Farmers head home for breather

Aparna Banerji
Tribune News Service
Jalandhar, January 28

“4-5 bande tan vyah vich vi khapp paa jande. Ehda matlab aah thori vyah hi nahi karna (A wedding cannot be called off just because of a few miscreants),” says Jaswinder Singh from Hoshiarpur, who took a huge double-decker trolley to the Singhu border on January 26 to back the march. Back home following a death in the family, Jaswinder says he will head back to

the Singhu border soon.

A number of other farmers have also returned for a breather after the January 26 march. After spending a long time at the Singhu border, Surinder Singh Khalsa, a resident of Kahjurla village in Phagwara, who is preparing to head home in a couple of days, says, “Farmers are returning due to violence is a false narrative. They were bound to return after the tractor march. Lakhs of them went especially for it. Now, they will take a break and go back again. Those who are holding permanent langars are staying at the border. Only those, who went specially on January 26, are coming back. There is usual hustle and bustle at the border.”

He adds, “It is true that the farmers received a setback. We don’t know the people in the videos. Our farmers at the morcha will never beat the police this way. The police have helped us here, so we always backed them. The violence is a flawed picture being propagated to discredit the protests. The R-Day march might have failed, but the morcha has not. We have to go home for a day to return one of the vehicles we brought for the march. We will come back after that.”

Jaswinder says, “Around 50 persons had gone from our house, and for three days, our trolley gave shelter to 300 persons. We spent Rs 1,15,000 on trolleys. People were keen to showcase the tractors, but something totally different transpired. We believe it’s a government conspiracy. The Delhi road was opened, while others were closed to misdirect the farmers.”