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'We Are One’: Why Punjab’s Landless Dalits are Standing with Protesting Farmers -Sandeep Singh

-TheWire.in

As much at risk as the farmers if the laws are not repealed, the Dalits are also determined not to be used by the BJP to turn the protests against the new agriculture laws into an issue of landowners’ rights.

New Delhi: On January 7, Thursday, when 2,000 labourers of the Punjab Khet Mazdoor Union (PKMU) began their journey from Dabwali, Punjab, to the Tikri border between Haryana and Delhi to protest the new farm laws, a new history began to unfold.

This is because the PKMU’s leadership is from the landless Dalit community and many of those who began marching to Tikri on Thursday are from villages of Punjab where Dalits had once clashed with other communities over village common land, one-third of which is meant to be reserved for Dalits.

While more than 472 farmer unions from across the country are protesting the new farm laws and the farmers at Delhi’s borders have now been there for 40 days, this agitation is being led by farmers from Punjab. In Punjab, all communities own land, but Jats, who constitute 25% of the state’s population are the major landowners, while the Dalits who constitute 32% of Punjab’s population own only 2.3% of the agricultural land.

Given this situation, it has become easy for those supporting the new farm laws to label the protests as a ‘Jat issue’, especially considering that the Dalit community has sometimes clashed with Jats in some areas of Punjab to get its fair share of panchayati (village local government) land.

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