Janhastakshep:a campaign against fascist designs
Contact: drvikasbajpai@gmail.com; mishraish@gmail.com
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Peasants Battle Cry for Land in Punjab:
An Investigation into Police and Land-lord Repression on Land Struggle of Dalit
Peasants in Villages of Sangrur District of Indian Punjab.
Authors:
1. Dr
Vikas Bajpai
Asst. Professor
Centre for Social Medicine and Community
Health
Jawaharlal Nehru University.
E mail: drvikasbajpai@gmail.com
2.
Prof Ish Mishra
Department
of Political Science
Hindu
College, Delhi University.
E mail:
mishraish@gmail.com
3.
Rajesh Kumar
Free
lance journalist, Delhi
E mail:
rjshvrm@gmail.com
4.
Anil Dubey
Free
lance journalist, Delhi
E mail:
anil_dubey64@yahoo.co.in
A Janhastakshep team visited
some of the villages in Sangrur district of Punjab on the 28 and 29 May, 2016
to investigate reports of police repression and landlord repression on struggle
for agricultural land being waged by dalit peasants in over hundred villages of
the district. Janhastakshep had been in the know of this struggle from some
earlier reports (Sharma, 2015; Mahil, 2015). Further, it was reported in ‘The
Tribune’ paper on the 25 of May that there had been a lathi charge on
protesting dalit peasants in Bald Kalan village in which around 15 persons had
been severely injured. The protesting peasants had also alleged firing by the
police (Goyal S, 2016). These reports were confirmed by us from some contacts
of APDR (Association for Protection of Democratic Rights) in Sangrur who
informed that the movement was simultaneously going on in many villages and
that the police had filed cases against dalit peasants and made arrests in
several villages. On the basis of these reports it was decided to send a team
to investigate the alleged repression unleashed by the district authorities on
the movement by dalit peasants.
A team of Janhastakshep visited
different villages of Sangrur district on the 28 and 29 of May, 2016 to enquire
into the incident of police lathi-charge and firing on protesting dalit peasants
in Balad Kalan village of Bhawanigarh tehsil on May 24 and numerous other
instances of arbitrary arrests and intimidation of dalit peasants in several
other villages by the district administration, police and the local landlords. The
team comprised of Ish Mishra, Prof at Hindu College, Delhi University; senior
journalists Sh Rajesh Kumar and Sh. Anil Dubey and Dr Vikas Bajpai, who teaches
at Delhi's Jawaharlal Nehru University. The team was ably assisted by friends
belonging to AFDR – Sh Sukhwinder Pappi, Sh Bisheshar Ram, Sh Namdev Pataar and
Master Amreek Singh who made possible our visit to different villages and other
logistics of stay in Sangrur. We also wish to acknowledge here the help
rendered by the PSU (Punjab Students Union) leader Com Shanker
Apart from visiting three
villages – Bald Kalan, Bhadoh and Kheri, the team had extensive interaction
with peasant men, women and youth; activists of PSU (Punjab Student Union), NBS
(Naujawan Bharat Sabha) and AFDR; village Panchayat representatives and the
district collector.
The report follows the
following structure: Section 1 brings out the main issues involved in this
struggle; Section 2 discusses some general features of the struggle that are
common to different villages of the struggle; Section 3 gives the findings
regarding the different issues discussed in section 1 along with the future
prospects of this struggle; and Section 4 concludes the report with the demands
made by the fact finding team.
Issues involved in
the movement by dalit peasants
Based on our deliberations, we
can identify the following issues as the focal points of the ongoing struggle:
1.
Land:
The assertion by the Dalits of different
villages for their share in the productive resources of the villages of which
agricultural land is the most important in the context of agrarian economy of
agriculturally advanced state like Punjab.
In the ongoing struggle the demand for
agricultural land has presented itself in the form of taking control over the
share of Dalits in the ‘Nazool’[1]
and ‘Panchayat’ lands[2]
which have hitherto been under cultivation of landlords or rich peasants and
other influential persons for all practical purposes (New Democracy News, 2014;
Gill, 2001). The struggle of Dalits for staking their right over this land
started in the year 2014 and at the present moment their two major demands in
this respect are:
·
The government should eliminate the dummy dalit
candidates put up by the landlords and rich peasants from the process of
auctioning the Panchayat and Nazool lands.
·
The land should be auctioned to dalit peasants
at a very nominal price.[3]
·
Third there should be security of tenure for the
dalit peasants over the land earmarked for them.
2.
Caste oppression:
Struggle against caste oppression is an integral
part of this movement by dalit peasantry in Punjab. The struggle for social
emancipation from caste based oppression is linked to the power relations
between the Dalits and the dominant Jat Sikhs that derives from the inequity in
ownership of the means of production, of which land is the most important. The
struggles for social and economic emancipation have moved in tandem; and as the
findings shall bear out, the latter is almost a pre-condition for the former;
at least for the poorer rural Dalits who constitute an overwhelming majority
among the scheduled castes.
3.
Police and Landlord repression:
Though mentioned last this was the immediate reason that
necessitated our visit in first place. The present struggle of dalit peasantry
threatens to upturn the social and economic status quo in the villages, and
hence has attracted the first response that the establishment is capable of
i.e. unleashing repression.
General features of
the struggle
Some of the common features of
the overall struggle that the team noticed and which the people in different
villages themselves highlighted are as follows:
Initiative of the
Students
The most novel feature of the ongoing land struggle in the
district is that is that this struggle was launched on the initiative taken by
socially conscious students and youth belonging to the Punjab Students Union
(PSU) and Naujawan Bharat Sabha (NBS).
In fact the inaugural struggle of the ongoing movement was
led by a leader[4]
of PSU, when the dalit peasants in Sekha village (now in Barnala district, but
was part of Sangrur district in 2014) forcibly captured seven acres of
Panchayat land for collective farming in 2014.
Figure 1: NBS activist Pirthi Singh
Longowal inter-acting with the team.
It was heartwarming for the team members to note that students
and youth had come forward to organize the most marginalized section of the
peasantry in Punjab.
In fact the activists of PSU and NBS are staying with these
peasants in several villages and actively participating in their daily
travails. One such example is that of Pirthi Singh Longowal, district committee
member of ZPSC and a NBS activist who hails from Longowal village of Sangrur
district, but has been leading the struggle of dalit peasants of Kheri village
who are fighting for the possession of homestead land allotted to them in 1976.
Pirthi’s native village is more than twenty kilometers away from Kheri village,
yet he has been camping with the villagers in the open fields where the
villagers have pitched their tents and are running a community kitchen.
The PSU and NBS activists have indeed set most desirable
example for all patriotic students and the youth of India to follow. One cannot
help but compare this with the nationalism of Hindu fascists that gets
consummated in the chauvinist chanting of ‘Bharat Mata ki Jai.’
Participation of the
Women
A particularly noticeable feature of this struggle has been
an equal and militant participation of dalit women who have borne
disproportionate brunt of police brutalities.
It is worth mentioning that in Matoi village the dalit
girls, many of them college students, organized the dalit women and families of
the village to stake their claim over the Panchayat land in 2014. Their
movement was led by 25 year old Sandeep Kaur, who holds a diploma in some course
on computer applications. Under her leadership the dalit girls themselves
participated in auctioning of the land.
Our team had reached Sangrur late in the night of May 27. We
were told by the comrades of ZPSC that that day itself around 23 dalit men of
Janeri village were picked up by the police while they were sitting on a dharna
on the Panchayat land. The women of the village also got into the police
vehicle, insisting that they also be arrested along with their men folk. The
police had to forcibly evict them from the vehicle.
