Acquiescence and assertion: The Kisan Andolan and a changing socio-political landscape in Uttar Pradesh

The proposed chapter is set within the context of peasant movements in the agrarian north, which since the 1970s has been anchored in the notion kisan bhychara (peasant brotherhood). The chapter examines the shifting nature of peasant solidarities, associated with the Bhartiya Kisan Union (BKU) in western Uttar Pradesh (UP), in light of the majoritarian push that gained immense currency on the eve of the general elections of 2014. What was earlier an alliance of class/caste interests that responded to the localised character of farm distress was now tacitly in support of a regime that has been pushing a new developmental paradigm in land on behalf of big capital. The farmer agitation (2020–2021) that originally emerged from Punjab against the draconian farm laws would go on to expose the fissiparous tendencies within an atrophied agrarian class of farmers in the sugar cane belt of western UP. The chapter traces the epiphanous support of the BKU to the pan-Indian alliance of farmers camped in Delhi. This, as the chapter shows, influenced the volatile socio-political landscape in UP, especially since the BKU rearticulated brother hood (bhychara) as representing a message of reconciliation and redressal that argued against the notion of solidarity woven around majoritarian ideas.