Sukhcharan Singh grows walnuts in Yuba City, California, about 40 miles north of Sacramento. Like many Sikh farmers in this small town in the Central Valley, Singh’s mind is occupied by the ongoing protests in India.
‘I’m losing sleep over this. When I was there, it was a poor country, yes, but it was a good country, ”said Singh, 68, and went through the notes he received on the latest news from India. “Last night I finally slept at 11.30.”
Since the end of November, hundreds of thousands of farmers, mostly from the agricultural states of Punjab and Haryana, have been protesting on the outskirts of Delhi, making the country’s capital miles inaccessible. They demand that Hindu nationalist prime minister Narendra Modi repeal three laws in September hastily passed by parliament – ‘pressed down the throats of the people’, as Singh puts it – in September that farmers fear regulation will be removed, leaving their earnings and livelihoods vulnerable to private investors .
“It’s very unfortunate,” Singh said, looking down at the tip of his long white beard. “On the one hand I feel happy that I’m here, on the other hand I feel guilty that I’m not there.”
The ties between there and here are self-evident. Outside of India, Yuba City is home to one of the largest groups of farmers from Punjab, the birthplace of Sikhism. About half of the 500,000 Sikhs in the U.S. live in California, with the largest concentration in Yuba City. Nicknamed “Mini Punjab”, the city elected the US Sikh mayor in 2009 and the country’s first female Sikh mayor in 2017. In the first week of November, the city hosts an annual festival in honor of the first Sikh Prophet’s birthday, which attracts more than 100,000 people.
It is therefore no surprise that the largest protest outside India in support of the farmers’ protests did not take place far from here. On Dec. 5, people from Yuba City and other cities in the Central Valley, including Fremont, Fresno, Stockton and Manteca, drummed, shouted over bulhorns and waved flags that read, “No farms, no food.” Thousands of large craft, cars and trucks departed from Oakland and lingered on the Bay Bridge for hours before arriving at the Indian Consulate in San Francisco. Other major events took place that week in Washington DC, New York, Chicago, Texas, and Michigan; During December and January, solidarity demonstrations and caravans of various sizes took place in at least 16 US states.
Naindeep Singh, 34, executive director of the Jakara movement, a non-profit organization that focuses on the youth and that strives for the Sikh community, led the protest. “I feel inspired. I see elderly people, my own family members sleeping in the cold and they have been there for months. I feel a deep will to support the efforts in any way, ‘he said.
Community members have also raised funds to put up billboards drawing attention to the protests of India in the central valley, where Punjabi is the third most spoken language, after English and Spanish. And there are further plans to advertise on the sides of 500 large rigs.
“I went to the San Francisco rally in December to show my support for my brothers,” said Kulwant Johl, 70, a Sikh farmer in Yuba City who rents out his agricultural land in Punjab. ‘The farmers [in India] says they need no money, so now it’s just moral support and talk to local politicians here and see if they can help. ”
He, like many of his neighbors, is constantly watching the Indian news coverage of the protests on satellite and social media – it has consumed conversations in the community. “That’s all we’re talking about now,” Johl said.
Migration and discrimination
It is estimated that 95% of the peaches and 70% of the prunes in Yuba City are grown by Punjabi Sikh farmers.. Johl farms with peaches, prunes, pomegranates and almonds. Its 800 acres is quite an extension of the 20-acre yard of his grandfather Nand Singh Johl, who is believed to be one of the first men in Punjabi to settle in Yuba City.
Nand arrived in Yuba City in 1906. He, like many other Punjabi men who followed an immigration pattern across the Pacific, worked the railroads and other short-lived jobs from Vancouver to California. Coming from a region known for farming, they naturally settled in rural areas with fertile land, including the Central Valley.
But those men faced different forms of discrimination. They may not become citizens or bring women from India with them; they also could not own land or sign long-term leases due to the Alien Land Law of California in 1913.