The new found confidence and pride in their struggle exuded
among the women in all the three villages that the team visited.
Spirit of
Collectivism
A noteworthy aspect that the team noticed in different
villages of the struggle is the ‘spirit of collectivism’ in the endeavors of
these villagers. One important reason for this is that it is not possible for
these families to counter the current onslaught on their movement by the
administration and the landlords individually and hence the need for unity.
Secondly, the dalit peasants have been making a collective
bid during the auctioning of the Panchayati land, and thereafter cultivating
the land collectively in the spirit of mutual cooperation. The allotted land in
all the villages is managed by a committee elected by the dalit families. This conscious
decision by the leaders of the ZPSC has helped strengthen the struggle by privileging
collective interest over individual greed, and thereby making it difficult for
the administration to break the collective will of these dalit peasants; at
least up to now. In all the villages visited by the team – Bald Kalan, Bhadoh
and Kheri, and we were informed that in other villages as well where there is
ongoing struggle, the control over the Panchayat lands reserved for Dalits is
being maintained under the collective watch of the men, women, youth and
children of the community, much against the wishes of the administration.
In Kheri village,
where the Dalits are occupying the Panchayat land on which residential plots
were allotted to them in 1976, but were never given possession of the same;
they are living together under makeshift tents and are running a community
kitchen under open sky while facing the threats and intimidation by the
landlords and their goons together.
Role of Political
Parties
Members of the team were informed by the protesting Dalits
in different villages that till now none of the ruling class parties such as
the Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP), Shiromani Akali Dal, Congress, the Bahujan
Samaj Party (BSP) or AAP had shown concern for their struggle worth some
substance. While the ruling BJP and Akali Dal combine had been openly hostile;
the state leader of BSP did come to address
a rally of ZPSC and issued a statement of support later. Congress has
largely kept silent on this issue.
The villagers informed that AAP national convener and Delhi
chief minister, Sh Arvind Kejriwal has had time to visit the dera of a Sikh
preacher, Bhai
Ranjit Singh Dhadhrian Wale located on the Patiala – Sangrur highway
on 26 May, but did not deem it fit to visit the villagers in Bald Kalan village
who had been injured in brutal lathi charge by the police on May 24. Mr
Bhagwant Mann, who is the AAP member of Lok Sabha from Sangrur had not bothered
to even issue a statement let alone visit the peasants injured in the incident
at Bald Kalan.
We were informed by the APDR comrades that a Punjabi newspaper
had carried the statement of support from the former Congress MLA from the
area, and that his party’s local unit shall stage a dharna in support of the
agitating farmers. However, as became evident later, this was only an attempt
on his part to broker a compromise between the agitating villagers and the
administration.
The peasant organizations affiliated to the CPI (Communist
Party of India) and CPM (Communist Party of India, Marxist) and some other
revolutionary organizations had however issued statements in support of the
ongoing agitation. The National Secretary of ‘Bhartiya Khet Mazdoor Union’ affiliated
with CPI, Com Gulzaar was present at the dharna site in Bald Kalan village when
the team reached there.
Findings regarding
the issues involved in the movement
In this section we shall
discuss the information provided to the team and the observations made by us
visually and on conversation with different stakeholders regarding the
underlying issues in the agitation as have already been highlighted above. We
shall begin with discussing the ‘Police and Landlord repression’ first as that
was the immediate reason for our visit to Sangrur.
Police and Landlord
repression
The dominant Jat landlords, a
large section of which is affiliated to the Akali Party, and their acolytes in
the state structure have been alarmed by this land struggle and have teamed
together to put down this movement of the Dalit peasantry.
The ZPSC activists and leaders
informed that at the moment a clear divide seems to have emerged in the
movement villages of Sangrur district between the dalit peasantry, including
dalit Sarpanchs and Panchs in some villages on one side and the Jat landlords
affiliated with Akali Dal on the other side. However, this is not to say that
the society has been completely divided along caste lines in these villages. We
shall dwell on this in greater detail later.
Figure 2: A peasant injured
during police baton charge at Bald Kalan village on May 24.
On May 24 a huge police force
was mobilized by the district administration to conduct the auction of the
dalit land of Bald Kalan village at the BDPO (Block Development Projects
Officer) office at tehsil headquarter Bhawanigarh even as Dalit peasants and
ZPSC activists from Bald Kalan and several other villages protested outside the
auction site. When the administration refused to yield to their demands the
agitators moved to outside Bald Kalan village and staged a dharna on the main
highway connecting Patiala with Sangrur. The dharna included elderly persons,
women and children apart from younger and middle aged men. The highway was
blocked. A heavy posse of policemen had surrounded the dharna.
The villagers at Bald Kalan
told that apart from the blockade of the highway they were peacefully sitting
on the dharna when two dalit boys from the village itself, who belonged to the
dalit families siding with the landlords, ploughed into their dharna on
motorcycles. Both the boys, it was claimed by the villagers were drunk. This
was indeed a grave provocation which the villagers believe had been
deliberately staged by the landlords with the tacit approval of the police to provoke
the protesters to commit violence such that police could then teach them a
lesson.
The two boys were severely
thrashed by the agitating peasants. The police immediately sensed an
opportunity and resorted to a heavy lathi charge (baton charge) that went on
for half an hour. The villagers also claimed that the police fired in air to
cow them down and some policemen fired many shots at a tractor parked nearby to
scare them. The peasants also retaliated with pelting of stones. An elderly
lady at Bhadoh village who appeared to be in late fifties or early sixties, who
had joined the dharna at Bald Kalan on May 24, said that when they were pelting
stones at the police, some policemen warned that they could get shot for doing
so. To this, she told, the women replied that if you beat up our men so
mercilessly, we will retaliate unmindful of the consequences.
Many women in Bald Kalan showed
their injury marks on their legs and thighs where the skin had turned purple,
while others said that they had received injuries on areas of the body which
could not be shown in public. Even girl students going for tuition on bicycles
were not spared. A girl – Kiran Pal, fifteen to sixteen years old, told that
she and two of her friends were stopped by the policemen even as they tried to
explain that they were going to computer centre for tuition. They slapped the
girls and threw their bicycles aside. Surprisingly enough, even though there
were a large number of women among the protesters, there weren’t’ any more than
three to four women police present on the spot.
The villagers also asserted
that at the behest of the local Akali Dal MLA, Prakash Chand Garg, the doctors
at the government hospital at Bhawanigarh forcibly discharged the injured
persons despite the fact that they were in severe pain. They were then taken to
Rajendra hospital (Government Medical College Hospital) Patiala, where again
the hospital authorities insisted that these persons would be attended to
provided they will not hold the police was not responsible for their injuries.
At this, the ZPSC activists had to take help of their contacts to get the
injured treated by private doctors.
On May 25 the police filed an
FIR – No. 0075/2016, under sections 307 (attempted homicide), 353, 186, 323,
148 and 149 against seventy nine persons of which twenty are unknown persons.
Till now 7 people from Balan are in jail. Along with these the others who have
been arrested are AIKMS (All India Kisan Mazdoor Sabha – a fraternal
organization) leaders Darshan Singh Kooner, Dhanna Singh Pattiwal, Jujhar Singh
Badokkhan who have been involved in organizing these peasants and have stood by
the struggle.
