NEW DELHI – Thousands of protesting farmers stormed into New Delhi on Tuesday as they used their tractors to pull barricades apart, prompting police to fire tear gas and throwing an event into chaos that posed a direct challenge to the government.
Farmers protesting against India’s new farm laws were expected to begin a march of trekkers through the city around lunch local time, to prevent the morning celebrations from interfering during India’s Republic holiday in Central Delhi. But farmers began tearing down the barriers about two hours early amid an apparent confusion among protesters.
The protest has already threatened to set up the annual celebration of the emergence of the Indian constitution. Prime Minister Narendra Modi oversaw a lavish military parade, and news channels showed surrealistic scenes of Mr. Modi saluting officers while chaos broke out in a few parts of the city just a few miles away.
When the evening dawned in New Delhi, at least one person died and many parts of the city still felt under siege. It was unclear whether the security forces, or the farm leaders who had apparently lost control, would be able to push the protesters out of the city and back to the campsites they had occupied on the capital’s borders for the past two months.
“Boer agitators have broken the agreed conditions and started their march well before the agreed time,” Delhi police said in a statement, confirming that several members of the force were wounded, without providing numbers. “The agitators have chosen the path of violence and destruction.”
At the city’s border with the town of Ghazipur, where farmers have been camping out of protest for months, tractors pushed a shipping container aside to block their route while police stood helpless there. Elsewhere, thick clouds of tear gas rose over approved processional routes while farmers on tractors, on horseback and on foot began their rally ahead of time.
The farmers waved the flags and taunted police officers. They also violated the Red Fort, the iconic palace that once served as the residence of India’s Mughal rulers and hoisted a flag on top of the fort that is regularly waved at Sikh temples. Many of the protesting farmers come from Punjab, a predominantly Sikh part of the country.
Many farmers wore long swords, triangles, sharp daggers and battle axes – functional but mainly ceremonial weapons. It turned out that most protesters were not wearing masks, despite the outbreak of India in Covid-19.
“Once we enter Delhi, we are not going anywhere before Modi repeals the law,” said Happy Sharma, a farmer from neighboring Uttar Pradesh, who was driving among 27 people in a trailer behind a tractor.
Large groups of trekkers and protesters broke away from the approved protest routes – they overturned buses and violently collided with overwhelming police officers armed with bamboo sticks – as they marched to Central Delhi.
Early in the afternoon, Delhi police commanders deployed officers carrying assault rifles. Television footage shows them standing in the middle of the main roads, sending off protesters, guns aimed at the crowd. In some areas, police officers beat protesters with their clubs to push them back.
Some of the most violent clashes took place during a junction near India’s income tax office and an old police headquarters, while protesters tried to break a final barrier and force them into the city center. Angry farmers withdrew and drove their tractors on a sidewalk that led away from the city, only after police fired several bursts of tear gas.
Local television channels showed farmers placing the body of a protester in the middle of a road. They said the man was shot, but it could not be independently confirmed. Reporters from the New York Times in the area see wounded people being taken away who say they were injured when a tractor overturned. CCTV footage broadcast on local television shows one tractor overturning after crashing into a police barrier at high speed.
The Indian government has temporarily suspended internet services in border areas that have been the center of protests for months, an Indian Interior Ministry official confirmed.
The protest, after the central government failed in its frantic efforts to prevent the tractor march, illustrated how deep the deadlock with the farmers mr. Modi was embarrassed. Although he emerged as India’s most dominant figure after crushing his political opposition, the peasants were persistent.
In September, Mr. Modi has rushed three farming laws through parliament which he hopes will provide private investment in a sector that has been inefficient for decades and has a shortage of money. But farmers stood up and said the government’s easing of the regulations had left them at the mercy of corporate giants who would take over their businesses.
As their protests grew in scope and anger, with tens of thousands of farmers camping in the cold for two months and dozens of them dying, the government offered to amend some parts of the laws to reflect their demands. The country’s high court also intervened and ordered the government to suspend the laws until a decision is reached with the farmers.
But the farmers say they will not stop a recall, and that their pressure has begun to increase. In addition to their tractor rally on Tuesday, they announced plans to march on foot to the Indian parliament on February 1, when the country’s new budget is presented.
Tensions were high before Tuesday, with some officials claiming the protests had been infiltrated by insurgent elements who would use force if farmers were allowed into the city. A few days earlier, the farmers’ leaders had arrested a young man who they allegedly detained, presumably from a conspiracy to shoot the leaders on Tuesday to disrupt the protest. No set of claims could be independently verified.
There was confusion about the scope and size of the tractor march before it would begin. Reports in the local news media, citing documents from the Delhi police, said the march would only start after the high-profile Republic Day parade in the heart of New Delhi reached a climax. The reports also state that the number of tractors is limited and how long they may stay in the city.
But farm leaders at a news conference on Monday said there were no time limits or restrictions on the number of tractors as long as they adhere to the routes set out by Delhi police. The maps of the routes suggested a compromise between the farmers and the police that protesters could enter the city but could not get close to sensitive institutions of power.
The leaders said about 150,000 tractors were gathered at the capital’s borders for the march, that about 3,000 volunteers would try to help police keep order and that 100 ambulances were on standby.
The farm leaders repeatedly called for peace in statements to the marchers as well as during the news conference.
“Remember, our goal is not to conquer Delhi, but to conquer the hearts of the people of this country,” they said in instructions posted online for marchers, who were told not to carry weapons – ” not even sticks “- and to avoid challenging slogans and banners.
“The hallmark of this agitation is that it is peaceful,” said Balbir Singh Rajewal, one of the movement’s key leaders. “My request to our peasant brothers, to our youth, is that they keep this movement peaceful. The government is spreading rumors, the agencies have started misleading people. Beware of that.
“If we remain peaceful, we have won. If we become violent, Modi will win. ”
Jeffrey Gettleman contribution made.