Jasminder Singh, a 43-year-old farmer from Punjab’s Perron village, pulled up his cotton trousers to show me large blue bruises on his legs. “See, how badly the police hit me,” he said angrily. His body was covered in such marks, proof of the beating. Jasminder stared at the light streaming into a small barrack in Tihar Jail, where we were both lodged. He looked at me with tears in his eyes. “What does the government think—that it will break our spirits by jailing us? That is a big misconception. Maybe it is not aware of our history. We will not turn back until these laws are repealed.”
On 29 January, Jasminder said, he was on his way back from Narela, near the Singhu border of Delhi. Since late November 2020, lakhs of farmers from Punjab, Haryana, Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh have gathered at several entry points into the national capital in a massive agitation against farm laws enacted by the Narendra Modi government in 2020. Along with thirty or so other farmers, Jasminder had gone to Narela to buy vegetables and other supplies. “When we were coming back, the police attacked us with sticks,” he said. “They took all of us in a green bus, got our medical done and locked us up in Tihar Jail.”
COMMENT