As per the FIR the police has
alleged that many among the agitating Dalit peasants intimidated and threatened
the Dalits who participated in the auction of the Dalit land held at BDPO
office, with dire consequences. They interrupted in the official function and
prevented the police from discharging its duties. Allegations have also been
made that during their dharna blocking the road the villagers, including old
women, indulged in unprovoked violence and pelting stones etc. It however,
fails to mention the issues raised by the protesting Dalit peasants.
We would like to admit that the
above mentioned version of incidents that transpired on the 24 and 25 May,
2016, as given either by the aggrieved party or by the police, could not be
verified beyond what was apparent to the eye. We tried to contact the senior
superintendent of police, Sangrur Mr Pritpal Singh Thind over his mobile, but
could not get through to him while in Sangrur. Attempts were made to contact
him over phone from Delhi as well, but without luck. Finally, we wrote a mail
to his office with our queries and seeking their version of the events. We were
still awaiting reply at the time of writing this report. Whatever may be the
allegations of the police against the agitating peasants; there are some things
already on record which make us doubt the propriety of the police action.
Barring the boys who ploughed
their motorcycle into the dharna, all the injuries have been sustained by the
agitating peasants only. One policeman sustained a minor injury on the little
finger of his hand, with regard to which an allegation has been made that the
agitators tried to snatch his pistol.
Additionally, It is important
to recall that the possession of land at Bald Kalan had not been easy for the
dalits of the village even last year. It was only after considerable agitation
that they could get the land at half the market rate. Last year also, around
the time of auction, the police had resorted to heavy baton charge at the
peasant’s protest and had sent 41 people to jail after filing a case under
various sections, including that of attempt to murder. The ZPSC had decided not
to take bail for these people from court and carried on with struggle demanding
that they be released unconditionally and the false charges against them be
withdrawn. It is to their credit that they succeeded in their efforts. Given
the general scheme of things, it would be too much to believe that this was the
outcome of government’s generosity.
The mala fide intent of the
police in this year’s action becomes apparent from the fact that in the
incident at Bald Kalan, the ZPSC leader of Baopur village, Krishna Kumar was
falsely implicated despite the fact that he was already in jail on the day of
the incident. When the press raised this issue and questioned the police, the
SSP Sangrur was obliged to issue a public apology.
The Janhastakshep team tried
meeting with the Sarpanch of Bald Kalan, Buta Singh. We contact him on phone
thrice and each time he gave us time at which to meet him but failed to turn up
at the anointed time. The report would be that much poorer for the lack of the
version of big landowners. But the fact that he avoided to meet us despite our
repeated attempts and despite the fact that he himself did not turn up at the
time given by him, is a reflection on the uprightness of the position taken by
the landlords.
Meanwhile, in many other
villages dominant landlords have been attacking and intimidating the dalits. We
were told that in May this year the sarpanch of Jhaneri village and his goons
attacked the ZPSC activists with fire arms, but the ZPSC members who were alert
retaliated even before the opponents could open fire. They captured the
assailants and their arms and forced the police to file a case against the
Sarpanch.
As alleged by the ZPSC leaders,
in May itself several ZPSC activists were falsely implicated in an old murder
case in Baopur village. Seven of the activists, including Krishan Kumar, were
still in jail when the team was visiting Sangrur.
On May 4, around two hundred
Sarpanchs and other Panchayat members of Sangrur district affiliated to Akali
Dal along with some known goonda elements of the district staged a dharna in
Sangrur against the ZPSC with the demand that cases be filed against the ZPSC
activists for disturbing the peace of the area and for unauthorized capture of
government lands. The ZPSC also retaliated with a dharna staged by Sarpanchs
and Panchs affiliated to them. The team members were shown cuttings of Punjabi
Tribune, which is a widely read paper of Punjab that had carried the pictures
of the two dharnas while the write up compared the contradictory motives and
issues of the two.
In Kheri village on three
consecutive days, 25, 26 and 27 of May, around hundred persons belonging to the
dominant Jat community of the village and among them some goons came to
threaten and clash with the dalit families camping in the fields. The Dalits -
men, women and children confronted the intimidators and somehow the clash was
averted with the intervention of the police. However, the police has refrained
from taking any action against the landlords and their goons. Instead a false
case has been slapped against fifteen dalits of which four are in jail.
A series of FIRs are being
slapped and arbitrary arrests are being made in several villages to break the
will of the people. In a separate case twenty three people of ZPSC from
Garrachon village have been framed; during 27 May day time 23 people were
arrested from Jhaneri village. The women of the village also got into the
police vehicle and insisted upon being arrested along with their men. It was
only with great difficulty that the police could dismount them from the
vehicle. In Samura village a case has been filed against thirty six persons on
the charge of forcibly occupying government property i.e. the Panchayat land
meant for Dalits. Six people of Jaloor village have also been implicated in a
similar case. Upon our return to Delhi, we learnt that the PSU activist leading
the struggle in Kheri village was also picked up by the police while going to
another village to attend a meeting.
In his conversation with us the
district collector, Arsh Deep Singh Thind requested us to help him restore
normalcy in the villages by counseling the ZPSC to give up the path of
confrontation. Even as we made it clear to him that we hardly wielded any
influence over ZPSC and that we could at best convey to them what he had said;
we also suggested to him that if he was so eager to restore peace to the
villages, should the arbitrary arrests not stop as a precondition? His reply
was very straight forward – as collector of the district he had to ensure that
the law of the land prevailed. He alleged that ZPSC is a group of people who
have been provoking the peasants in different villages; that they are very
violent people and have been inciting the innocent farmers to commit violent
acts.
The repression is going on in
the villages in full swing. With the approaching monsoons the next agricultural
season shall begin soon and our apprehension is that the conditions of the
dalit peasants are likely to get far worse before their will prevails
ultimately, as it happened last year. From all available indications and from
what the team could gather in different villages, people, especially the women,
have lost fear of the repressive state machinery because the freedom that they
have tasted as a result of their struggle under the leadership of ZPSC over
last two to three years is too dear to give up at any cost. The women were the
most vociferous in saying in each and every village – ‘assi maran nu vi taiyaar
haan, par zameen nahi chaddan ge’ (we are even prepared to die, but shall not
give up our land).
The land question
The current land struggle
started from Sekha village which was part of the old Sangrur district (now in
Barnala district that was carved out as a separate district from Sangrur in the
year 2011). The struggle started with the objective of restoring the possession
of Nazool land in the village to the dalits of the village. As has already been
mentioned, even though there were legal entitlements for Dalits to have share
in Nazool and Panchayat lands, the actual possession of these lands had
remained with the landlords and rich peasants.
Seven acres of Nazool land was
captured in Sekha village under the leadership of a PSU comrade in 2014. This
greatly enthused the dalit peasants in different villages and they approached
PSU to help them get possession of land in their villages.[5]
Soon 16,423 acres of land was freed from the clutches of the landlords and rich
peasants in about 65 villages. As the movement grew, need was felt for forming
an organization to deal with the specific organizational and agitational issues
of this movement. It is at this juncture that a conference of dalit and small
peasants belonging to the Jat peasantry was called in Badrukkhan village in
February 2014 in which representatives from eighty villages took part and
‘Zameen Prapti Sangarsh Committee’ was formed to guide the future course of the
movement. The participating peasants themselves chose red flag with a glowing
sun in the centre to be the symbol of their struggle.
The founding conference of ZPSC
was followed by another big gathering of about 1000 representatives from thirty
villages of Mansa district in 2015 and the latest show of the gathering clout
of the movement was organised on March 2o, 2016 at Garrachon village of Sangrur
district in which 4000 peasants participated. Starting from Sekha village of
Barnala district the movement has now spread to more than 102 villages in
Sangrur district alone, apart from some parts of Patiala, Barnala and Mansa
districts.
