Were Ferozepur farmers a security threat to Modi?

By

Faraz Ahmad

What kind of threat our well-fortified, SPG protected Prime Minister face from the poor agitating farmers of Ferozepur, Punjab on Thursday, January 5, presumably because of whose street level agitation, BJP supremo Narendra Modi cancelled his first public meeting in Punjab to campaign for his party or so he implied?

If we go by the beating of breast by his mantris, santris and bhakts in and outside the godi media never before a Prime Minister of India faced a crowd of agitating and slogan shouting protestors. Of course Modi has not and therefore he probably felt a threat to his life as he told the Punjab officials at the Bhatinda airport, simply because the motorcade of our fakeer Pradhan sevak got stuck in a traffic jam for 15 odd minutes on account of agitating farmers present some distance away.   

These same farmers were denied a ‘darshan’ of their dear Prime Minister for a full one year and made to languish (and hundreds perished) in freezing Winter, skin drenching and pouring Monsoon rains and blistering heat wave of Delhi Summer, were anxiously waiting all night in freezing cold, accompanied by one more spell of winter rain, to bring to his notice his lack of concern for them, thumbing his nose at the hapless farmers who lost hundreds of their kin in the year-long dharna where the BJP government got huge nails inlaid on the roads leading to Delhi, lest the tractors dared cross into the national capital reserved only for the Prime Minister and his fellow Lutyen dwellers. The elections to the Punjab assembly are due next month or so and the PM and his party does not brook a defeat at whatever cost. That’s why the urgency of addressing an election rally in Ferozepur. Besides, as he told his Meghalaya Governor Satyapal Malik “Wo mere liye mare kya (Did they die for me?)” Naturally then, how could he imagine that farmers would be so angry as to want to show their anger to him by raising slogans and waving black flags? So probably he didn’t imagine people will be on the road not to welcome him. He, in fact, was expecting a huge response to his rally and got arranged 70,000 chairs for the expected audience, forget the fact that the local BJP could sense the anger and decided to ferry even those 700 from Jammu in buses.

That saffron clad criminal Yati Narsinghanand who called from a public platform on December 17-19 at the ‘Dharam Sansad’ in Haridwar, Uttarakhand for a genocide of Muslims; who dismissed the call by another woman ‘Sadhvi’ to arm all Hindus with swords, arguing that distributing swords to Hindus won’t suffice. To kill and exterminate all Muslims from India like the Rohingyas from Myanmar, many more sophisticated weapons are needed; who said the Police and the Army need not be fair and objective.  “They are our allies and they are with us,” addressing the police officer who stood smiling and nodding ascent. At the same “Dharam Sansad” one of those saffron-clad criminals declared that had he a revolver he would have shot the only non-Hindu Prime Minister of the country Dr Manmohan Singh “six times.” Dr Singh never reacted to that though. The speakers there threatened to launch a la 1857 mutiny against Modi government if it does not heed to its call of ridding the country of each and every Muslim by putting them to sword. That Yati Narsinghanand is strutting around freely openly announcing that he was working to make Yogi the Prime Minister in 2024, implicitly after ridding the country of Modi, is free to say or do as he fancies!

The Prime Minister seems to face no threat or fear from such dangerous elements. Thanks to a Congress government in Chhatisgarh, the other criminal Kalicharan, was arrested but even after that, he wore a huge smile on his face as the Raipur court remanded him to only one-day Police custody, confident of support of his Hindutva patrons. And that Sulli/Bulli bai online auction of hundreds of Muslim women by anti-Muslim rabid elements, which included the hapless and unfortunate 52 year old mother of the JNU student who mysteriously disappeared after an altercation with the ABVP crowd who came to his hostel room to threaten him, these elements are no threat to the Nation’s peace and tranquillity? The Prime Minister appears quite comfortable in the company of all such elements and considers this an ideal situation.

That naturally raises the question did these farmers utter or intend to harm the Prime Minister? Not at all. The Prime Minister who waited in his car for 15 long minutes, had he walked a few steps, spoken to the farmers, heard their grievances, reassured them, it is common sense the farmers would have moved away, the crowd would have melted,  giving way to the Prime Minister’s cavalcade. In fact their leader said, they were not even aware of the Prime Minister’s cavalcade stuck at some distance from them and did not believe the senior police officers when they informed them about it. They were aware only of the earlier plans of the Prime Minister to fly in a helicopter to the public meeting. They were there only to show black flags to the buses adorning BJP flags and going to the PM rally on the same route, they said. But then how could he and his drumbeaters gone to town preparing ground for dismissing the Congress government in Punjab and imposing President’s rule there to loot the elections?

According to Punjab chief minister Charanjit Singh Channi the chief secretary informed him at 1.30 am that the protestors wanted to meet the Prime Minister and the chief minister felt that could be arranged. But the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) did not respond to the calls.

But if the Prime Minister and his Government feared the poor farmers so much he should have stuck to the earlier plans of flying directly to the venue and if the weather was inclement he should have cancelled his visit from Delhi as advised by the Director General (DGP) of Punjab Police. But that could not serve his political purpose.

In any case, the moot question is why did the ‘Pradhan Sevak’ feel so threatened by peaceful farmers, anxious to meet him and draw his attention to their plight?

Eom