Gursevak barely slept on Thursday night. The 23-year-old Sikh farmer from Bulandshahr, Uttar Pradesh, anxiously watched news videos that showed the swelling number of police personnel at Ghazipur, one of the sites of the two-month-long farmers’ protest on the borders of Delhi. The administration had ordered the eviction of the protest site by midnight.
Another video Gursevak watched showed Bharatiya Kisan Union spokesperson Rakesh Tikait teary-eyed, saying that the two-month-old protest against the three agricultural laws would continue no matter what the authorities did. The message had an immediate impact. In Tikait’s hometown in Sisauli, Muzaffarnagar, slogans expressing support for him began to be chanted.
As a result, on a day when the administration appeared prepared to crack down and clear out the site, hundreds of farmers poured in to Ghazipur. The protestors at this site and other places on highways entering Delhi fear that the new laws open the doors to…