Why did I meet the family of a deceased BJP worker in Lakhimpur Kheri: Yogendra Yadav

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heyOn my journey back from Lakhimpur Kheri, a question haunted me: Should we divide the victims between ‘ours’ and ‘theirs’? How do we acknowledge the many victims on different sides of the divide? I kept thinking of Shubham Mishra’s one-year-old daughter playing in the room oblivious to the tragedy, the blank look in his wife’s eyes, the questions her father had thrown at me.

I had gone to attend Tikunia in Lakhimpur Kheri, the site of the massacre anti ardas (Last Prayer) of four farmers and a journalist. I could connect with more prayer – It triggers childhood memories – compared to many fiery speeches to the congregation. Years of people coming after different forms of tragedies has taught me to look at women as they have a spectrum of emotions. This is a misery to which I relate.

As soon as the ceremony was over, the women of the families of the martyr farmers quietly left the stage, met my namaste with blank eyes or silently with folded hands. What do you say or expect from a mother whose 19-year-old son has been crushed? It is one thing to read about such a horrific event or watch it on video and quite another to encounter it in real life. The women looked like they had shrunk in the past week. The family of journalist Raman Kashyap, who was a little lost in the exotic setting of Sikh religious rites, also betrayed signs of fear. For the ninth time, I played that horrifying video in my mind and raged at the vulgarity of power that can do this to one human being to another. This reinforced my faith in our collective demand for the removal and arrest of Union Minister Ajay Mishra.

Read also: Another death in Lakhimpur Kheri should not go unnoticed – Indian Media Credibility

Grief on the ‘other’ side

Somebody told me as soon as I left Tikunia that my journey was incomplete. For a week, I was asked about the lives of three other people, a driver and two Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) workers. I said that although the two types of killings cannot be equated, but every death is a matter of sorrow. If I lived up to my point, it was only appropriate that I meet families on the other side as well. My colleagues were initially apprehensive: the reaction could be hostile, even violent. But finally he supported me and we decided to land at the house of Shubham Mishra, the first BJP worker killed that day in the heart of Lakhimpur city.

On his return from the Records meeting, Records went to Shubham’s house. The family has not offended the family. Q: Are we farmers? What was our fault? Your partner reported the action of action?
Their pic.twitter.com/q0sYAT8gV6

— Yogendra Yadav (@_YogendraYadav) 12 October 2021

“Are you from the family?” With a few people sitting on chairs outside the house, I immediately asked the person who greeted me and recognized me. “Yes, I am Shubham’s father,” replied this man, clearly younger than me. It was an awkward moment. I just folded my hands: “hurt so much“and explained that I was coming from anti ardas Farmer Martyrs. He was not angry or hostile, just in anguish, “You are the first person to meet us (on behalf of the farmers). All these big leaders have come and gone to Lakhimpur. No one came to meet us. Aren’t we farmers? ? You want to check my land documents? NS head is from my village Sardar. Are we their enemy? What was my son’s crime? Ask someone in the city and tell me if you hear a word against my son?” Then he turned to me: “I expected better from you. The second day Rakesh Tikait said that it was action-reaction. You were sitting next to him. You could have fixed that.” I said I did, but the media didn’t take my side.

For nearly an hour, he juggled between pleading for his son’s innocence and blaming the protesting farmers from outside for the entire incident. This was expected. He takes his complaint out of his pocket to the police, who blames my friend Tajinder Singh Virk (who himself was seriously injured when Shubham was attacked) for the lynching. Obviously, I did not agree with much of his version. But arguing with a grieving father would be heartless and pointless. I said it doesn’t matter whether he is a farmer or not. what matters to me is that he was a Human. Alam is that his son did not deserve such a death.

We do not know whether Shubham and all the others in those vehicles were co-conspirators or not. From what we know so far, Shubham was neither involved in driving over the protesting farmers nor in any firing. It seems that when the real criminals fled, they were left behind to face the wrath of the mob. Euphemistically ‘collateral damage’. Inside his house, I saw the human cost of this ‘collateral damage’. I met four generations of women who were trying to deal with this setback in their lives: Shubham Ka Rukha Grandmother, his desolate mother, his numb wife and their one-year-old daughter.

Read also: Lakhimpur Kheri is the tipping point for the Modi government. Like Gandhi’s Chauri Chaura was for the British

partisanship over shared misery

Did this visit change my mind about the culpability of Minister Ajay Mishra and his son Ashish in this massacre? not one bit. Did it quell my anger about how the Uttar Pradesh and Central governments have tried to hide things? No. Did it leave me with some questions and concerns about what we should grieve for and how should we react in such a situation? Maybe yes. I had indicated this in a tweet. It was met with a mixture of bouquets and brickbats: admiration, accusation, disbelief and suspicion.

“Whose side are you on?” Asked some of my friends in the farmers movement. This was not the first time I had encountered the partisan nature of our activism. I remember visiting Jhajjar in Haryana widespread arson and riots During the Jat reservation agitation of 2016. We were the only team to visit both the sites of violence: Saini Mohalla where there was violence led by the agitators and Sir Chhotu Ram Dharamshala where his statue was desecrated by the protesting agitators. On the same day, two teams of ministers from Haryana came and went to meet a group of victims on the basis of their caste.

This bias is rooted in our ideologies. The citizenship confusion in Assam is a classic example. Our liberal-secular intellectuals identify the diaspora Bengalis, mostly Muslims, as victims. They are right to do so. But it blinds them to the deeply rooted cultural and material concerns of the Ahomis, mostly Hindus, who feel marginalized in their own land. Similarly, the Left had identified the landless agricultural laborers as the most oppressed class in rural India. it was right. But this prevented them from recognizing the structural exploitation of the agricultural sector, including that of the landlord farmers. Leftist landlords even went as far as to call the farmers Kulakso, and recognizing them as class enemies. One victim was pitted against another.

Our victims, their victims. Real victims, fake victims. Much of our public life is about choosing or grading our favorite victims. It is one of the deepest diseases of our public life.

Choosing ‘our’ prey has its advantages. It makes our life easier. Prejudice is the easiest cognitive strategy. We don’t need to use our brains. We have a ready-made truth, as can be seen from one side. There is no room for moral confusion. True and false are given in black and white. Furthermore, a clear identification of the enemy leads to clear politics. You send a clear message, gather energy and organize people. Once the leader takes a position, the followers do not need to exercise their mind and heart.

The trouble is that this partisan and partisan approach leads to short-sighted politics. It works pretty well for a while, but eventually gets us into deep trouble. Once you practice the art of shuffling uncomfortable truths under the carpet, someone else takes it a step further and hides the whole truth. Once you create black and white moral frames, they can be reversed at any time. Once you base your politics on the identification of enemies, one can use it to identify new enemies. How do we design collective action that allows for inconvenient truths and moral complexity? I came back from Lakhimpur with this question.

The author is a member of Swaraj India and a co-founder of the Jai Kisan Andolan. He tweeted @_YogendraYadav. Thoughts are personal.

(edited by Prashant)

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