Meanwhile, demand had also
started arising that apart from the nazool land, one third of the Panchayt land
meant for Dalits should also be restored to the dalit peasants in different
villages. Dalits at large had been denied possession of this land by the
Panchayats dominated by the landlords through the dubious mechanism of dummy
dalit candidates.
In Punjab the total land of the
Panchayats is 1, 58, 000 acres, out of which the share of Dalits comes to
52,667 acres. As per the existing rules/practice the Panchayat organizes
auction of both Dalits share of its land and that meant for non- Dalits every
year. This is subject to the condition that the land for Dalits should be
auctioned at roughly half the price at which the non-dalit land is auctioned
and that the minimum bidding price for both be raised by ten percent every
year.
It is important to note that
the auction amount is not subject to actual production from the land and has to
be deposited in advance. This amounts to a fixed rent which in itself reflects
a retrogressive feudal practice. The fact that the government itself is the
lessor in this case makes it a case of ‘State led feudalism’ in agrarian
relations. A peasant did remark in our conversation at Bhadoh village – ‘sarkar
jagirdari parbandh bapas le aona chahandi hai.’
At present rate the market rent
of land is 50 to 60 thousand per acre and therefore that for Dalits is 25 to 30
thousand an acre, but only in the areas of the struggle, while in other
district of Punjab, it varies from area to area. Even though this amount is
half that of the market rent in these villages where struggle is on, it still
remains a big sum for Dalits who are largely landless peasants and lack the
kind of resources required to bag the lease of Panchayat land. The only option
left for them is to take loans from private money lenders at heavy interest.
Taking advantage of this
situation the landlords, who almost exclusively belong to the dominant Jat
caste, hitherto leveraged their clout to put up a dummy dalit candidate (to
suffice the technical and legal condition for auction of the dalit land) with
their financial backing who would quote an auction price that was impossible
for any other dalit household to compete with. Thereby the de facto control of
the Panchayat land meant for Dalits remained with the landlords.
However, this has changed with
the coming together of Dalits under the banner of ZPSC which has given them a
new political identity. It is not that they lacked a political identity
earlier. Given the fact that being nearly thirty two percent of the population
in Punjab (as per 2011 census) they are a big electoral block; only that even
parties like the BSP who claim to represent the dalit interest, used dalits’
political identity only for electoral purposes rather than build struggles
centering on their day to day issues and needs. Formation of ZPSC has given
these Dalit peasants a new political identity and even though, at the moment
its manifestation is limited to assertion of their economic demands, but as we
shall see later, this has all the elements of developing into a fully fledged
class struggle.
As an organized force under
ZPSC the dalits in different villages have managed to assert themselves
politically and pool their resources to bid for the Panchayati Dalit land. This
has more or less denied the landlords the cake walk they had earlier in
usurping this land.
Village Bald Kalan located on
the Patiala-Sangrur highway in Bhawanigarh tehsil has emerged as the biggest
centre for this struggle. This is owing to the fact that the village Panchayat
has a huge 375 acres of land under its control and thereby the Dalit land also
adds up to a substantial 125 acres. In 2014 the representatives of the local
ZPSC committee bid for the entire land and got at a price of Rs 24,000 an acre.
Thereafter, the land was cultivated cooperatively by all the dalit families of
the village with each household contributing financially and the produce being
equitably distributed among them. In 2015 they managed to have the price
reduced further to Rs 23,000 an acre. However, this year problems have cropped
up with respect to the bidding process in several villages of the district.
First of all even to afford a
bidding price of Rs 24 or 23,000 was not easy for these Dalits. They were
obliged to take loan on interest from private moneylenders to secure the land.
Secondly, no surety of being able to get the lease in the subsequent year bred
insecurity of tenure. In Bald Kalan given the huge amount of land, the peasants
could have produce for selling in market as well and thereby pay the lease
amount; but in smaller villages like Bhadoh, also located in Bhawanigarh
tehsil, the land being small (only 28 acres) and shared among a large number of
families; the produce from land is meant for consumption within households. For
example, in Bhadoh each dalit household only manages to have round the year
supply of fodder for their cattle. More than having a modest financial benefit,
this has enabled the dalits to reduce their dependence on the fields of the
landlords; though they still have to supplement family income from other
sources – mostly casual labor.
Figure
3: ZPSC leader in Bald Kalan, Jarnail Singh making a point.
Figure
4: Dalit peasants staging a dharna on their land in Bald Kalan. 
Hence, further lowering of the
bidding price in order to secure land lease over successive years had already
been on the agenda of ZPSC; district administration’s own doing has only helped
precipitate the issue sooner than later.
Earlier this year the district
administration allowed leasing of thirty acres of Panchayat land in Jhaneri
village of Sangrur for a ‘gaushala’ (cowshed) at the rate of Rs 7,000 an acre
and that too for a thirty years period. Dalit peasants are now demanding that
land be leased to them also on same terms. The leader of ZPSC in Bald Kalan,
Jarnail Singh asked – “je majhan-gawan layi zameen satt hazaar utte ditti za
sakdi hai, te assi taan jeunde insaan haan” (if the land can be given for
animals at Rs 7,000, then why can it not be given to us at the same rate? We
are after all living human beings).
However, when ZPSC demanded
from the district administration, before this year’s auction, that land should
be given to dalits at the same price at which it has been given for ‘gaushala’,
the administration stoically refused to do so. When contacted by us on phone,
the district collector Mr Arsh Deep Singh Thind admitted that the land has been
given for ‘gaushala’ at a huge loss of revenue to the government. As to why it
could not be given at the same price to the dalits; he said that the rules did
not permit this. When asked as to what rules permitted this for cattle which do
not have much productive potential when compared to the marginalized sections
of the peasantry, who if facilitated likewise would help the society immensely
by increasing its productive potential; he had no answer.
Mr Thind instead argued that he
was bound by government rules which were categorical that the land for dalits
needs to be auctioned at a minimum price that is half the market rent. As a
proof of his generosity/concern for the poor, he volunteered that he was
willing to forego the mandatory ten percent increase over last year’s price and
that he had been helpful towards these peasants by enabling them to get
fertilizers at cheap rates. This he assured of doing again, but said the lease
price cannot be reduced any further.
Though unsuccessful over last
two years, this year the dominant section of the peasantry has succeeded in
breaking a few dalits from the fold of the majority under the influence of pervert
incentives to act as dummy bidders on their behalf. In Bald Kalan village while
out of a total of approximately 144 dalit families the majority of nearly 132
families are on one side, around 12 dalit families have been lured by rich
peasants on to their side, reportedly with a promise of being given one lakh
rupees each.[6]
The majority of dalit families
in Bald Kalan and other villages where ZPSC is active have decided to boycott
the bidding process this year unless the administration is willing to lower the
bid price. They have simultaneously occupied the lands in their respective
villages and are staging a continuous dharna on the land to ensure that no one
else is able to take control of that land. When the administration was
organizing the auction for dalit land in Bald Kalan at tehsil headquarter at
Bhawanigarh, a large number of dalit peasants from Bald Kalan and other
villages staged a massive dharna outside on May 24. However, the administration
went ahead with the auction, though in the melee that followed, it was not
clear to the dalits we met in Bald Kalan as to who among the dissenting dalits
has bagged the lease; of course on behalf of the landlords.
The district collector insisted
with us that the real issue was not of removing the dummy dalit candidates from
the bidding process. The issue really was that the ZPSC wanted to arm twist the
administration by hook or by crook. He said – “They want that the lease either
be given to their people, or else they wouldn’t allow the auction to get through.”
