sukhcharan Singh grows nuts in Yuba City, California, about 40 miles north of Sacramento. Like many Sikh farmers in this small town in the Central Valley, Singh’s thoughts are occupied by the ongoing protests in India.
“I lose sleep over it. When I was there, it was a poor country, yes, but it was a good country, ”said Singh, 68, leafing through his notes on the latest news from India. “Last night, I finally slept at 11:30 am.”
Since the end of November, hundreds of thousands of farmers, most of the agricultural states of Punjab and Haryana, have protested outside Delhi, making the country’s capital inaccessible for miles. They are demanding that the Hindu nationalist prime minister, Narendra Modi, repeal three laws hastily approved by parliament – “pushed into the throat of the people”, as Singh says – in September that farmers fear that regulation will be eliminated, leaving their earnings and livelihoods vulnerable to private investors.
“It’s very unfortunate,” said Singh, looking down past the tip of his long white beard. “On the one hand, I feel happy to be here, on the other hand, I feel guilty for not being here.”
The links between there and here are evident. Outside India, Yuba City is home to one of the largest groups of farmers in Punjab, the birthplace of Sikhism. Approximately half of the 500,000 Sikhs in the USA live in California, with the highest concentration living in the city of Yuba. Dubbed the “Mini Punjab”, the city elected the first Sikh mayor of the United States in 2009 and the country’s first Sikh mayor in 2017. In the first week of November, the city hosts an annual festival in honor of the birthday of the first Sikh prophet, attracting more than 100,000 people.
It is not surprising, then, that the biggest rally outside India in support of the farmers’ protests took place not far from here. On December 5, people from the city of Yuba and other cities in the Central Valley, including Fremont, Fresno, Stockton and Manteca, played drums, shouted into megaphones and waved flags that said “No farms, no food”. Thousands of large platforms, cars and trucks left Oakland and held traffic for hours on the Bay Bridge, before reaching the Indian consulate in San Francisco. Other large rallies took place in Washington DC, New York, Chicago, Texas and Michigan that week; Throughout December and January, demonstrations of solidarity and caravans of various sizes took place in at least 16 U.S. states.
Naindeep Singh, 34, executive director of the Jakara movement, a youth-focused non-profit organization that defends the Sikh community, led the protest. “I feel inspired. I see elderly people, my own family members, sleeping in the cold and have been there for months. I feel a deep desire to support the efforts in any way I can, ”he said.
Community members have also raised funds to support posters that draw attention to India’s protests across the Central Valley, where Punjabi is the third most spoken language, after English and Spanish. And there are other plans to advertise on the sides of 500 large platforms.
“I went to the rally in San Francisco in December to show my support for my brothers there,” said Kulwant Johl, 70, a Sikh farmer in the city of Yuba who leases his land in Punjab. “The farmers [in India] they say they don’t need any money, so now it’s just moral support and talking to local politicians here and seeing if they can help ”.
He constantly watches Indian news coverage of the protests via satellite and on social media, like many of his neighbors – this consumed the conversations in the community. “That’s all we are talking about now,” said Johl.
Migration and discrimination
It is estimated that 95% of peaches and 70% of plums in the city of Yuba are grown by Sikh farmers in Punjabi. Johl grows peaches, plums, pomegranates and almonds. Its 800 acres are a huge expansion over his grandfather Nand Singh Johl’s 20-acre plot, which is believed to be one of the first Punjabi men to settle in the city of Yuba.
Nand arrived in the city of Yuba in 1906. He, like many other Punjabi men who follow a pattern of immigration across the Pacific, worked on railroads and other temporary jobs from Vancouver to California. Because they come from a region known for agriculture, many settled naturally in rural areas with fertile land, including the Central Valley.
But these men faced various forms of discrimination. They were not allowed to become citizens or to bring wives from India; they were also unable to own land or sign long-term leases due to the California Foreign Lands Act of 1913.
