The incident at Tikonia, some 70-odd km from Lakhimpur Kheri, was waiting to happen. The state’s monopoly over ‘legitimate’ violence was always held together by a tenuous moral claim—as is easy to see when the veneer comes off. And that is happening with far more frequency than can be claimed to be a coincidence. Two separate incidents: one an act of real violence, and one verbal, though no less chilling. The same backdrop. The farmers of western UP, Punjab, and Haryana have been on protest against the farm laws for over a year now. Much water and other comorbidities have flown down the Ganga in this time. The laws have been kept ‘in abeyance’—but that’s a frustrating stalemate, for both sides. The farmers want a complete withdrawal, not the threat of immiseration hanging over their heads like a Damocles’ sword.
The government is of the view that the protests are not truly pan-Indian and, why, not even purely a farmer’s agitation—they tout the prophesied death of the middleman as the root cause! The last bit is never pronounced openly but is put out via whisper and innuendo, as a means of delegitimising the protests. The power of whispers to trigger violence or spawn a default attitude of antagonism that finally leads to violence is well-known. Nine more corpses stand testimony to that truth in Lakhimpur Kheri.
The usual choreography is playing out. Union Minister Ajay Mishra Teni’s son, who allegedly mowed down farmers blocking his way, now has an FIR against him. Compensation has been announced, a judicial probe may follow too. But the comfort of protocol will not hide how violent disruption is often commissioned, and not even through the machinery meant to establish law and order. Haryana CM Manohar Lal Khattar advocating ‘tit for tat’, in chaste Sanskrit, to party cadre comes as a kind of verbal complement to Lakhimpur Kheri. More than that, it’s a sign of the age.