When asked – “does the fact
that there are only eleven or twelve dissenting households, while the
overwhelming majority is together, not show that those from the minority
households are dummies?” His claim was that up to forty percent of the dalit
households are against ZPSC in Bald Kalan. When suggested that the
administration could easily settle this issue through ballot; he invited us to
stay back in Sangrur for a few more days and that he would organize bidding in
our presence so as to assure us that everything has been done in a transparent
manner. When suggested that this would still not solve the demand to lower the
rates to Rs 7,000 per acre, he again insisted that he has to work as per the
government rules and that he would be willing to help the dalit peasants in
other ways as he had done earlier.
Just like Bald Kalan village,
the issues in Bhadoh village are also of lowering the rent and removing dummy
candidates. The exception is that unlike Bald Kalan, in Bhadoh the land
earmarked for dalits is only about 28 acres, shared between approximately 128
Dalit households. As has already been discussed, though small, this land is of
vital importance to the dalits of the village. This point shall be further
elaborated while discussing the caste oppression factor below.
The case of Kheri
village; a travesty of social justice
The last village that we
visited during the visit was Kheri. We were taken straight to a plot of around
three to four acres of land a little distance from the village. We were overwhelmed
to see that the villagers had pitched their tents on the land; had erected a
makeshift Gurudwara and were running a community kitchen on the spot – all
signs that they had launched ‘Occupy Homestead Land’ movement in earnest and
seem to have dug in their heels for a long haul.
In Kheri village, which also
lies in Sangrur district, the issues are two folds – that of agricultural land
meant for dalits and the issue of possession of homestead land allotted to
eighty five families as far back as 1976. Since the Panchayat land for Dalits
is even less
Figure
5: Occupy homestead land – tents pitched in open fields.
Figure
6: Villagers in Kheri with the makeshift Gurudwara in the background.
over here, the dominant issue
is of getting possession of the homestead land. Until four years back these
eighty five families of the village did not even know that homestead land had
been allotted in their name by the government in 1976. Of these 85 families
only 56 approached the ZPSC for help.
We were informed that an
earlier Sarpanch (head of the village council) of the village had quietly had
this land registered in the name of these families in the official land
records, but refrained from telling as much to the beneficiaries in a hope of
using this information at an opportune moment to secure their votes in an
electoral duel. However, he had met an untimely death and the issue had lain
dead for many years with his death; only to be discovered four years back.
These families filed a case in the court for getting possession of the land,
but with the formation of ZPSC and their getting to know of it, they have
decided to fight it out through agitational means. The one twist in the story
is that as per an earlier Punjab and Haryana High Court order, if the beneficiary
does not make a house on land given for homestead, within three years of
allotment, s/he would lose entitlement to the land and it shall come back to
the village Panchayat.
The affected villagers in Kheri
told that the government records, as of date continue to show this land in
their name. To support their claim they even gave us a copy of the fard (land
record) for the concerned land in which the names of heads of these families
could be seen. Despite this these families were never given the possession of
the land to build their houses. For all these years gone by, the said plot of
land had been leased through auction every year.
After occupying the land, they
had gone and met the district collector to ask him to facilitate the possession
of the land officially. On being shown the current status of this land in
official records, he is reported to have told them to keep sitting on the land.
However, due to subsequent lobbying by the landlords of the village with
political leaders, especially the local Akali Dal MLA, Prakash Chand Garg, the
district administration is now insisting that they vacate the illegal
occupation of the land.
When we raised this issue with
the district collector Mr Thind, he asserted that these dalits were illegally
occupying the land and requested us to advise the villagers to peacefully give
up their occupation. He also said that when they have themselves gone to the
court, they should at least wait for the court’s judgment; and that their
action showed that they have little regard for the law of the land. On being
asked whether the people can be expected to respect the legal process when the
law enforcing agencies had kept silent for all these years over their not
getting possession of land endowed to them as far back as 1976; Mr Thind’s
reply was that he could not be held responsible for something that happened far
back in time.
On being reminded that
governance is a continuing process and ought to be respected irrespective of
individuals, he told us that we as well ought to know that the High Court had
said that if construction on allotted homestead land was not done within three
years by the beneficiaries; such land shall revert back to the Panchayat. Upon
our suggestion that this could not be held against the beneficiary villagers in
the instant case as they never could get possession of the land; his insistence
was that the administration cannot allow illegal occupation; let them win from
the court to take possession of the land.
The Janhastakshep team reached
the house of the village Sarpanch unannounced, lest her husband also disappear
and avoid meeting us like the Sarpanch at Bald Kalan. Fortunately, both the
Sarpanch Ranjeet Kaur and her husband Gurcharan Singh were at home. Being a
seat reserved for women and scheduled castes, the Sarpanch herself is a
Ramdasia Sikh (Dalit Sikh). As is the wont of women Sarpanchs almost throughout
India, in Kheri also it is the Sarpanch’s husband who is the de facto Sarpanch.
Figure 7: The de facto Sarpanch
of Kheri village Gurcharan Singh and his wife, the de jure Sarpanch,
Ranjeet Kaur talking to the members of
the team.
The first complaint of both the
husband and the wife was that - need they have done it during my tenure only; I
also being a dalit myself? When we insisted that this is only incidental and
that the real issue is whether their demand is justified; and whether as
Sarpanch you should be helping them achieve their just demand? At this his
submission was that he had heard that the land allotted to them was elsewhere
and not at the plot they were occupying and that at the allotted land a stadium
had been built by one Mr Majithia who is related to the deputy chief minister
of Punjab, Mr Sukhbir Badal. He complained that when that happened, nobody said
anything. At this other members of the team questioned if he was sure that the
land allotted was other than the one that is being occupied by the allot tees
and whether he had any documents to show that the copy of the fard provided by
the allot tees was wrong, especially as it mentioned the details of the land
allotted?
The Sarpanch’s husband was
clearly exasperated by this time; his submission was that I have not asked
these people to occupy the land, neither am I asking them to vacate it; but if
the Jat landlords of the village are opposed to them then what can I do. They
say that this land belongs to the Panchayat and that it should be auctioned as
earlier for farming. The unsaid but implied submission was that – “If I have to
function as Sarpanch then I have to listen to them.”
Till the time of our leaving
Sangrur, the impasse in Bald Kalan, Bhadoh, Kheri and other villages of the
district was continuing, as were the arbitrary arrests in several villages of
the movement.
Caste oppression
Caste is a living reality of the
Indian society that mediates all social, economic and political phenomena
impacting the society. The most important aspect of this struggle is the fact
that this is the struggle of the most deprived and marginalized section of the
society. Had it been a struggle of the dominant upper caste peasantry its
projection in the media and the anxiety of the rulers to resolve their issues
would have been at an entirely different plane. That notwithstanding, the
significance of this struggle from the standpoint of annihilating caste based
oppression, especially in a state like Punjab where Dalits constitute a high
proportion of the population, is undeniable.
Our interaction with the
political leaders of this movement and with the dalit peasants[7] in
all the villages that we went to convinced us that apart from the trials and
travails of the movement that we have talked of above; there is a great
chemistry to these developments which is changing the rural society in the
areas of the struggle for good; and hopefully, forever. In every village
people, especially the women asserted – “eh sadde aatam-sammaan di ladai aa.