One way around this law was to put property in the name of children born in the United States like husband and wife Ralie and Stella Singh. Ralie and Stella were born to Punjabi parents and Mexican mothers – about 100 of these marriages took place in the city of Yuba in the early 20th century. Mexican women, many of them displaced by the Mexican Revolution, could find agricultural work alongside and eventually for the Indian men in the Central Valley. The couples shared enough physical traits to be passed through county offices, thus avoiding anti-miscegenation laws that were not lifted in California until 1948.
Over the phone, Stella, 90, remembers eating roti and curried chicken prepared by Mexican women at a meeting in Yuba City to celebrate Indian independence in 1947. “Back then,” like Ralie, 92, begins many phrases, “simply there weren’t Indian women here. “
After the Luce-Celler Act of 1946 was passed, Indian men were able to bring wives from India to the United States, which led to a decrease in these interracial marriages. The Singhs, who have retired from cultivating 1,000 acres, are two of the few remaining here. “We are unique now,” said Stella, “and we will be obsolete soon.”
Mixed-race children like them allowed the Indian community to stake the land in Yuba City. Start with five acres, bring relatives to work, get more land, bring more relatives, Ralie said it was the way. “At that time, the Indians came here with nothing, but they multiplied and are very proud”.
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‘People are watching’
On January 26, protests in India changed shape when some farmers strayed from protest routes, skipped barricades and drove tractors to Delhi. The police responded in the following days by hacking the internet, building stronger barricades and erecting barbed wire fences, which affected the water and food supply for the protesters. At the same time, negotiations between farmers’ union leaders and the government have stalled and farmers say they will not leave until the laws are repealed.
“Modi has been seen as untouchable. But many people are watching this. An authoritarian regime cannot be allowed to win after victory and not be controlled, ”said Naindeep Singh of the Jakara movement. India’s supreme court ruled in January in favor of suspending the laws, an unusual setback against the prime minister. “Will it be the farmers who will break Modi’s authoritarian streak?” Singh asked.
Then his fast cadence slowed. “I have a family that was affected by violence in the 80s and 90s. I know the violence that the Indian state can practice, I know how brutal it can be,” he said. “This has to end peacefully.”
Mallika Kaur is an author, lawyer and professor at the University of California, Berkeley, who works on human rights issues in South Asia. She said genocidal violence in the 1980s and 1990s against Sikhs in India – “basically the Sikh hunting season, and politicians were at the forefront of the attacks” – including on the streets of Delhi, where farmers are protesting today, resulted in a distrust of the government.
“Handing over the keys to agriculture to corporations deeply affects the community,” she said. “For a very poor country, since such things as basic rotor and dal corporations are able to set prices, there is massive devastation and despair that they fear. This is part of the reason why the average person, farmer or not, is supporting farmers and someone who faces the government, handing over another sector to the control of large corporations. ”It is estimated that 250 million Indian workers from various sectors are also on strike in support of farmers.
Kaur said at least 143 farmers died in protest, with about seven suicides – this in a place and profession devastated by suicides, which have increased more than twelve times in Punjab in five years. Pneumonia is a major risk; the same is true of heart attacks and other diseases that arise with old age and cold and rain. Workers in medical tents set up at the protest report blood pressure of 150, Kaur said.
“What we know for sure is that there are very desperate times ahead,” said Kaur. “People outside India should say that these protests are important because we don’t want to end the same kind of disconnection from our food producers.”
The US embassy in Delhi is asking the Indian government to resume negotiations with farmers. AN Rihanna tweet, followed by Greta Thunberg expressing her solidarity with Indian farmers, contradicted the protesters in India, who burned photos of the two women on Thursday.
Sukhcharan Singh said he was “very, very hopeful” with the support of celebrities. “I can’t say how much respect for people like them, who think about human rights, I have,” he said. But his outlook is bigger than some important endorsements. “In India, it is no longer just a protest by farmers. It is infiltrated in the lives of ordinary people. When that happens, those in power need to bow. But I don’t know at what cost and I don’t know when. “