Sarcasm is a weapon in the arsenal of a humorist or a stand-up comedian or a conversationist. It is used mostly to mock or annoy someone or for humorous purposes. Sarcasm does not redound to the credit of a leader like Prime Minister Narendra Modi, particularly when he employs it against a group of people who have been experiencing untold misery in pursuit of a public cause.

A great humorist is one who makes fun of himself or those who hold high offices. There is no humour in making fun of a poor man or a woman, who has to do menial jobs to make a living. 

Similarly, sarcasm must not be directed against the weak and the struggling. In no case does a rich or powerful person has the right to mock at the poor and the humble. Such a behaviour can only be described as mean.

When Modi compared the then Prime Minister, Manmohan Singh, to a person taking a bath with the rain coat on, I enjoyed the metaphor. Or, when he called him the “Mauni Baba”. 

It is a different matter that, in comparison, Manmohan Singh was far more vocal, addressing Press conferences as often as he visited foreign countries. Modi is yet to address a Press conference in India or abroad. He is comfortable reading out prepared texts, with or without a prompter. He has always been one up on technology.

To return to the subject of this column, the Prime Minister used the words, Andolankari and Andolanjeevi, in the context of the farmers’ agitation. I would not be surprised if someone finds that these words were actually coined by Modi. True, he told Parliament how he arrived at the words. He adapted them from the words Sharamjeevi and Buddhijeevi.

The farmers have been agitating since November 2020 and they have, over the last four months, suffered so much of deprivation, pain and discomfort that their agitation will go down in history as one of the greatest in the annals of mankind. It was no joke to sleep in the open when temperature dipped to 1 or 2 degree centigrade during the months of December and January.

In comparison, the BJP councillors and Mayors in Delhi had better arrangements when they began a dharna in front of Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal’s official residence. After a few nights, they all left the place one by one, though their demand was not conceded. 
Modi would have done well to check with them why they ended the agitation even before it could pick up momentum. In that case, he would have realised how torturous life would have been for the farmers forced to live on the Delhi-Haryana and Delhi-Uttar Pradesh borders.

They are there not because they have anything personal to gain. They are there because they believe that the three agriculture-related laws the Modi government enacted in an anti-democratic, hush-hush, hurried manner are against the interest of the farmers and they will render them supplicants before the likes of Ambani and Adani.

Modi seems to be under the impression that they are professional agitators. Agriculture, not agitation, is their profession. This misunderstanding could have arisen because of Modi’s own misconceptions. Modi never had a profession to call himself a professional. His profession is politics. He is, therefore, a Rajnitijeevi!

By now everybody knows that the story of his selling tea at a railway station is as fanciful as the story that he spent a few years doing “tapas” in the upper reaches of the Himalayas. His career began and continues in the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS). He is in the BJP and is holding the highest post only because he is primarily an RSS member.

In another four years, the RSS would complete 100 years. When Dr KB Hedgewar founded the organisation, the politically-conscious people were taking part in the struggle for freedom. The RSS founder thought it was pointless to take part in the struggle. He devoted solely to organising the RSS into a large organisation with the leadership drawn essentially from a particular community.

The British never faced any problem from the RSS. Hedgewar and his successor, MS Golwalkar, were touted as the greatest Buddhijeevis. Modi never took part in any Andolan. True, there was an agitation against the Congress government in Gujarat under a Nav Nirman Samiti. The RSS might have benefited from it but it did not play any significant role in the agitation.

When the RSS was banned, first by Sardar Patel, and, later, by Indira Gandhi, there was no agitation from the organisation. Instead, they sucked up to the authorities. Many Jan Sangh functionaries, including RSS men, might have been arrested during the Emergency but it is a myth that they resisted the Emergency. Modi was at that time, allegedly, in the US. The point is that the Sangh Parivar did not produce any Andolanjeevi or Andolankari.

However, Modi’s state, Gujarat, produced a great Andolankari. He began his Andolan when he was in South Africa. Right from the start of his life there, it was a relentless struggle against the iniquities he found in the country. Gandhi spent as many as 20 years there before shifting to India.

As someone said, “The highest merit of Gandhism as a system of thought is that it tries to bring together the gospel of disinterested action in the Gita, the simple ethics of the Sermon on the Mount, the devotion of Tulsidas, the concept of bread-labour of Tolstoy and the anti-capitalistic economics of Ruskin”.

Gandhi was an out and out Andolankari. He spent all his life fighting against injustice and he died at the hands of a person who thought that doing justice to the Muslims was injustice. He was called an anarchist, even by C Sankaran Nair, the only Malayali who presided over a Congress session. In fact, he wrote a book titled “Anarchy and Gandhi”.

