A show of inter-faith solidarity at Singhu
New delhi: Walking past several trucks and trolleys stationed across the Singhu border, where farmers have been staging a dharna against the new agriculture laws for 15 days now, one is sure to come across several langars or community kitchens set up by various Sikh organisations and human rights groups, in a bid to provide sumptuous meals to protestors and help them keep their agitation going.
However, among them happens to be one set up by a group of Muslims hailing from Malerkotla in Punjab, around 250 kms from the Singhu border, who said they are doing their bit to support their Sikh brothers and keep them well fed.
"We have to support our farmer brothers…without them our life will come to a standstill…this is the least we can do," Iliyas, who supervises the kitchen, said, adding that he keeps calling in workers from Malerkotla in view of the rising footfall at the protest site as the farmers' agitation grows.
With neither the government nor the farmers agreeing on the contentious aspects of the three new farm laws, the last interaction with Home Minister Amit Shah had failed to exact a positive response with farmer leaders promising to intensify their stir. As of now, neither side has agreed to meet each other for the time being as the border standoff continues with farmers adding to the crowds every day from states like Punjab, Haryana, Madhya Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Karnataka and Odisha among others.
At 9:30 AM, 50-year-old Mohammad Iliyas along with his fellow cooks and workers, part of an organization called Muslim Brotherhood, gather all the ingredients and start preparing the meal for the day—vegetable pulao and sweet rice—puts in into a steel pot and starts serving the piping hot dish on plastic plates to everyone from protesting farmers to policemen to journalists.
While Iliyas said there are around 13 Muslim workers who help prepare the meals, even the farmers at the protest site chip in and assist them in chopping vegetables and procuring supplies and other necessary items.
"We cook the meals twice a day, once before Namaz in the afternoon and once after it… there is a very positive response and everyone eats a wholesome meal whenever they drop into our langar… even our Sikh brothers help us by carrying the pot from the kitchen to the counter and also serving the rice to protestors," Iliyas told Millennium Post.
Apart from providing food to the farmers, the makeshift langar also serves as a shelter during the night when the floor is dotted with several mattresses, where members of both communities turn in for the cold nights.
Lending a hand in distributing packaged water bottles to protestors, Gurdeep Singh, hailing from Jargari in Punjab, said, "Even back in my village, these Muslim brothers live around 20 kms from our place and we have had a good camaraderie for several years… me and my fellow Sikh brothers help several langars at Singhu throughout the day as a form of 'seva' and this one is no different."
"They even provide us a place to sleep. We have been working as one unit since this langar was set up a week ago and see no reason to differentiate between our religions," Gurdeep Singh, another farmer, said.
