (*Ramlila Maidan Incident vs. Home Secretary*)
that ‘Citizens have a fundamental right to assembly and peaceful protest,
which cannot be taken away by an arbitrary executive or legislative
action’. The police barricades, the use of tear gas, and the use of water
cannons – infused with the Israeli invention of yeast and baking powder to
induce a gagging reflex – violate the letter of the Constitution, something
that the farmers yelled to the police forces at each of these
confrontations. Despite the cold in northern India, the police soaked the
farmers with water and tear gas.

But this did not stop them, as brave young people jumped on the water
cannon trucks and turned off the water, farmers drove their tractors to
dismantle the barricades, and the working class and the peasantry fought
back against the class war imposed on them by the government. The
twelve-point charter
<http://www.citucentre.org/75-12-point-charter-of-demands> of demands put
forward by the trade unions is sincere, having captured the sentiments of
the people. The demands include the reversal of the anti-worker,
anti-farmer laws pushed by the government in September, the reversal of the
privatisation of major government enterprises, and immediate relief for the
population, which is suffering from economic hardship provoked by the
coronavirus recession and years of neoliberal policies. These are simple
demands, humane and true; only the hardest hearts turn away from them,
responding instead with water cannons and tear gas.

[image: Amrita Sher-Gil (India), Resting, 1939]

Amrita Sher-Gil (India), *Resting*, 1939

These demands for immediate relief, for social protections for workers, and
for agricultural subsidies appeal to workers and peasants around the world.
It is demands such as these that provoked the recent protests in Guatemala
<https://peoplesdispatch.org/2020/11/24/carlos-barrientos-there-is-rage-on-the-streets-of-guatemala/>
and that led to the general strike on 26 November in Greece
<https://peoplesdispatch.org/2020/11/26/greek-working-class-unites-strikes-for-health-safety-and-rights-amid-covid-19/>
.

We are now entering a period in this pandemic when more unrest is possible
as more people in countries with bourgeois governments get increasingly fed
up with the atrocious behaviour of their elites. Report after report shows
us that the social divides are getting more and more extreme, a trend that
began long before the pandemic but has grown wider and deeper as a
consequence of it. It is only natural for farmers and agricultural workers
to be agitated. A new report
<https://www.landcoalition.org/en/uneven-ground/> from the Land Inequality
Initiative shows that only 1% of the world’s farms operate more than 70% of
the world’s farmland, meaning that massive corporate farms dominate the
corporate food system and endanger the survival of the 2.5 billion people
who rely upon agriculture for their livelihood. Land inequality, when it
considers landlessness and land value, is highest in Latin America, South
Asia, and parts of Africa (with notable exceptions such as China and
Vietnam, which have the ‘lowest levels of inequality’).

A young man, Avtar Singh Sandhu (1950-1988), read Maxim Gorky’s *Mother*
(1906) in the early 1970s in Punjab, from where many of the farmers and
agricultural workers travelled to the barricades around New Delhi. He was
very moved by the relationship between Nilovna, a working-class woman, and
her son, Pavel, or Pasha. Pasha finds his feet in the socialist movement,
brings revolutionary books home, and, slowly, both mother and son are
radicalised. When Nilovna asks him about the idea of solidarity, Pasha
says, ‘The world is ours! The world is for the workers! For us, there is no
nation, no race. For us, there are only comrades and foes’. This idea of
solidarity and socialism, Pasha says, ‘warms us like the sun; it is the
second sun in the heaven of justice, and this heaven resides in the
worker’s heart’. Together, Nilovna and Pasha become revolutionaries.
Bertolt Brecht retold this story in his play *Mother* (1932).

Avtar Singh Sandhu was so inspired by the novel and the play that he took
the name ‘Pash’ as his *takhallus*, his pen name. Pash became one of the
most revolutionary poets of his time, murdered in 1988 by terrorists. *I am
grass* is among the poems he left behind:

*Bam fek do chahe vishwavidyalaya par*
*Banaa do hostel ko malbe kaa dher*
*Suhaagaa firaa do bhale hi hamari jhopriyon par*
*Mujhe kya karoge?*
*Main to ghaas hun, har chiz par ugg aauungaa.*

If you wish, throw your bomb at the university.
Reduce its hostel to a heap of rubble.
Throw your white phosphorus on our slums.
What will you do to me?
I am grass. I grow on everything.

That’s what the farmers and the workers in India say to their elites, and
that is what working people say to elites in their own countries, elites
whose concern – even in the pandemic – is to protect their power, their
property, and their privileges. But we are grass. We grow on everything.

In the next week, Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research will host
two events with The People’s Forum. On 4 December, cultural workers from
Venezuela, South Africa, and China/Canada will discuss art making for
people’s struggles in times of CoronaShock. The discussion will highlight
the Anti-Imperialist Poster Exhibition
<https://antiimperialistweek.org/en/posters/>; the last of the four
exhibitions launched today on the concept of the hybrid war includes
artwork from 37 artists from 18 countries across the world. You can RSVP
here <https://peoplesforum.org/event/coronashock-and-art/>.

On 8 December, the feminisms working group of Tricontinental: Institute for
Social Research will discuss the recently launched study, *CoronaShock and
Patriarchy*
<https://www.thetricontinental.org/studies-4-coronashock-and-patriarchy/>*,*
and the gendered impact of the pandemic. You can RSVP here
<https://peoplesforum.org/event/coronashock-and-patriarchy/>.

Warmly,

Vijay


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