Kurukshetra (Haryana): Bharatiya Kisan Union (BKU) leader Rakesh Tikait Tuesday criticised Prime Minister Narendra Modi's 'Andolan-jivi' (professional protestors) remarks and asked if people like great freedom fighter Bhagat Singh will also be put in that category.
Addressing a well-attended 'Kisan Mahapanchayat' at Gumthala Garhu village in Pehowa in this district, a third within a week in Haryana, he said the government should not be under the wrong impression that the protesting farmers will return to their homes without their demands being accepted.
Without naming the Prime Minister or using his Andolan-jivi' phrase, Tikait said, "In Parliament, they are saying these are parjivis (parasites). Was Bhagat Singh who sacrificed his life for this nation a parjivi? What about 150 farmers who died during this agitation? Were they parjivis too? Had they gone to Delhi to agitate and die?"
Speaking in Rajya Sabha on Monday, the prime minister had hit out at those behind the farmers' protests, saying a new "breed" of agitators called "Andolan jivi" has emerged in the country who cannot live without an agitation and the nation should guard against them.
Kurukshetra is a land of 'kranti' (revolution) and 'nyay' (justice) and that is why the mahapanchayat' is being held here to get justice for the farmers, he said.
Tikait also alleged that attempts were being made to divide the protesting farmers on the lines of region and other considerations, and appealed them to reject any such design.
"They will try to divide you on Punjab-Haryana lines, as Sikh and non-Sikh, Hindus and Muslims..," he alleged. "The farmers' agitation against the Centre's farm laws is nationwide and not limited to Punjab or Haryana."
"We will win this fight," he declared.
Projecting the 40 farmers unions spearheading the agitation as fully united, he said, "We have said we will neither change 'Panch' (leader) nor 'Manch' (stage)."
"We have always said that if government has to talk there are 40 representatives they can talk to them, whatever these unions decide will be acceptable to us," he said.
Tikait said the protesting farmers will divide their time between home, fields and the agitation. Every farmer's family, he said, is required to participate in the stir by sending at least one person at the Delhi border protest sites while other members would continue to work in their fields.
He said the protesters are prepared for a long struggle to get the three laws repealed and would visit other states like Maharashtra, West Bengal, Karnataka and Odisha to garner farmers' support for their struggle. He said that a farmer does not transfer his agriculture land to even his son during his lifetime, how he can give it to the corporates.
The BKU leader from Uttar Pradesh has been camping at Ghazipur on the Delhi-UP border as part of a campaign by farmer unions against the central laws enacted in September.
"Over the past two days, they have brought this new issue of small farmers, saying this (agitation) is not fight of small farmers but that of big farmers who are coming in tractors,"' he said, attacking the Centre.