Dallewal’s Fast Unto Death

On 5 March 2025 one hun-dred days have passed since Jagjit Singh Dallewal’s protest fast. Discussions will continue on issues like minimum support price (MSP) for crops, other demands put forth under the aegis of the SamyuktKisanMorcha (non-political) and KisanMazdoorMorcha, talks related with the government; and coordination with the Samyukt Kisan Morcha (SKM), and also will continue Jagjit Singh Dallewal’s protest fast unto death.

As a result of the farmers’ protest at Delhi’s Singhu border in 2020-21, the government withdrew the three agricultural laws. Since then, the yaks hprashn has also stood out in the open about how the country’s vast agricultural sector can survive with the rapidly increasing pace of corporatisation of education, health and service sectors, including the public sector enterprises! Economists have not yet raised the question about the private capital that is being worshipped in corporate India, and how much of the private capital is looted public money! It is hoped that economists like Professor Arun Kumar, who have explained how much of the Indian economy is black money, will also consider this central question. Whatever be the case, a decisive point in the clash between farmers and corporate powers is not expected to happen soon.

But for Jagjit Singh Dallewal’s fast which has crossed 100 days, it can be said right now with certainty that it has become a kind of landmark in the history of nonviolent resistance to injustice. The importance of this fast increases even more when one finds that it has restored the credibility, dignity and strength of protest fasts. While the media covered Anna Hazare’s 13-day fast in 2011 day and night, they have not paid even a fraction of the same footage to Jagjit Singh Dallewal’s long fast.

In fact, this comparison itself is wrong. The truth had come out at the very beginning that Anna Hazare used to fast for the media. The powers involved in that fast-episode and their intentions were also not a hidden truth. Its result was also on the same lines - India’s national and social life came under the tight grip of the corporate-communal nexus.

Seriousness, dignity and humility have always been maintained in Jagjit Singh Dallewal’ssatyagraha-fast. Jagjit Singh Dallewal and the farmer leaders/supporters involved in the movement did not make the fasting site a platform for speeches. This has upheld the belief that the long-tested value of ‘weighing before speaking’ has not been lost entirely in the noise of ongoing verbosity. Needless to say, Jagjit Singh Dallewal had prepared himself for this fast. 

With Jagjit Singh Dallewal’s fast, there has indeed been a small revolution in the non-violent mode of resistance - a single person standing up fearlessly against injustice through satyagrah, civil disobedience, fasting. Mohandas Gandhi used this mode of resistance in India’s freedom movement while taking inspiration from global sources. Dr Ram ManoharLohia, describing Gandhi’s “nonviolent mode of action as the most revolutionary core of his teachings,” writes, “The greatest revolution of our time is, therefore, a procedural revolution, removal of injustice through a mode of action characterised by justice. The question here is not so much the contents of justice as the mode to achieve it. Constitutional and orderly processes are often not enough.

(Contributed by Prem Singh. The contributor associated with the socialist movement is a former teacher of Delhi University and a fellow of the Indian Institute of Advanced Study, Shimla.)

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Frontier
Vol 57, No. 40, March 30 - Apr 5, 2025