Each year on the Punjabi festival of Lohri, peanut shells fly into the bonfire, challenging the biting January cold. “Uddam aa, dalidarr ja...
Each year on the Punjabi festival of Lohri, peanut shells fly into the bonfire, challenging the biting January cold. “Uddam aa, dalidarr jaa,” elders recite a couplet. “Dalidarr di jarh chulle paa!” Throw the very roots of apathy into the fire, may it be replaced by fiery effort! Youngsters dance to tunes they fancy but not before the customary call-and-response (“hoye!”) folk song about “Dulla Bhatti waala” – the legendary hero who led a rebellion against Mughal emperor Akbar.
As the winter festival rolls around on January 13 this year, the song has special resonance as farmers and laborers sit resolutely in the freezing cold around New Delhi demanding the repeal of three new agricultural laws that they believe will undermine their livelihoods.
The bravehearted protestors carry with them decades of agrarian desperation and dejection. What they are asking for is not too much. Sadly, it may be too little. The fact that the government remains obstinate despite knowing this makes its apathy all the more galling.
The rebellion of Dulla Bhatti, whose story is invoked every Lohri, was rooted in agrarian discontent. It was a protest against the new top-down systems imposed by Akbar in a way that “seriously compromised the economic and political independence of...Read more
