 I'm going to begin this video by unconditionally condemning what happened at Red Fort yesterday. The violence that we saw, the way the police were attacked, they were thrown off the parapet. We saw all that happen and it's out there on camera. I want to condemn that for two reasons. First, because there is no place for this kind of violence in democratic politics. And no matter what about it, we can make it right. That is the first point. Secondly, this essentially weakens the farmers movement. It essentially becomes a great way to make them look bad. And we saw what happened. We saw what the television media did. We saw what newspapers have done today, except barring a few. Indian Express is a case in point where you'll find a lot of good reportage. But the language that we see in electronic media, which is television, but some of us like to call Godi media, which is the compliant media. And also some of the big newspapers has essentially been to vilify these farmers, make them look like villains and make them look like aggressive people who are dangerous and need to be dealt with with a strong arm of the state. Now, all of this makes it very crucial that farmers unions, the key farmers unions distance themselves from this violence and make sure that this is not repeated. And we've seen that it has already happened. We know that the biggest umbrella body of farmers has already said that they were not part of what happened at Redfoot. They condemned what happened at Redfoot and they're going to look into why this happened and who led it. But this is not a black and white story. This is important to understand. This is not a black and white story. And this video is going to be about those shades of grace. Stay tuned. So let's look at the context here. Because think of it, if you've been sitting in Delhi, you've been under your blanket for the past two months. You've got heaters on in your house. You know how biting cold it is. The cold wave has been absolutely crazy this time. And in this freezing cold, farmers, thousands and thousands of them have been sitting at our borders. The three borders entry points into Delhi where they've been camping, protesting, asking for these farm bills to be repealed, to be withdrawn. And what have they been met with? They've essentially been met with silence. They've been rendered invisible by the national media. And the government too has only offered them some, a few platitudes and no real answer with which they can go home and say, Okay, we feel safe now that our entire livelihood is not going to be taken over by some private company later on. Now, the point here is that 60 days of protests when no one listens to you, when you're seen as if you do not exist, this is a powder cake. When such things happen in a democracy, what happens? It is very easy for the more volatile elements to start looking for more extreme forms of protests. And as we know, this is precisely what happened, as you can read in the Indian Express today, on the 25th evening. Because the stage from which the farmers are addressed at the single border, that was taken over on the evening of the 25th by the more extreme groups. And this is there in a report by Kamal Deep Singh Brar in the file from Amritsar, this is on the Indian Express website, you can go and see it. And I'm going to read it out that for about 6 hours from 6pm to midnight, a group of youth hijacked the stage to oppose the route agreed upon between the main farmers union and Delhi police. And their protest was webcast live on some Punjabi web channels as well as some individual social media accounts. And this involved two known faces, one was Lakbeer Singh Siddhana, alias Lakha Siddhana. And there was also the Punjabi film actor Deep Siddhu who you've been seeing on social media with his photographs, along with Sunny Deol, some with Prime Minister Modi and with Home Minister Amit Shah. In the past he's known to have campaigned for Sunny Deol. Although Sunny Deol over the past two months has distanced himself from him and has said that we have nothing to do with this person. He has been an apologist for amongst others Singh Brindanwale and the Khalistan movement. He has been kind of bringing that repeatedly in every time he's spoken during this farmers protest. Now the interesting thing is that these two people and their groups called upon younger farmers to take the ring road. To violate the agreed route that had been agreed upon by the farmers main key leaders and the Delhi police. Perhaps this is bound to happen in a certain sense because as I said that once you leave people invisible, once you make them invisible, don't listen to them and you say that okay, I was interested when they were protesting for the five, six days and now it's the same old stuff. I really don't care. They're going to do something which will make you care. Now what they did didn't make you care. It made you feel they need to be crushed. That's the feeling you've had. The point again is very clear that when the farmers unions had been talking to the government, each time if any reporter spoke to them or any journalist spoke to them, any analyst spoke to these farm union leaders, then broadly they told you off camera that look, we cannot accept any compromise because the farmers are angry. If we go back with any compromise other than repealing these laws, then we simply won't be accepted. So in a sense when they made this deal with the Delhi police, they had made a certain compromise because initially they had talked about joining the republic day parade. Some of the big leaders had said if the country is about Jai Javan, Jai Kisan, what is the problem if Kisan joined soldiers? As we know that the army and the defence forces are part of the republic day parade and this leader had said what's the problem if soldiers or Kisan joined. They said farmers joined this. Now obviously this was going to be a problem. Obviously if tractors had been rolling down Rajput, it would have been a problem, unplanned and it would have been a security issue. So this is not going to happen but many farmers as again you can see from more reports on the Indian Express website, many farmers were not clearly aware of the plan. Many farmers did not know that they were not supposed or meant to go to Red Fort and some reports suggest that the fact that the internet was switched off in some places in anticipation of trouble, internet was switched off in parts of Delhi yesterday made it even more difficult for farmers leaders to communicate what the route was or to stop people from breaking through because there was no control possible if the internet was no longer working. We know internet is now virtually a lifeline for everyone. So here's the point to look at. They were ignored. There are always more agitated people in any group. The question is how do you keep them within the moderate space? It is clear that that was not possible for at least in Red Fort. Again, you can go to scroll.in, the website stroll.in and there's an excellent timeline here which has been created by reporters and it's a combination of many reports from across the spectrum and this has been reported by Vijayata Lalvani and Supriya Sharma on scroll where they've given you a blow by blow account of how this rally unfolded and their point is and you can see how they've done it that most of this tractor rally, most of it was actually peaceful. It had a festive air about it, flowers were being shard even when in parts of, in one part of Delhi where the police Lathi charged them and used tear gas shells, even then it was peaceful. Reports started coming in that in some parts the route was being breached. Again, if you go to another story on Indian Express we hear that