Lakhimpur Kheri attack on farmers part of design to impose democratic dictatorship by killing democratic polity

 

Lakhimpur Kheri:  Threat to democratic polity from democratic dictatorship

Ground Zero

 

Jagtar Singh

The issue in no more the scrapping of the three contentious farm acts for which the farmers have been sitting at the doors of Delhi for more than 10 months as their entry into the national capital has been blocked by the government by erecting permanent barricades thereby also closing down the highways. The farmers have been forced to stage sit in due to the government action of blocking them. This vital aspect must be taken into account by the Supreme Court. Don’t blame the farmers for the blockade and they have also not sought judicial intervention.

The mowing down of four protesting farmers and a journalist by the goons who include the son of a union minister of state at Lakhimpur Kheri under the wheels of their fast moving cars is a symptoms of a bigger disease. They had gathered as they had been challenged by the union minister of state from that very area.

It is the dissent that has been crushed under the wheels. It is a warning to all those who try to raise their voice under the present regime that functions as democratic dictatorship.

It is pertinent to mention here is that Adolf Hitler too  captured the German imagination through democratic process.

The juggernaut of this democratic dictatorship is crushing under its wheels almost every institution and  it is this situation that should be the biggest concern of the people who value freedom of thought.

This situation had emerged too during the Emergencies from 1975-1977 but the dictatorship has now controlled imagination of a section of the people at the ideological level, not just by misusing the institutions of the state. The Emergency was administrative excess and brazen misuse of state institutions.

It is in this context that the farmers struggle that is now spreading in several other states has to be assessed. This is the struggle that has questioned the very ideology that has been used by the people in power to capture the minds of a section and move ahead with dictatorial methods.

Here is a classic example of the degeneration of state institutions.

Siddique Kappan, a Kerala journalist writing for a Malyalam paper was arrested while going to Hathras to cover the rape case. No need to repeat as to how the state institutions joined hands to deny justice to the rape victim family as even the basic human rights were crushed. Kappan is still in jail in flimsy charges. He was still to write his story on Hathras and still posed a threat.

The accused in the Lakhimpur Kheri murder case Asish Misra, son of Union Minister of State Ajay Misra Teni, has not been arrested despite the fact that it was his convoy that murdered the farmers and a journalist. It was this minister that had challenged the farmers.

Shamefully, a section of the media started the disgusting campaign that the provocation had come from the agitating farmers who were mowed down by the vehicles coming from behind.

Congress general secretary Priyanka Gandhi  Vadra was detained for 36 hours without any charge while proceeding to Lakhimpur Kheri.

Rahul Gandhi accompanied by Punjab Chief Minister Charanjit Singh Channi and others had to struggle to reach Lakhimpur.

And the state acts in the name of maintaining law and order.

The irony is that this colonial governance  and these methods suit every party in power without exception. This exactly is the tragedy of this country.

These political parties including the Communists don’t question the colonial governance. Democratic dictatorship too flows from that colonial mindset.

Now is the time for the non-BJP political parties to make the choice.

The farmers struggle has so far kept the political leadership away from the stage. However, Lakhimpur Kheri has opened the path for these parties to unite by through the  platform of farmers struggle without joining that stage

This struggle has taken political awakening of the common person in India to another level. This struggle has questioned the way India has been governed since 1947.

Time has come to change that structure. It is the farmers struggle that has the potential to catalyse the change and take the country towards path of liberal people’s democracy.

Democratic polity is under threat from democratic dictatorship.