In December 2019, the city of Delhi witnessed a new protest led by Muslim women against the recently enacted legislation that revised the provisions under which Indian citizenship is granted. Indian Muslims feared that the new law would have adverse consequences for their status in the Indian union. One of the most visible manifestations of the movement was a strong affirmation of the Muslim claim to be Indian, his nationalism and his roots in Indian soil.
The main sites of the upheaval were awash with images and signs affirming this claim. Muslim children painted their cheeks with images of the Indian flag and each leader who spoke from the stage affirmed their unwavering patriotism.
However, it did not appear to make any difference to the ruling system and a section of the national media that continued to project the protesters as “illegitimate” Indians, often using popular stereotypes, to make them appear synonymous with Pakistan and Pakistanis.
One year later
A year later, large numbers of Sikh farmers from Punjab arrived at the border of the national capital, protesting against another set of laws recently enacted by the central government, this time related to agriculture and its trade and commerce.
Although they were soon joined by farmers from Haryana, Uttar Pradesh and Rajasthan, farmers from Punjabi continue to invoke and use religious slogans aloud, proudly invoking their Sikh identity and warrior traditions to spark enthusiasm among participants from their state. They carry a variety of flags, representing the political orientations of their affiliated organizations.
Yet they all seem to identify with Sikhism and speak with one voice: that they are here because they are farmers and they are demanding that new laws be repealed because they are against agriculture. Those who have joined them from other states also bring their own flags and have also joined the Sikh protesters as farmers, making the same demand.
In the prevailing political ecosystem, Punjabi farmers encountered hostile national media, which attempted to brand them as separatists and anti-Khalistan nationals. However, the narrative has not improved and it is unlikely to gain much traction. There are many reasons for this.
First, there is the very idea of nationalism and its fundamental idioms that overlap with agriculture. Nationalism invokes and sacralizes the territory, the land. “Mother India” is not only the “sacred” map of India, it is also made of its soil, on which its agricultural workers and cultivators work.
Remember the movie posters Indian mother, done in 1957, with Nargis Dutt carrying a plow and sickle on his shoulder? How can you think of gau kills, the holy mother cow, without the image of a farmer crossing your mind at the same time? Nationalism everywhere has privileged its agricultural classes and it is difficult to mobilize nationalist sentiment without referring to the land and its agriculture.
When populist leaders invoke the ideas of secondharat and oppose it to India, they also claim the rural / agrarian as the authentic nation. The urban, on the other hand, is seen as elite, inauthentic and exploitative of the former. The binary makes the rural seem morally superior to the urban.
Even western European countries and the United States, where a very small proportion (less than 5%) of the workforce works on the land, have to privilege agriculture in their national imagination. Agriculture also receives large subsidies from the state, mainly due to its cultural status in the national imagination.
Military recruitment
Another critical aspect of agriculture’s relationship with nationalism is that of being the recruiting base for the armed forces. A large proportion of those who join the military come from farming families almost all over the world. This also applies to India. In fact, a good number of soldiers in the Indian Army come from agricultural households in the states of Punjab, Haryana and Uttar Pradesh.
This is so even in the popular imagination. Most Hindi films showing Indian soldiers foreground a turbaned Sikh as a brave and loyal soldier, a leader who wins the war for the country. Even members of the paramilitary forces and the police have similar backgrounds.
Finally, in a country like India, the sphere of agriculture is much larger than its economic value or the proportion of the workforce that it employs. In fact, during the last three decades, agriculture has experienced a fairly rapid decline in terms of its share in the national economy. During the period after the 1990s, when India’s growth rate experienced a significant acceleration, led by the private business sector, the share of agriculture declined rapidly and fell to around 15% of national income. .
The number of people employed full time in agriculture also decreased, although at a much slower rate. However, if we were to add in the number of people who continue to depend in part on agriculture, it adds up to almost half of India’s workforce, if not more.
A country like India also has a substantial number of people employed outside of agriculture, including a section of the rising middle class, who continue to have an active relationship with the village, as their extended families maintain a rural base.
As anthropologists tell us, agriculture is not simply an economic enterprise: it is also a source of identity, in a very different way from other occupations, A lifestyle, which remains in the memory throughout generations and is actively reflected in popular songs and music. They remain a source of identification with one’s roots, even for those who emigrated to other countries long ago.
Farmers are the carriers of national cultures, almost everywhere. How can they be branded as anti-national? They are the “real” nation.
Surinder S Jodhka is Professor of Sociology at the Center for the Study of Social Systems, Faculty of Social Sciences, Jawaharlal Nehru University, Delhi.
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