As my colleagues and I walked to the venue at Jantar Mantar we turned a corner and came upon this huge sea of people on the street. “How wonderful” I thought to myself, “What an amazing show of strength, so many people from different corners of…hey…wait a minute…why are all of them carrying sugarcanes?” Something seemed ‘dal mein kaala’. This sea of people composed entirely of men. Men with sugarcanes who glared lecherously at every passing woman.
Unfortunately for us, the first day of the dharna at Jantar Mantar clashed with the sugar cane farmer’s protest. The sea of people was an unfriendly lot who I had mistakenly thought to be ‘our people’. I have attended a few such events before and one thing that is common to all of them is the large number of women at such meetings and the men present at these meetings have never made me feel uncomfortable. We finally made it to the NAPM dharna site and heaved a sigh of relief. The people here were warmer and friendlier and as we positioned ourselves on the dari, the men stationed themselves, protectively, around us. It was difficult to hear what the speakers were talking about, since our dharna site was an island in the sea of protesting sugarcane farmers who actually had a larger island, right next to ours with louder loudspeakers (that’s ‘two’ loud right there for you). Well after a shouting match between their island and ours, a large group of the farmers came up to our tent and started pointing their sugarcanes threateningly at us. If this would have been a movie, it would have been comic, but I was right there and comic, was the last thing that came to mind. Suddenly this woman sitting right next to me got up along with a few others and shouted back. I am not sure where she was from but her accent was hard for me to understand but here’s the gist, ‘Why cant we both speak, our issue is just as important. They took our land and I have small children to feed, where will I go now?’
I sat there feebly in the corner witnessing this fiasco. Clever idea, this. Just shove all the protestors in one corner give them loud loudspeakers and just walk away as they self-combust. And it made me wonder, what is this country doing to its own people? Free speech in a limited space, say this but not here, do this but do it this way, here’s progress but you’ve got to move. A lot of debate can ensue on the limits of freedom in a democratic state but I wonder whether this debate will mean anything to that lady. One of the speakers narrated an anecdote about the foolish god and the clever devotee. A clever devotee asks this foolish god to make him rich and says in return he would sacrifice a large bull. The foolish god grants him his wish and waits for the bull to be sacrificed. Weeks pass by and the sacrifice still hasn’t been performed. The foolish god appears to the devotee and demands his sacrifice. The devotee makes excuses says he has a lot of bills to pay and a lot of other expenses and can’t he just sacrifice a smaller animal, say a goat. The God accepts. 15 days later still no sacrifice. The whole incident is repeated several times and ends each time with the foolish god accepting a smaller sacrifice. Until at last the god says, I have had enough! Give me my sacrifice right now! To this the devotee says, O god I promised you I would sacrifice a small bird but I am really busy, aren’t you powerful enough to catch a bird and sacrifice it yourself? The foolish god represents the people who have lost their lands to the government and the clever devotee is the government who promises a lot but delivers nothing. As we sat listening to this story and the other speeches, shouting fiery slogans, I smiled a smile of satisfaction on having done my good deed for the day but sitting next to the lady as she wiped her tears I didn’t know whether any of this would help her get her land back and we sat silently as the speeches continued.
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