Congress leader Rahul Gandhi on Sunday compared the ongoing farmers’ protests against the three new Central agriculture-related laws with the Champaran agitation during the British rule, and said every farmer-labourer part of the current movement is a ‘satyagrahi’ and they will take their rights back.
“The country is going to face a Champaran-like tragedy. British were ‘company Bahadur’ back then and now Modi-friends are ‘company Bahadur’,” Mr. Gandhi alleged in a tweet in Hindi.
“But, every farmer-labourer of the movement is a “satyagrahi” who will take back their rights,” the former Congress chief said.
The Champaran Satyagraha of 1917 was led by Mahatma Gandhi and is considered a historic event in India’s independence movement.
It was a farmer''s uprising that took place in Champaran district of Bihar during the British colonial period when the farmers protested having to grow indigo with barely any payment for it.
The Congress has been seeking the repeal of the three new farm laws, alleging that they will ruin farming and the farmers. The Congress is also supporting the farmers'' agitation against the legislations.
After the sixth round of formal negotiations on Wednesday, the government and farm unions reached some common ground to resolve protesting farmers’ concerns over rise in power tariff and penalties for stubble burning, but the two sides remained deadlocked over the main contentious issues of the repeal of three farm laws and a legal guarantee for minimum support price (MSP).
Braving the cold, thousands of farmers, mainly from Punjab and Haryana, are protesting at various borders of the national capital for more than a month against these laws.
The government has presented these laws as major agriculture sector reforms aimed at helping farmers and increasing their income, but the protesting unions fear that the new legislations will leave them at the mercy of big corporates by weakening the MSP and mandi systems.