Farmer protests ‘politically motivated’, MSP law demand ‘unreasonable’, says RSS-linked magazine

The Organiser editorial claims farm stir, Haldwani protest and opposition to Sandeshkhali probe are part of 'larger game to disrupt, demean democracy'

Farmers protesting at Shambhu border near Ambala. (Express Photo)

4 min readNew DelhiFeb 22, 2024 07:05 AM IST First published on: Feb 21, 2024 at 09:17 PM IST

As protesting farmers try to break through police barricades at the Shambhu border in Haryana to reach Delhi, the latest issue of the RSS-affiliated magazine The Organiser has called their demands for a legal guarantee of MSP “unreasonable”, and called their protests “politically motivated”. This is in sharp contrast to the Sangh’s earlier stance of supporting the agitating farmers’ demand.

The magazine also sought to link the Sandeshkhali incident in West Bengal to “sex slavery” inspired by the ISIS.

“The farmers’ agitation that we witnessed around Delhi in 2020 was in the context of three Bills related to reforms in the agricultural sector. This time around, there is no such reason,” said an editorial of the magazine penned by its editor Prafulla Ketkar.

Suggesting that the farm stir was political in nature, the editorial said, “The modus operandi is the same – massive mobilisation and blockade of roads with unreasonable demands such as legal guarantees related to Minimum Support Price (MSP) for all crops, loan waivers and pensions for all farmers to withdraw from the World Trade Organisation. Some are also raising the sensitive and provocative issue of Khalistan.”

Ketkar argued that following the 2020 protests, the Union government had announced MSP on various crops, and kept engaging with the farmer bodies.

“Even when negotiations are ongoing, the kind of mobilisation that is taking place, not just to draw attention but also to obstruct traffic on roads, is undemocratic. In the popular perception, opposition parties are fueling this protest to create an anti-government atmosphere. Using farmers in this political game undermines the genuine concerns of the agriculture sector,” Ketkar further said.

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The editorial concluded that the farm agitation along with the Haldwani protest and the opposition to probing the Sandeshkhali incident were part of “a larger game to disrupt and demean democracy”.

Last week, the RSS’s farmer wing, the Bharatiya Kisan Sangh (BKS), had criticised the “violent protests” by farmers, but supported their demand for MSP. “We reiterate that remunerative prices based on (input) cost is the farmers’ right, and they should get it,” the BKS said in a statement.

Interestingly, the BKS had earlier supported the idea of a law that guarantees MSP to farmers. In its suggestions to the government on the now-repealed farm laws in September 2020, it had stressed that traders must be mandated to buy produce from farmers at prices not less than the MSP. “If MSP can’t be included in these Bills, the government should bring another law,” BKS general secretary Dinesh Kulkarni had told The Indian Express.

The cover story of the issue is the alleged sexual harassment case in Sandeshkhali. The report, written by Rajarshi Roychowdhury, starts with a brief description of the atrocities unleashed by the Islamic State in Syria and Iraq on women, where they were turned into spoils of war and used as sex slaves.

It then says, “Fast forward to 2024; moving from Syria to Sandeshkhali, medievalism and barbarity of the ISIS variety is getting perpetuated within the very borders of India.”

Suggesting that the incident was a conspiracy allegedly hatched by a Muslim politician (TMC leader Sheikh Shahjahan) against Hindu women, the report says, “The women of Sandeshkhali had been turned into objects cheaper than commodities for Shahjahan and his accomplices to use and throw at their will. The grotesque saga of Sandeshkhali is unfolding with women speaking up about the unimaginable abuse they had to face. These helpless women would invariably be Hindus but never Muslim.”

The article also suggests that Shahjahan has done this as part of a modus operandi. “The first is to settle a large number of Rohingyas from across the porous Bangladesh border to permanently alter the demographic profile of Sandeshkhali, which in turn would help him (Shahjahan) turn the criminal-minded Rohingyas into his private militia,” it alleges.