the planning was not as good as the farmers leaders thought and many people, many farmers thought that they will go to Red Fort, take around and come back and again, I would like you to go to quint.com and there's an excellent piece here excellent eyewitness piece which is worth reading by Nishtha Gautam and where she says how it was her day off, it was a holiday and she just could hear farmers rolling down the ring road I think that's what she says right at the beginning and she went there and she wanted to see what's happening and she said that she could hear the tractor rally and the interesting thing is that she writes that I witness an unending procession of tractors, cars, SUVs and bikes not to mention cycles and walking protesters for an hour or so the sloganeering, the songs and vehicular noise drowns any other experience on the road. What is remarkable about the processions is that there is absolutely no problem on the roads the traffic is largely streamlined, I see organizers make way for an ambulance so again this has not been reported to you on mainstream media all you saw is those A&I pictures of policemen jumping off that parapet into a dry well many of them were injured there we see it is worth going through Nishtha Gautam's blow by blow account because she talks about how farmers had a sense that they have to go to Red Fort to show that they exist to make the people of Delhi, the government of Delhi see them and realize that they are there, they are human beings and they have their own reasons for this protest they are not just sitting out there in the cold for fun they wanted to be seen but they had not planned to go into Red Fort and take it over many as Nishtha Gautam says took their tractors, went around Red Fort, took a U-turn, went back they had registered that they had come and they went back there is an interesting part in Nishtha Gautam's report which we see in other reports also is the great contradiction that we see between older farmers who want to be moderate who want to and the farmer leaders who are trying to keep it within control and some younger farmers now the younger farmers in some cases wanted to make a much louder splash and here is an interesting part where Nishtha Gautam writes that she talks about a clash between an older farmer and a younger farmer here because a young man is being lambasted by another she writes and this is inside the Red Fort she has also gone there in with them and it appears that more youngsters want to climb up the walls of Red Fort to reach the flagstaff elderly protesters are telling hot-headed youth that it isn't right and this is what an elderly gentleman says this is our national flag, we don't even want to touch it our job is done, just come here so what is the overall, even those who have broken the planned route who have breached that plan and have gone to Red Fort and they believed that they just have to go make their presence felt and go back, nothing to be done there and this is where one youngster says we are here to make a blood offering and an elderly gent shouted go outside and shed blood offer your blood outside and let out some chaste Punjabi expletives now again Mishra Gautam's what she sees appears to her that there was some kind of a report or a rumour of a Lathi charge whether that happened or not is she's not reported, no one knows there was people, some young people farmers ran out of Red Fort and they said that there's a police Lathi charge going on inside and when that happened, people started running in and then we know what happened we saw those pictures of that group of farmers going and hitting and attacking the police force and pushing them off the parapet wall where lot of policemen got injured Mishra Gautam writes about how she saw one injured policeman being carried away by other policemen and as she tried to take a video or a photograph with her phone camera one of the protesting farmers came to her and threatened in Haryanvi don't bring us bad name by showing only this police constable he probably means that there are other farmers who got injured so don't just show it now this is another important point she makes other protesters whisk him away and apologise to me now there's this even there as we know we've seen it on twitter, if you go to social media you'll see lot of videos of farmers trying to calm farmers unions trying to calm down the more agitated young people who were part of this violence and before that those who put up the flag up there as we know it which was earlier called wrongly called a Khalistani flag which is what is called the Nishant Sahib now repeatedly we've seen on social media and on news channels that this is a Khalistani flag and the Khalistanis have taken over and this was always a protest organised by these Khalistanis some of the well-known names that we know those who are pro these farm laws have also talked about time to really hit back and stamp this protest out some have talked about how our money, our tax money is goes to feed these pf farmers and they use it and they're destroying public property which has been paid for with our tax money now this is a godsend as I said this is a perfect event which has been created even if it is a fringe but did it, it has been created for television cameras to be played out over the next few days endlessly for you to watch and say these farmers are so violent and they did this and they can do anything and there is a fear of this unruly mob this great unwashed unruly mob there's a fear in the middle class mind there's a fear in the ruling classes that they can come and do anything what if there's an insurrection, they need to be stopped no one's telling you about the 90% of farmers who are peaceful and I'm saying 90% actually as I mean very generous here to the India's gaudi media because I think it's most likely going to be 5% of a violent and 95% who are absolutely peaceful 95% who felt that this violence was wrong because they were out there as well I'm not going to go into the issue of Deep Singh Siddhu the reason I'm not going to go into that is because you know just because he took photographs with Amit Shah and that and Narendra Modi and he campaigned for Sunny Deol does not necessarily mean that he's currently a supporter of the BJP and it definitely does not translate into any kind of fact that he is a plant or some kind of Trojan horse in the movement because there is a sentiment there is an extremist sentiment out there which takes place in any such protest organization any such large scale protest that takes place which sometimes does take the law into their hands and always the groups that are in power use that and I'll give you one example you remember the protests after the Nirbhaya rape in Delhi there was a policeman who got hit on the head and later he died of a heart attack and it was used by many people who were pro-UPA pro-Congress at that time as look at these protests they're out of hand, they've killed this cop in fact later as we know it turned out that the protesters were trying to save the policeman and took him to the hospital but as I'm saying that such events always are used by those in power to discredit a protest movement it is important for us to therefore see these shades of grey it is important for us to also understand that when we treat things as black and white and we also switch off we make people invisible when we make the underdog invisible then we're essentially pushing them to become extremists to take extremist paths and that is important that we must continue to engage and you might have at some point had a sympathy a bit of sympathy with the farmers movement cut them some slack don't give it up just because you saw those pictures on television