Assi pehli vaari aap noo zamindaran to azad mehsoos kar rahe aan. Hun sadde kol
aapni zameen aa; sannu ona de kehtan ch zaan di lodh nahi” (this is a struggle
for our self-respect. It is the first time that we are feeling independent of
the landlords. We have our own land; there is no need for us to go to their
fields now).
ZPSC leader of Bald Kalan,
Jarnail Singh said – “asal ch zameendaran nu es gall da dukh aa ki eh zameen
wale kyon bande ne? Pehlan saddi kudiyan ona de khetan ch jaandiyan san; oh
mada-changa bolde san. Saadiyan aurtaan di koi izzat nahi si. Saade bande
mazoor bhai ne; pehlan kadi kaamm milya, kadi nahi. Vele baina painda si.
Zameen Milan toon sadda saal aram naal lang jaanda aa. Hun saanu ona de agge
jhukkan di koi lodh nahi” (The truth is that the landlords cannot digest the
fact that we too have the land now. Earlier our girls had to go to their fields
(to get the weeds for fodder), and they would say nasty things about them. Our
women were not respected. Our brethren are simple laborers; sometimes they
would get work, sometimes times not. They used to sit idle; but with access to
land, our year goes by in comfort. Now we do not have to bow before them). A
young man in early twenties volunteered – “This land is a big guarantee for our
future. The government isn’t giving jobs anyways.”
Sandip Kaur of Bald Kalan, who
had been badly beaten up by male cops on the thighs and back in the brutal baton
charge by the police on 24th May 2016 to break the protest being staged by the
villagers, recalled the inhuman insults inflicted by the landlords whenever
they went to collect weeds for the cattle in their fields. The access to land
was a kind of emancipation. Notwithstanding the pain of nearly fresh injuries
she proudly expressed her determination not to lift the collective occupation
of land and to fight till the end. Baljeet Kaur at Bhadoh was another woman to
express the same feelings on behalf of other women of the village. These
sentiments were expressed in all the three villages; and we can hardly
overemphasize that it were the women who were the most vociferous in asserting
them.
It is difficult to appreciate
from a distance the intensity of the emotions these down to earth peasants
expressed. Even as they are enduring another cycle of repression by the state
they recalled events around this time of the year in 2014. As is a usual method
of breaking the will of the people, in 2014 as well 41 people were detained for
59 days in the jail, charged under various IPC sections, including attempt to
murder. ZPSC took the decision of not applying for the bail of arrested comrades,
and instead pressurize the government to withdraw the false cases through
agitation. There were protests for their release all over Punjab. Eventually
the struggle yielded results. Dalits under the leadership of ZPSC won the
battle and secured the release of their comrades along with the lease of their
land. It proved to be a historic victory.
Fifty four year old Karnail
Singh was overwhelmed recollecting the experiences of those days two years back.
He was among the arrested agitators. His forearm was severely injured in brutal
lathi (baton) charge and needed stainless steel prosthesis to restore its
integrity. It still pains. Nonetheless, the pleasure he feels on being able to
access his own land, after his family having worked as laborers on the fields
of the landlords for generations, suffices to sooth all his worries. For him this struggle with his comrades has
brought about a new spring in the lives of the 144 Dalit families of Balad
Kalan (regrettably, 12 of them have decided to separate themselves from the
rest this year). Likewise, Paramjit Kaur, forty years of age, recalls the struggle
of 2014 - "They were brutal"; a particularly vicious policeman
pounded her on the head with his baton resulting in her spending weeks in a
comatose state. Yet there she was, at her post, lending strength to this year’s
battle.
Bald Kalan has become a
precedent of transformation that is overtaking rural areas in this part of Punjab,
slowly but surely and firmly challenging, even demolishing, age-old caste
equations. The traditional power equations in these villages are changing;
rendering asunder in turn the age old caste bondages. One needn’t ruminate to
figure out that the agent of change has been ‘the struggle for land’. This
change does not owe to the electoral victory of a Dalit messiah or any kind of
governmental affirmative action, important though these are for the
democratization of our society. Indeed, given their educational levels most of
these Dalit peasants would not even qualify for taking advantage of the
official policy of ‘reservations’ in jobs and higher education. It needs no
persuasion to realize that among other things, lack of command over productive
resources is one important reason that has kept them from getting educated.
People in all the three
villages told that the dominant sections and government officials had deprived
many among them from governmental benefits like cancelling their BPL cards; not
allowing them work under NREGA etc. We did not have time to investigate this,
but we do know about the errors of inclusion and exclusion in government
schemes and the fact that there is little sincere effort to remedy this; given
government’s emphasis on curtailing ‘wasteful
subsidies.’ The district collector, Arsh Deep Singh Thind, almost admitted
as much. He volunteered that – “these people are even creating problems with
NREGA work. They insist that work be given to them on the land whose possession
is controversial.” Indeed it seems Mr Thind has not heard that many development
experts have opined – ‘why can’t we implement land reforms and give the people
work under NREGA on their own land to improve its productivity.’
Hence, presuming the complaints
of names being cut from welfare schemes to be true, one can only say that these
are but some other means to browbeat these peasants who live by the sweat of
their brow; but nothing of this has dissuaded them from giving up on land they
consider as theirs. There is indeed a great lesson in this for the rulers as
much there is for the rest of the society – ‘More important than showing
generosity towards the impoverished; the need is for enabling people to help
themselves; which is what any self-respecting person would like to do.’[8]
The proportion of scheduled caste
(SC) population in Punjab, at 31.94 percent, is the highest amongst all states
of the country as per the 2011 census. This amounts to 4.3 percent of the
entire SC population in the country. The ten year growth rate of the SC
population in Punjab is 26.06 percent as compared to 13.89 percent for the
entire state (Government of Punjab, undated). Out of the total, 73.33 percent
of the SC population lives in rural areas, and fifty seven villages out of the
total 12,168 inhabited villages in the State are 100% SC villages, while the
proportion of SCs is forty percent or more in another forty percent of the
villages i.e. 4,799 villages (Government of Punjab, undated).
These demographics underline
the significance of ensuring the well being of SC population for overall uplift
of the Punjabi society. However, the economic status and the ownership of
productive resources by the SCs in Punjab is grossly out of sync with their
numerical strength.
Despite its relatively better
economic development level among the Indian states, agriculture still
constitutes the backbone of Punjab’s economy. This implies that agricultural
land is the principle productive resource in Punjab, ownership of which
determines the social, economic and political status of any segment of the
population. It is in this respect that the SCs lag far behind all other
segments.
As revealed in the agricultural
census 2010 -11, the SCs in Punjab owned 63,480 operational holdings covering
an area of 1,26,966 hectares. This amounts to 6.02 percent and 3.2 percent of
all land holdings and area of the state respectively. Of these operational
holdings also a large proportion (nearly 85 percent) are said to be unviable
due to small size of less than five hectares (Government of Punjab, Undated).
Res ipsa loquitur – goes the
Latin phrase; meaning – ‘the thing speaks for itself.’ If ‘annihilation of
caste’ is the objective, then ‘redistribution of land’ is the answer; most
eminently so in Punjab.
For the overwhelming masses of
the oppressed castes, given their material reality, taking advantage of the
‘reservation policy’ remains an uphill task at any rate. The Dalits are
overwhelmingly rural people. Hence, demand for land is the key to a secure
livelihood and their empowerment. Only if this can be stably ensured can they
think of acquiring the abilities to take advantage of opportunities like
reservation in jobs and higher education.
None of the Dalits in the three
villages that we visited talked of strict implementation of Reservation Policy,
because they know they are in no position to benefit from it. This however is
not to say that they will not affirm the desirability of such measures if
specifically asked so. It is just that they are still at a lower pedestal.