One way to circumvent that law was to place property in the name of American-born children such as husband and wife Ralie and Stella Singh. Both Ralie and Stella were born to Punjabi fathers and Mexican mothers – about 100 such marriages took place in Yuba City in the early 20th century. Mexican women, greatly displaced by the Mexican Revolution, were able to find farm work alongside and eventually for Indian men in the Central Valley. The couples shared enough physical characteristics to flip through records of the counties, thus circumventing the anti-clogging laws first enacted in California in 1948.
Over the phone, Stella (90) remembers roti and curry chicken prepared by Mexican women during a rally in Yuba City to celebrate Indian independence in 1947. t Indian women here. ”
After the Luce-Celler Act of 1946 was passed, Indian men were able to bring women from India to the USA, which led to a decrease in these interracial marriages. The Singhs, who have retired from the 1,000-hectare farm, are two of the remaining singles here. “We are unique now,” Stella said, “and we will soon be obsolete.”
Children of mixed races like them have enabled the Indian community to place a stake in the land in Yuba City. Start on five acres, bring family members to work, get more land, bring more family members, Ralie said. “In those days Indian men came here with nothing but they multiplied and they are very proud.”
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‘People watch’
On January 26, the protests in India changed shape when some farmers deviated from protest routes, jumped with barriers and drove tractors to Delhi. The police responded in the following days by cutting the internet, stronger building barriers and fences with to set up barbed wire, which influenced the protesters’ water and food supply. All the while, talks between farmers’ union leaders and the government have stalled and farmers say they will not go until the laws are repealed.
‘Modi was considered inviolable. But many people are watching it. You can not have an authoritarian regime victory after victory, and it remains unnoticed, ‘said the Jakara movement’s Naindeep Singh. The Supreme Court of India ruled in favor of suspending the laws in January, an unusual setback against the prime minister. “Will it be the farmers who break Modi’s authoritarian series?” Vra Singh.
Then his fast cadence slowed down. ‘I have a family affected by the violence in the’ 80s and ’90s. “I know how violent the Indian state can be, I know how cruel it can be,” he said. “It should end peacefully.”
Mallika Kaur is a writer, lawyer, and lecturer at the University of California, Berkeley, working on human rights issues in South Asia. She said genocide violence in the 80s and 90s against Sikhs in India – ‘basically open season on Sikhs, and politicians were at the forefront of the attacks’ – including in streets of Delhi, where farmers are protesting today, has led to decades of mistrust in government.
“The handing over of the keys to agriculture to enterprises touches a deep and painful nerve for the community,” she said. ‘For a very poor country, if these things like basic roti and valley corporations can set the prices, there is reasonable mass destruction and desperation that is feared. This is part of the reason why the common man, whether or not the farmer, supports the farmers and someone who stands against the government and surrenders another sector to great corporate control. It is estimated that 250 million Indian workers from various sectors support the farmers.
According to Kaur, at least 143 farmers have been killed and protested with about seven suicides – this is in a place plagued by suicides, which has more than doubled in Punjab in five years. Pneumonia is a major risk; so too heart attacks and other conditions associated with age and outside in the cold and rain. Workers in medical tents who set the blood pressure at 150 at the protest report, Kaur said.
“As far as we know, there are very desperate times ahead,” Kaur said. “People outside India have to say that these protests matter because we do not want the same kind of disruption of our food producers.”
The US Embassy in Delhi is urging the Indian government to resume talks with farmers. A tweet by singer Rihanna, followed by Greta Thunberg who expressed her solidarity with Indian farmers, upset protesters in India, who burned photos of both women on Thursday.
Sukhcharan Singh said he was “very, very hopeful” about the support of the celebrities. “I can not tell you how much respect I have for people like them, who think about human rights,” he said. But his prospects are greater than a few important endorsements. “In India, it is not just a peasant protest. It penetrated the lives of ordinary people. If this happens, the rulers must bow down. But I do not know at what cost I know. ”