P. Sainath Profile picture
Nov 20, 2021 7 tweets 6 min read Read on X
1/7. Why is it so hard for the media to admit that the farmers at Delhi’s gates represent the largest peaceful democratic protest the world has seen in years – that too, organised at the height of the Covid-19 pandemic? Story link at end of thread.
#FarmLaws #FarmLawsRepealed
2/7. Prime Minister Modi ‘apologises’ to the nation not for bringing in obnoxious anti-farmer laws but because, he says, he failed to persuade ‘a section of farmers despite best efforts’ to accept them. So which sections of farmers did he persuade?
#FarmLaws #FarmLawsRepealed
3/7. Denying them entry to Delhi, blocking them with trenches, barbed wire and water cannons, converting their camps into little gulags, vilifying them daily – these were the government’s ‘best efforts’ at persuasion? I’d hate to see their worst ones.
#FarmLaws #FarmLawsRepealed
4/7. Mr. Modi made seven trips overseas this year alone. But found no time to drive down a few kilometres from his residence to speak to the countless thousands of farmers at Delhi’s gates. Now that would have been a genuine effort at persuasion.
#FarmLaws #FarmLawsRepealed
5/7. The farmers defeated not just the government and corporations, but also thoroughly discredited Big Media. On the farm issue (as on so many others), corporate media functioned as extra power AAA batteries (Amplifying Ambani Adani +).
#FarmLaws #FarmLawsRepealed
6/7. The farmers know theirs is a fantastic victory but realise there’s a long road ahead. The larger agrarian crisis and its issues remain unresolved. Still, their unflinching courage and resistance is an inspiration.
#FarmLaws #FarmLawsRepealed
7/7. The farmers didn’t just fight for repeal of the laws, they fought for the democratic rights, legal security, and civil liberties of every citizen of India. An inspiration to all those resisting bullying and authoritarian intimidation.
#FarmLaws
Link: ruralindiaonline.org/en/articles/fa…

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More from @PSainath_org

Apr 23
1/6. Tata Institute of Social Sciences suspension of Dalit scholar P. S. Ramadas for alleged ‘anti-national’ activity is appalling. This must mark the lowest point TISS has seen in its distinguished history in both leadership and action.#TISS #DALIT
2/6. To one who has been part of and later followed student activity on Indian university campuses for 50 years, Ramadas signifies the finest trend – that of the conscious, informed, student who always connects to the society around him with sensitivity and empathy. #TISS #DALIT
3/6. The peculiarly vicious and vindictive action of the present TISS authorities damages an otherwise highly respected institution more than it does Ramadas. Their claims of what are ‘anti-national’ activities are a dead giveaway. #TISS #DALIT
Read 6 tweets
Jun 7, 2023
1/6. ‘Tipu Sultan was the only prince who died fighting the British… With (his death) Indian Independence was extinguished for a century and a half.’ Not quotes from Karnataka’s new government but from a BJP founder-member. Story link at end of thread.
#Karnataka #TipuSultan
2/6. BJP founder-member and foremost RSS journalist K.R. Malkani wrote decades ago: ‘The more I read about Tipu, the more I am impressed with his rich personality.’ His heartfelt praise of Tipu appears in his book ‘India First’ (Ocean Books 2002).
#Karnataka #TipuSultan
3/6. K. R. Malkani was Vice President of BJP from 1991-94. And editor of the RSS weekly Organiser for 35 years, while also editor of its Hindi counterpart Panchjanya. No other RSS man ever climbed such heights. L.K. Advani wrote the foreword to his book.
#Karnataka #TipuSultan
Read 6 tweets
Aug 14, 2022
1/8. Was Independence the gift of a few Oxbridge elites? As Gandhi put it, not great men, but ‘the people themselves are the cause’ of revolutions. My book The Last Heroes: Footsoldiers of Indian Freedom (Penguin) out in November, looks at 16 such people.
#IndependenceDay2022
2/8. In the next 5-6 years, there will not be a single person alive who fought for this country’s freedom. Our new generations will never get to meet, see, speak, or listen to India’s freedom fighters. Never directly learn who they were, what they fought for.
#IndependenceDay2022
3/8. The youngest freedom fighter in this book is 92, the oldest 104. Ordinary people who stood up to the British, unsure if they would ever see the freedom they fought for. They never went on to be ministers, governors, presidents, or hold other high office.
#IndependenceDay2022
Read 8 tweets
Jun 28, 2022
1/7. Home Minister Amit Shah recently declared that “No one can stop us from writing history anew” (ToI June 11). The outrageous arrest of Teesta Setalvad shows we’re not just rewriting the past. But our contemporary era and present as well.
#TeestaSetalvad #MohammedZubair
2/7. So all we knew about the Gujarat riots was wrong. Especially about who the victims really were and who the villains. A human rights activist who has stood by and fought for the (real) victims for 20 years now pays the price of her ‘audacity.’
#TeestaSetalvad #MohammedZubair
3/7. The efforts of Teesta and her team led to 117 perpetrators of the Gujarat riots of 2002 being handed life sentences by trial courts. Including a former MLA and minister. Perhaps we’ll now see the rewriting of those judgements and sentences.
#TeestaSetalvad #MohammedZubair
Read 7 tweets
Apr 12, 2022
1/15. This week marks the 200th anniversary of the great tradition of Indian journalism – the opposite of the petty one that has ruled our media for 30-40 years. Raja Ram Mohan Roy founded the newspaper Mirat-ul-Akhbar on April 12, 1822.
#PressFreedom Image
2/15. He had of course launched the Bengali paper Sambad Kaumudi in November 1821, but it was not his name that appeared as publisher for a while. With Mirat ul Akhbar he explained his political and social views quite explicitly to an educated elite.
#PressFreedom
3/15. Very early in Mirat ul Akhbar (Mirror of News) Ram Mohan Roy wrote a brilliant editorial protesting the death of Pratap Narayan Das who died from a whipping ordered by the Judge of what is now Comilla in Bangladesh, John Hayes.
#PressFreedom
Read 15 tweets
Feb 17, 2022
1/8. With the passing of Ramchandra Sripati Lad (underground name ‘Captain Bhau’) on Feb. 5 – India lost one of her greatest freedom fighters. On June 7, 1943, his Toofan Sena squads looted a British Raj train at Shenoli, Maharashtra. Story link at end of thread.
#FreedomFighter
2/8. The money from the Raj payroll was spent on struggling farmers and workers in a year of great hunger. “It is unjust to say we looted anything,” he complained. “What the British had looted from us Indians, we brought a small part of that back to our people.”
#FreedomFighter
3/8. Captain Bhau’s Toofan Sena was the armed wing of the prati sarkar, the underground provisional government that had declared Satara’s secession from the British Raj and which actually held sway across 600 villages or more for three years from 1943 to 1946.
#FreedomFighter
Read 8 tweets

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