Amit Shah to attend birth anniversary of Bihar’s farmer movement icon

Announcing the party’s decision, BJP Rajya Sabha MP Vivek Thakur told reporters: “Saraswati, the biggest-ever leader of farmers, has not got his due like other icons such as Mahatma Gandhi, Bal Gangadhar Tilak, Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru and Subhas Chandra Bose. There is hardly any mention of of him in school and college textbooks. It is only recently that (writers) Walter Hauser and Kailash Chandra Jha translated his biography. Saraswati was someone whom poet Ramdhari Singh Dinkar had called ‘Sanyasi of Dalits’. Even Bose had chosen to seek help from Saraswati during freedom movement and called him ‘the real sanyasi’.”

Thakur added that the Narendra Modi government had tried to give farmers their due with schemes like Kisan Samman Nidhi. “Amit Shah-ji has given his consent to the function. He will interact with farmers and take up their questions on the occasion of Saraswati’s birth anniversary.”

Bihar BJP president Sanjay Jaiswal said, “Even though the Centre has been giving adequate subsidy on urea, scores of farmers in Bihar are complaining of not getting it. The Nitish Kumar government should try at least to make fertilizers available to farmers as a token of respect to the iconic farmers’ leader.”

The BJP is celebrating Saraswati’s birth anniversary after several years. Saraswati, who was born in Uttar Pradesh in 1889, had set up an ashram at Bihta in Bihar where he got involved in peasant activism. His social and political activities focused initially on Bihar, and gradually spread to the rest of India with the formation of the All India Kisan Sabha. He was an iconic figure for the influential Bhumihar community, largely seen as BJP supporters.

Asked if the party is playing “politics of appeasing some castes” by celebrating anniversaries of their caste icons, Jaiswal said: “Great men have no caste. We wonder why (Chief Minister) Nitish Kumar never thought of honouring Saraswati even in name of tokenism by publishing diaries and calenders after Saraswati.”

Jaiswal added that Nitish did not have courage to meet agitating Buxar farmers during his ongoing Samadhan Yatra. The BJP leader was referring to the violence on January 11 in Buxar where a peasants’ protest over compensation demand for acquired land for a thermal power project turned violent.

“When he is not meeting people, what kind of samadhan (solution) is he talking about,” he asked.

Amid speculation that senior JD(U) leader and former Union minister Upendra Kushwaha, who is in Delhi for a routine medical checkup, may join the BJP, Jaiswal said, “All those leaders inclined towards the politics of development and nationalism are welcome to join our party. Besides, all those who fought against the jungle-raj in Bihar are welcome.”

Nitish, however, denied any such information. “I will speak to Upendra Kushwaha once he returns (from Delhi). In any case, one is free to take one’s decision. He had left our party twice before and came back. I have no information on his political moves.”

With PTI inputs