“
Active demonization of the protest movement had already
begun while it was still limited to Punjab. At the end of November,
when the farmers’ march was finally stopped on the borders of Delhi,
the rhetoric against them was ratcheted up. The BJP general
secretary in Uttarakhand on 29 November 2020 called the protestors
pro-Pakistan, pro-Khalistan and anti-national. Gujarat’s deputy chief
minister called the farmers anti-national elements, terrorists,
Khalistanis, Communists and pro-China people having pizza and
pakodi. Madhya Pradesh chief minister Shivraj Chouhan wrote an
article blaming the protests on vested interests. Law and justice
minister Ravishankar Prasad associated them with the mythical
‘tukde-tukde’ gang.
The BJP vice president in Himachal Pradesh called the protests
the work of anti-nationals and middlemen. The same day, the
party’s spokesman in the state called the protestors miscreants who
were the same people behind Shaheen Bagh. On 17 December, the
BJP chief minister in Tripura, Biplab Deb, said Maoists were behind
the protests, while Uttar Pradesh chief minister Yogi Adityanath
claimed Opposition parties were using farmers to fuel unrest in the
country because they were unhappy about the construction of a Ram
temple in Ayodhya. He also blamed communism and those who
wanted to promote disorder and didn’t want to see India prosper.
BJP national spokesman Sambit Patra called the farmers extremists
in the garb of food-providers, another spokesman called them terrorists, and BJP IT cell head Amit Malviya called them anarchists
and insurrectionists.
On 17 January 2021, a BJP MP from Uttar Pradesh said the
protests were backed by anti-national powers.
A BJP MLA from Gujarat wrote to Amit Shah asking him to hang
or shoot the protestors. Even in March 2021, the slander of calling
the thousands of protestors fake farmers and terrorists continued.
The New York Times reported that this demonisation cleaved to
a pattern from Modi’s playbook: first the accusations of foreign
infiltration, then police complaints against protest leaders, then the
arrests of protesters and journalists, then the blocking of internet
access in places where demonstrators gathered. All this was akin to
India’s actions in Kashmir, and against the protestors of Shaheen
Bagh and elsewhere
”
”