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December 12 marks the birth anniversary of Maulana Bhasani. The massive farmer protests in India remind me of his profound impact on the region as strategic thinker, organizer, Muslim, socialist, and internationalist and more. #StandWithFarmers #RightsofPeasants
The preeminent scholar of Bhasani and his profound international impact is Layli Uddin @kudos4nemo
She writes: "To forget Bhashani is to forget the histories of poor and landless peasants, sharecroppers, char-dwellers, and workers" ; https://www.thedailystar.net/opinion/tribute/lessons-freedom-1328605
She writes: "To forget Bhashani is to forget the histories of poor and landless peasants, sharecroppers, char-dwellers, and workers" ; https://www.thedailystar.net/opinion/tribute/lessons-freedom-1328605
December 17 is also the second anniversary of the UN Declaration of the Rights of Peasants which came about through sustained grassroots mobilizations led by Via Campesina and other groups. @viacampesinaFR
We must view the present struggle and mobilizations by farmers in India as part of these continuities and global grassroots struggles. We need to remember instances of farmer suicides from 1990s that went unanswered.
We should connect the farmer mobilization not only as a counter to Modi but to a longed history intended to displace farmer, rural workers, and peasants and to increase of land grabs globally. https://www.grain.org/article/entries/5492-the-global-farmland-grab-in-2016-how-big-how-bad
Social movements do not emerge out of a vacuum. Aside from the massive support of the farmers, there is a moment of convergence around land, labor, and food sovereignty, democratic institutions. #StandWithFarmers
Bhasani has always resonated with me as a crucial global figure to know. He contemplated a vision of society "without the coercive structure of state and capital" and one that not environmentally destructive.
Read @farhadmazhar https://lawatthemargins.com/perspectives-why-we-need-bhasani-now/
Read @farhadmazhar https://lawatthemargins.com/perspectives-why-we-need-bhasani-now/
Bhasani is instructive now because we witnessed how in the formation of the newly independent Bangladesh government the liberatory promises of the movement were coopted by the state and its interests subjugated to the interests of global capital. #StandWithFarmers
If we use only Bangladesh as an example, we see that its independence (Victory Day to be celebrated December 16) ushered in a period of destruction of rural economies and promotion of the exploitative labor practices in the garment industry.
We should of course advocate for the rights of industrial workers, including garment workers, but as global labor advocates we need to understand the relationship between agricultural workers, land, environment and food sovereignty. #StandWithFarmers
If we view the farmer mobilization as simply a matter of opposing Modi, the Farmer Bills which they most immediately are, we lose the opportunity to bring varied movements together to confront the state and global economic policies that placed farmers in this precarity.
I have tried to document the relationship between the state, economy & social movements organizing in response to global capitalism in my tea worker article (Read here: http://hrlr.law.columbia.edu/hrlr/charting-global-economic-inequalities-and-emancipatory-human-rights-responses-from-the-ground-up-the-tea-workers-movement-of-bangladesh/) but we need more case studies and research.
For now, I encourage anyone who is committed to supporting global grassroots social movements especially peasants and workers to know Bhasani.
"I speak for the people of the fields."
#StandWithFarmers
"I speak for the people of the fields."
#StandWithFarmers