Future prospects of
the struggle
Even as we were keenly
conversing with the people in Bald Kalan we were cautioned by our APDR friends
that Bald Kalan is an exception in as much as here the Panchayat land meant for
Dalits is huge at 125 acres, which makes it possible for them not only to
sustain their own needs but also produce for the market. As opposed to this,
the amount of land reserved for dalits in other villages is very small and can
hardly suffice even for self-sustenance. The suggested implication of this was
that in this form, this land struggle has a very limited scope in Punjab since
it is not a big issue in majority of the villages. Limited though the land may
have been in the other two villages – Bhadoh and Kheri, what was nonetheless
apparent was the fact that this still did not prevent it from becoming the bone
of contention between the Dalit peasants and the landlords in these villages.
After removing the land reserved
for Dalits, there still remains 1,05,333 acres of Panchayat land in Punjab that
is auctioned every year and that too at market price. If the demand is raised
that this land be reserved only for small and marginal and may be semi-medium
peasants, they have every reason to come out in support of such a demand.
The Dalit peasants we met in
Bald Kalan and other villages are very much aware of the dangers inherent to
limiting the scope of their movement to the present level and do realize very
well the need to take other sections of the peasantry along with. Jarnail Singh
of Bald Kalan did say – “Aje o ladai ch sidda shamil nahi ne, par Jattan ch vi
jede chotte kisan ne oh sadde naal ya. Assi te kehne aan ki e saddi sanjhi
ladai aa; assi onna layi vi ladan nu taiyar haan” (Even though they are not yet
directly involved in this struggle, but small peasants among the Jats do
support us. It is our view that this is our common struggle and we are prepared
to fight for their demands as well.)
Stressing the longer term goals
Jarnail Singh said – “Assi baad ch eh vi maang karange ki ceiling di limat kat
kitti jaye, ate zameen di dobara wandh honi chahidi” (We shall later demand
that ceiling limit (for land holding) should be reduced and that land should be
redistributed).
Similar sentiments were
expressed at Bhadoh. Baksish Singh, a well built youth who is pursuing a PhD
from Punjabi University, Patiala, told that, “our committee is also thinking
along the lines that Jat peasants having small land holding should come and
join our struggle and that we shall fight for their right to Panchayat land as
well. However the bigger landlords keep instigating them by saying that – tussi
hun chude-chamaran naal jana e aa” (you will now join ranks with these lower
caste people?)
These Dalits, especially the
youth among them, harbor a vision of a brighter future. They have started
realizing the importance of deepening their political understanding and fully
trust the ZPSC to show them the way. Baksish and his comrades were confident
that as their involvement in the movement deepens their political understanding
shall also develop.
However, enthusiasm and
subjective wishes alone do not suffice to build a movement if the objective
reality does not favor it. To check lest the enthusiasm of these peasants be
misplaced we tried doing a reality check of our own.
We took note of the objective
realities regarding land holdings in Punjab. Table 1 gives the status of
operational holdings in Punjab as per the Agricultural Census, 2005-06 (the corresponding
figures from the latest Agricultural Census of 2010-11 could not be found).
Land ownership data in India is not available and even if given in the way it
is present in records, it would be highly unreliable for various reasons that
need not be gone into over here.
Table 1: Size class wise number
and area of operational holdings for different social classes in Punjab (Number
in 000 unit; Area in 000 Ha).
Size of holding in Ha
(acres)
1 ha = 2.47 acres
|
Scheduled Castes
|
Others
|
Total
|
|||
Number
|
Area
|
Number
|
Area
|
Number
|
Area
|
|
Marginal
(a)
Below .5
to 1.0 (1.2 to 2.5 acres)
|
18
|
9
|
116
|
74
|
134
|
83
|
Small
(b)
1.0 to
2.0 (2.5 to 5.0 acres)
|
9
|
12
|
174
|
246
|
183
|
258
|
Sub-total
(a + b)
|
27
(2.7%)
|
21
(.5%)
|
290
(28.9%)
|
320
(8.1%)
|
317
(31.6%)
|
341
(8.7%)
|
Semi-medium
(c)
2.0 to
4.0 (5 to 10 acres)
|
8
|
19
|
314
|
834
|
322
(32.1%)
|
853
(21.6%)
|
Sub-total
(a + b + c)
|
35
(3.5%)
|
40
(1%)
|
604
(60.2%)
|
1154
(29.3%)
|
639
(63.7%)
|
1194
(30.3%)
|
Medium
(d)
4.0 to
20 (10 to 50 acres)
|
3
|
20
|
351
|
2434
|
354
|
2454
|
Large
(e)
20 &
above (50 & above acres)
|
0
|
1
|
11
|
299
|
11
|
300
|
Sub-total
(d + e)
|
3
(.3%)
|
21
(.5%)
|
362
(36%)
|
2733
(69.3%)
|
363
(36.2%)
|
2754
(69.8%)
|
All
Classes
|
38
(3.8%)
|
61
(1.6%)
|
966
(96.2%)
|
3887
(98.5%)
|
1004
(100%)
|
3948
(100%)
|
Source:
Punjabstat.com (undated)
Taking the number of operational
holdings to be the proxy for owners of operational holdings of different size
class in different social classes, it can be seen that lower thirty percent of
non-Dalit peasants in Punjab belong to small and marginal peasant category
operating merely 8.1 percent of the total operational area. If semi-medium
category is added to this then the proportion reaches sixty percent of the
total holdings with an operational area of just 29.3 percent among the
non-Dalit peasants. Together with dalit peasants the sub-total of a + b + c
becomes an overwhelming sixty four percent of all operational holding and just
thirty percent of the operational area. For this category land constitutes all
the more of a motive force if it can be so for the landlords.
ZPSC is very clear regarding
the future course of the movement. They visualize the further development of
this movement in a phased manner. Securing the control of Dalits over their
part of the Panchayat land is only the first phase which shall include in the
coming days the demand to give the rest of the Panchayat land to poor peasants
at an affordable rent while ensuring security of tenure. Thereafter the demand
shall be for distribution of Panchayat land to the Dalits and ownership rights
for the tenants on government land. At a more advanced stage of the movement,
only when the people are prepared for this, capture of ceiling surplus land
held by the landlords and rich peasants is envisaged. Capturing of the
endowment land – land held by the Gurudwaras, umpteen number of Deras and
Temples in Punjab, shall be the last target in the struggle for land.
ZPSC is also aware that there
is no linear path to take this strategy forward, and many ifs and buts shall
remain at every stage of the struggle. But then in the era of neo-liberalism
when the idea of ‘Land Reforms’ would elude many even in their dreams; these
brave souls at least have a plan which they are trying to implement with due
seriousness while entailing the expected costs. Signs that this spark could
light a prairie fire are on the anvil; on May 30, in a press conference
organized at Jalandhar, apart from ZPSC, two other organizations – Kirti Kisan
Union and Punjab Pendu Mazdoor Union pledged to take this struggle to the
nearly 13,000 villages all over Punjab (Chaba A A, 2016).
Our demands and
conclusion
In view of the findings of our
visit and the existing socioeconomic realities of life in the villages of
Sangrur district visited by us, the Janhastakshep team demands from the present
Akali Dal-BJP coalition government in Punjab:
·
That all false cases filed against the
protesting dalit peasants in different villages of the district be withdrawn by
the government forthwith and all arbitrary arrests that are being carried out
should be stopped immediately in the interest of justice and public harmony.
