Priyanka Chopra said that farmers’ fears need to be allayed. (Archive)
New Delhi:
Actress Priyanka Chopra Jonas shared her thoughts on the farmers’ protests on Sunday, backing a tweet from singer and actor Diljit Dosanjh and calling for her concerns about the center’s new farm laws to be urgently addressed.
“Our farmers are India’s food soldiers. Their fears must be appeased. Their hopes must be fulfilled. As a thriving democracy, we must ensure that this crisis is resolved sooner rather than later,” he wrote on Twitter, citing a tweet from the Mr. Dosanjh in Punjabi showing the secular tone of the farmers movement.
Priyanka Chopra’s pro-farmers tweet amid her run-in with the government bucked the trend that celebrities rarely speak out on social issues in India for fear of retaliation from the government or its gang of fans supporters who form a huge electorate online.
Our farmers are the food soldiers of India. Your fears must be appeased. Your hopes must be fulfilled. As a thriving democracy, we must ensure that this crisis is resolved sooner rather than later. https://t.co/PDOD0AIeFv
– PRIYANKA (@priyankachopra) December 6, 2020
For the past week, Twitter has hosted an ugly fight between Dosanjh and actor Kangana Ranaut, a fervent supporter of the ruling BJP who has criticized farmers and has come under fire in her efforts to spread disinformation to discredit the movement.
In her tirade against the protests of farmers who defy new farm laws that they claim will leave them at the mercy of big corporations and overturn safeguards against deception, Ms Ranaut mistakenly identified a protester as one of the organizers of Shaheen Bagh’s sit-in in Delhi against the center’s controversial citizenship law and claimed he had joined the protest for 100 rupees.
Dosanjh’s curt retorts to Ms Ranaut in Punjabi went viral on Twitter, sparking a trend of Punjabi jokes on the social media site.
In its latest round of talks on Saturday, the central government failed to break out of a stalemate with the thousands of farmers protesting on the outskirts of Delhi against agricultural reforms and are scheduled to meet again on Wednesday.
The government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi says the new laws are aimed at overhauling outdated procurement procedures and giving producers more options to sell their products. However, the ruling BJP has faced harsh criticism for its handling of the protest, including a brutal crackdown on farmers last week in Haryana.
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