For the British, he was a “terrorist”. However, such epithets did not bother Gandhi who believed in his karma and did everything possible in pursuit of it. Small wonder that Romain Rolland said about him, “Mahatma Gandhi has raised up three hundred million of his fellow countrymen, shaken the British empire and inaugurated in human politics, the most powerful movement that the whole world has seen for nearly two thousand years”.

Modi may or may not know that many of the things that we consider  as naturally evolved were the result of the struggle of millions of people. There was a time when people of low castes were not allowed to walk on public roads, travel in public transport and eat in restaurants. They did not get these rights by the mercy of some.

There is a temple at Vaikom in Kerala. The lower caste people were not allowed to walk on the public road outside of the wall that surrounded the grand temple. The Congress had to organise an Andolan against the temple authorities. No, it was not to allow the lower caste people to enter the temple and worship there.

Rather, it was to allow them to exercise their civic right to walk on the public roads at Vaikom. At that time everybody did not have the right to enter the temple and worship there. It was the Vaikom Satyagraha and the threat that the lower castes like Ezhavas might convert to Christianity and Islam that forced the rulers of the time to issue the temple entry proclamation.

Even after the proclamation was issued, the Scheduled Castes and other lower castes had to wait for several years before they could enter the Guruvayoor temple to worship there. They got the right as a result of an Andolan.

Similarly, there was a time when women of certain castes and communities in Kerala did not have the right to cover their breasts. They were expected to keep them bare. The women of Travancore had to organise an Andolan to obtain the right to cover their breasts.
Today, the working class is entitled to certain benefits like bonus, eight-hour duty, leave for a certain number of days, maternity leave with wages, provident fund, gratuity etc. No, they did not get these benefits automatically. Workers had to struggle for these rights.

Every such benefit was the result of an Andolan.
When AK Gopalan was the leader of the largest party, after the Congress, in the Lok Sabha, he organised a drama titled “Ee Velicham Ningalkullathakunnu” (This Light is For You), written by Omchery NN Pillai, to raise funds for the coir workers of Kerala who were agitating for their rights. 

At every point of the growth of the nation, there was an agitation. This is true about the whole world. The condition of the workers in Britain was pathetic as could be inferred from the works of Charles Dickens and others. Similarly, Thakazhy’s work Thottiyude Makan (Scavenger’s Son) reflected the state of affairs of the scavengers in Kerala.

The point is that at every stage of progress, there has been an agitation. Today’s newspapers have pictures of some tribes of Myanmar, in their traditional attire, protesting against the coup in their country. Yes, they are Andolankaris.

The point to ponder over is that if we as a nation have achieved something, it is because of the sacrifice of millions of people. There are many who lost their lives in the Cellular Jail in Andamans. They suffered tortures of various kind but they did not compromise like Veer Savarkar who wrote petition after petition to the British to pardon him. They preferred to die, rather than lick the boots of the alien rulers. They were Andolankaris.

It is surprising that the Prime Minister has mocked the farmers. It is out of conviction that they are at the borders of Delhi. They believe that the three laws are not acceptable. The Prime Minister himself has agreed to put on hold the laws for one and a half years. Already four months have passed since the agitation began.

For all practical purposes, the laws are already on hold. If Modi is willing to wait one and a half years, nothing prevents him from conceding their demand. The heavens will not fall if he personally calls their representatives for talks. He can try to convince them that the laws are in their favour.

I am sure the farmers will be only too happy to talk to the Prime Minister. Who knows they may agree to call off the agitation if Modi shows willingness to put on hold the laws for, may be, two or three years so that Parliament can bring forward new Bills which will ensure that the minimum support price for various crops, as suggested by the Swaminathan Committee, are maintained while giving farmers the freedom to sell their crop at the highest price.

There is no problem in the world which cannot be settled in a spirit of give and take. Modi’s credibility as a leader will increase if he is able to take the farmers into confidence and strike a deal that will not be construed as a surrender for either the government or the farmers.

It is true that Modi has unlimited resources to keep the agitating farmers on tenterhooks. He has police and other agencies at his command to harass the farmers. They may not be able to withstand the pressures for long and their agitation may lose its steam. After all, they also have families to support and their presence is required at home.

Such an eventuality will not be in the long-term interest of the nation. The condition of the farmers in India are pitiable. Nearly two lakh farmers have committed suicide so far. Many of them are on the verge of suicide. It is in the interest of the nation that the farmers should be kept happy. Modi will be judged a total failure if he is not able to do justice to them. The time for justice is now. Will Modi rise to the expectation or remain obstinate like a petulant child?

ajphilip@gmail.com