·
All men and women
languishing in jails should be freed immediately unconditionally.
·
The district
administration should allot the panchayat land meant for dalits at very nominal
price without any commercial motive in order to ensure the wellbeing of these
marginalized sections of the society.
·
The dalit families
in Kheri village who had been allotted land for homesteads should be
given possession of the same without further ado and law should be implemented
in the spirit of justice rather than selectively to ensure the benefits of the
dominant sections in the village.
·
The policemen guilty of
committing brutalities on villagers in Bald Kalan village should be booked
under law and compensation be given to those injured in police action.
The team in its deliberations
sought to objectively observe, confirm and note the various findings to the
best of our ability. However, an analysis of these findings makes it incumbent
upon us; and we hope upon every other reader of this report, to have a sense of
judgment on who is on the path of taking the society in these villages of
Punjab forward and who are the forces obstructing this progress.
As an indicator of our own
judgment of things we might simply state here what a youth said in the village
of Bhadoh in response to our question. The setting was the Raidas Dharamshala
(a community centre of sorts) where more than a hundred villagers had collected
to meet us at a short notice. Our attention was specifically sought for the
lines of Pash’s (a revolutionary Punjabi poet who was killed by the terrorists
during the Khalistani movement in Punjab) poetry and the quotations of Bhagat
Singh and Che Guerra written on the wall in Gurmukhi. We asked Baksish Singh,
the youth pursuing PhD from Punjabi University, Patiala – Why did you choose
the color of your flag to be red; because it is blue that is considered to be
the color of the Dalit movement in the country? His straightforward answer was
– it is the color of revolution. We couldn’t have agreed with Baksish more.
Epilogue
On June 7 demonstrations were
held by AIKMS in all district headquarters throughout the country where its
units are there. There were militant demonstrations held in at least ten
district headquarters. In Sangrur itself a rally and a massive militant
demonstration of more than four thousand people was held on June 7 to demand
land reserved for Dalits be given to them at low rates. More than half of the
peasants present in the demonstration were women.
The best is that the
administration seems to be buckling under. In at least six villages of Sangrur
the administration has scaled down to price from Rs 23,000 to Rs 12,ooo per
acre. There is no reason why the peasants in Balld Kalan and remaining villages
should not have their way.
Figure:
Rally being taken out by ZPSC activists in Roxy Bazar road, Sangrur on June 7.
Figure:
Demonstration by ZPSC peasants at Anaj Mandi (Grain Market), Sangrur.
References
·
Chaba A Agnihotri (2016): ‘Panchayat Land Row:
Dalit Groups Demand One-third Share; State Wide Stir From June 7’, The Indian
Express e paper, 31 May, 2016, Tuesday.
·
Goyal S (2016): ‘Land row: Dalits, police clash
in Sangrur village, 15 injured’, The Tribune, May 25. Available from: http://www.tribuneindia.com/news/punjab/community/land-row-dalits-police-clash-in-sangrur-village-15-injured/241756.html on 27
May, 2016.
·
Government of Punjab (1956): ‘The Nazool Lands
(Transfer) Rules, 1956’, Department of Revenue. Available from http://punjabrevenue.nic.in/nzruls(1).htm#R2 on May
30, 2016.
·
Government of Punjab (1961): ‘The Punjab Village
Common Lands Regulation Act 1961’, Punjab Act No. 18 of 1961. Available from http://punjabrevenue.nic.in/pvcomlact961(1).htm#_ftnref13 on
June 1, 2016.
·
Mahil S S (2015): ‘Land Struggles in Punjab’,
New Democracy – Central Organ of the Communist Party of India
(Marxist-Leninist) – New Democracy, August 2015, p 16-23.
·
New Democracy News (2014): ‘Punjab: Militant
Struggle of Dalits for their share of Panchayat land’. Communist Party of India
(Marxist-Leninist) – New Democracy Website. Available from http://cpimlnd.org/category/land-struggles/page/2/ on
June 1, 2016.
·
Punjabstat.com (undated): Compiled from the tables
– ‘Size Class-wise Number and Area of Operational Holdings by Social Group
(Scheduled Castes) in Punjab (2005-06)’ and ‘Size Class-wise Number and Area of
Operational Holdings by Social Group (Others) in Punjab (2005-06). Available
from http://www.punjabstat.com/agriculture/2/agriculturallandholdings/153/stats.aspx on
June 5, 2016.
·
Sharma Amrinder (2015): ‘An uncommon fight for
common land’, Times of India, October 5.
-sd- -sd- -sd- -sd-
Prof Ish Mishra Dr
Vikas Bajpai Rajesh Kumar Anil Dubey
(Convener) (Co-convener)
[1] The Nazool Lands (Transfer) Rules, 1956,
Punjab, define ‘Nazool’ lands as “land situated beyond two miles of the
Municipal limits, which has escheated to the State Government and has not
already been appropriated by the State Government for any purpose”; or it is “such
other land as the State Government may make available for being transferred
under these rules” (Govt. of Punjab, 1956). In the state of Punjab much of the
Nazool land comprises of the remainder of land belonging to Muslims who
migrated to Pakistan at the time of partition, after a part of this land was
given to the Hindu and Sikh families that migrated from the Pakistani Punjab to
the state. Provided this land has not been appropriated by the state government
for any other public purpose, it is meant to be leased to the scheduled castes
and other backward castes for cultivation. Some part of the Nazool land also
comprises of land that came to government’s account in cases where there was no
heir to the land.
[2] The village Panchayat (village council)
has certain land under its jurisdiction that is earmarked for use for purposes
directed at the welfare of the people of the village. ‘The Punjab Village
Common Lands Regulation Act, 1961’ has a provision that out of the total cultivable
land, available with the Village Panchayat and which is proposed to be leased, “thirty
percent, ten percent and ten percent, respectively shall be reserved for giving
on lease by auction, to members of the Scheduled Caste; Backward Classes;
and dependants of defense
personnel killed in any war after the independence of India” (Government of Punjab, 1961).
However, the practice has been to reserve 33 percent of the land for Dalits
while no land has ever been reserved for Backward Classes or dependents of
defense personnel.
[3] At the present moment the practice is
that the opening price set for the auctioning of the land earmarked for dalits
is half of the price at which the Panchayat land not meant for dalits is
auctioned; and that every year there should be at least ten percent increase in
the opening price.
However, recently the Sangrur district administration leased
thirty acres of Panchayati land for the purpose of opening a ‘gaushala’ in
Jhaneri village at the rate of Rs 7,000 per acre for a period of thirty years;
whereas the minimum price at which land was leased to dalits in the district
last year was Rs 23,000 an acre.
[4] We have on purpose not mentioned the
names of the main leaders for consideration of their safety.
[5] We would also like to acknowledge here
similar struggles developed by another revolutionary organization – Krantikari
Pendu Mazdoor Union in Benra and Namol villages of Sangrur district.
[6] These total number of families could
vary by a minimum of few digits because we could only get the approximate
strength since the people did not seem to be knowing the exact number of dalit
households; though they were very sure
that the number of dissenting families is not more than eleven to twelve.
[7] We would certainly have liked to
interact with other sections of the village society as well, but the short
duration and the immediate purpose of our visit prevented this from happening.
[8] We certainly are not arguing against the
social welfare schemes over here. All that is wished to be emphasized is that
these schemes become meaningful only when applied in conjunction with equitable
distribution of society’s productive resources. To cure a malady is to remedy
its causes rather than the symptoms. The unraveling of the ‘twenty first
century socialism’ in South America is a case in the point.
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