Mandeep Kaur and her son Lovepreet in front of their house – Photo: Sukhman Billing/Al Jazeera. “I wish he had waited for just a few days before taking this step,” his 40-year-old widow Mandeep Kaur told Al Jazeera. “Everyone calls my husband a martyr but what about us? What will we do without him?”
By Srishti Jaswal | Al Jazeera |
Fatehgarh Sahib, India – On the morning of November 10, the tall body of Gurpreet Singh was found hanging from a tree at Singhu outside Indian capital New Delhi, where thousands of farmers have been camping for more than a year to protest against a set of farm laws passed by the government.
Gurpreet, a 45-year-old landless farmer, left no suicide note, but the word “zimmedar” (responsible) was found engraved on his lifeless left hand.
Gurpreet had returned to the protest site only two days ago from Roorkee, his village in Punjab state’s Fatehgarh Sahib district where he had rented 1 acre (0.4 hectares) of land.
In his last days, he had told his fellow protesters that he was torn between his time in the village and the protest site, 250km (155 miles) away. Barely able to manage a living, he was upset over the impasse.
“No one thought he would take that extreme step,” said Lovepreet Singh, his 20-year-old son, who received a photo of his father’s body on WhatsApp that morning.
“It crushed me. I could not believe my eyes.”
Gurpreet killed himself only 10 days before Prime Minister Narendra Modi, in a surprise U-turn, announced the controversial farm laws will be repealed. On Monday, India’s Parliament passed a bill to cancel the three laws passed by Modi’s government in September last year.
The government claimed the laws would enable farmers to market their produce and boost production through private investment.
But the farmers – mainly in the “grain bowl” states of Punjab, Haryana and Uttar Pradesh – rejected the laws, saying they would lead to a corporate takeover of the agriculture sector and deny them a minimum support price (MSP) for their produce guaranteed by the government.
To press for their demands, thousands of farmers began a march to New Delhi in November last year. When stopped from entering the capital, they decided to camp at three sites around the city, where they still remain despite the repeal of the farm laws. They now want the government to pass a law guaranteeing MSP and address other issues faced by them.
In the yearlong protest, Gurpreet’s death was not isolated. He was the ninth farmer to die by suicide, according to data compiled by Samyukt Kisan Morcha (United Farmers Front or SKM), the farmers’ body spearheading the stir, which also says nearly 700 farmers have died in the stir as they weathered bone-chilling cold, record rains, smog and heat.
But Modi’s government claims there is no record of the farmers’ deaths, leading to anger and demands of compensation to the families of the deceased, who the farmers call “shaheed” (martyrs). The SKM is also demanding land to be allotted for the construction of a martyrs’ memorial at Singhu.
Read the full story, ‘The human cost of India’s yearlong farmers’ protest’ (Al Jazeera, 30 Nov 2021), here.
Lovepreet Singh showing a photo of his late father Gurpreet Singh on his mobile phone [Sukhman Billing/Al Jazeera]
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A victory, one year later. Farmers call off agitation (Asia Samachar, 9 Dec 2021)
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