Rakesh Tikait
This is a collection of articles archived for the excellence of their content. |
Career
2009-21
Himanshi Dhawan, February 7, 2021: The Times of India
The chequered rise of Rakesh Tikait
Flower diplomacy, teary videos…Baba Tikait’s son has quite a flair for drama but can he fill his father’s big shoes?
On a cold November night in 2009, Bharatiya Kisan Union (BKU) leader Rakesh Tikait received information that a train laden with 26,000 quintals of raw sugar from Brazil was going to reach Shamli railway station. This cargo could have upended the livelihoods of thousands of farmers in the sugarcane belt of Uttar Pradesh. There were only three people, “but that did not stop Rakesh. We travelled at night from Muzaffarnagar to Shamli and stopped the sugar from being unloaded. The train had to turn back,” says BKU spokesperson Dharmendra Malik.
On January 26, Tikait seemed to have turned the tide again when his tears brought thousands of tractors towards Delhi. Ten days later, authorities are still grappling with the events that are unfolding, as farmers across Haryana and west Uttar Pradesh gather for mahapanchayats pledging support to this doughty 54-year-old fighting the farm bills. Sensing political opportunity, Rashtriya Lok Dal (RLD), Shiromani Akali Dal, AAP and Samajwadi Party have come forward to offer support.
A former Delhi police constable, Rakesh has inherited a formidable mantle. His father Choudhury Mahendra Singh Tikait was revered by farmers across Haryana and UP and feared by Delhi for the loyalty that he was able to command. Politicians learnt at their own peril that Tikait senior or Baba Tikait, as he was popularly known, was not to be underestimated when over 80,000 farmers laid siege over Boat Club, bringing Lutyens’ Delhi to a standstill for seven days in 1988. It was in Tikait senior’s heyday that Rakesh was pressured to break up a protest demonstration by his father, and resigned from the police. But with the rise of Mulayam Singh Yadav and Mayawati, the farmer-centric identity waned, says Sajjan Kumar, academic and political analyst. The camaraderie between Choudhury Charan Singh and Mahendra Tikait was replaced by rivalry between the sons of the two stalwart leaders.
In 2011 after Mahendra Tikait’s death, when his older son Naresh Tikait took over as BKU president and head of the Balyan khap and Rakesh as the Union’s spokesperson, the farmers’ voice had been lost in the wilderness. Choudhury Charan Singh’s son Choudhury Ajit Singh, RLD founder, was flirting with both the BJP and the Congress. It was a difficult time. Malik recalls Rakesh sending letters, sitting on dharnas and courting arrest, trying to make a dent in the politics of the time.
Whether it was placing flowers next to iron nails fixed by the police near the Delhi border or tying himself in chains in a dharna outside Uttarakhand Vidhan Sabha, Rakesh always had a flair for drama. He has been arrested 42 times, the longest in Madhya Pradesh for over 40 days while agitating for adequate compensation from MoserBaer, which was setting up a factory there. He’s also travelled to places like Hong Kong, Bali and Brazil, agitating against the WTO, and within India to understand agriculture beyond the sugarcane-belt dynamic. “He can speak for different kinds of farmers, unlike most north Indian farmers who only understand the Green Revolution paradigm,” says Kavitha Kuruganti, leader of the All India Kisan Sangarsh Coordination Committee.
By 2013 as the BJP made inroads in UP, both brothers Naresh and Rakesh saw an opportunity. They participated in the 2013 Muzaffarnagar mahapanchayat and were named in police FIRs for incendiary speeches given from the platform. The riots that took place subsequently killed over 60 people and displaced nearly 60,000 Muslim families, but won the assembly seat for fellow Khap leader Sanjeev Balyan. BKU split with Ghulam Mohammed Jaula, a long-time aide to Mahendra Tikait.
Jats at the time had a dissonant attitude towards this communalism, says Kumar, who has extensively studied this phenomenon. “While they justified the violence, the older generation of Jats also expressed remorse because of the socio-economic relationship with the Muslims in the region. ‘Kheti barbaad ho gayee, gaon ujjad gaya (The village and the harvest has been destroyed’), they would say,” he says.
By 2019, there was increasing regret at having privileged their religious identity above their ‘kisaan’ identity, but this did not translate into votes, says Kumar. Both communities made tentative steps towards rapprochement. “After 2019 there were many protests in Muzaffarnagar and Shamli districts led by the BKU. What was interesting was the presence of many Muslim farmers at these demonstrations,” says documentary filmmaker Nakul Singh Sawhney. And so, when the BKU joined the farmers protest, rumours swirled. Many alleged that Tikait was a BJP stooge and would sell out, which left many other union leaders wary of him. “There continue to be apprehensions that having come this far we may be betrayed by our own,” a union leader says. With declared assets of Rs 4 crore in 2014, a BJP leader’s barb that Tikait is no small impoverished farmer may even have a touch of truth. Political analyst Nilanjan Mukhopadhyay strikes a note of caution over a single leader like Rakesh Tikait emerging as a rallying figure. “Considering his chequered past, it is a discomforting development that he has become a central figure to a people’s movement that has so far not led by any one person or group. Mass mobilisation on the basis of caste that we see happening now is also a worrying sign. It might be restricting the movement to Jat vs BJP,” he says.
However, “this is the first time they (BKU) walked in unconditionally, willing to be led by the Punjab unions, which is significant because it shows faith and a commitment to protect the farmers’ interest,” says Kuruganti. On January 26, even as the crowds started receding as echoes of “terrorists” and “anti-nationals” rang in their ears, Tikait stood his ground.
This week at Haryana’s Jind mahapanchayat where a sea of farmers welcomed Rakesh Tikait with loud roars of approval, a farmer said, “Woh Baba Tikait the, inko humne Dada Tikait ki upadhi di hai. ( Tikait senior was referred to as a father, but we have dubbed him grandfather Tikait.)” History is repeating itself after 32 years, says Malik.
