Congress leader Rahul Gandhi on Sunday compared the ongoing farmers' protests with the Champaran agitation staged during the British rule and said every farmer-labourer part of the current movement is a “satyagrahi”.
"The country is going to face a Champaran-like tragedy. British were 'company Bahadur' back then and now Modi-friends are 'company Bahadur'," Gandhi alleged in a tweet in Hindi.
"But, every farmer-labourer of the movement is a 'satyagrahi' who will take back their rights," the former Congress chief added.
The Champaran Satyagraha of 1917 was led by Mahatma Gandhi and is considered a historic event in India's independence movement.
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The Champaran movement was a farmer's uprising that took place in Champaran district of Bihar during the British colonial period when the farmers protested growing indigo.
The Congress has been seeking the repeal of the three new farm laws, alleging that they will ruin the agriculture sector and the lives of farmers. The Congress is also supporting the farmers' agitation against the legislations.
After the sixth round of formal negotiations on Wednesday, the government and farm unions reached some common ground on issues regarding power tariff and penalties for stubble burning, but the two sides remained in a stalemate over the main contentious issues of the repeal of three farm laws and a legal guarantee for minimum support price (MSP).
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Braving the cold, thousands of farmers, mainly from Punjab and Haryana, are protesting at various borders of the national capital for more than a month against these laws.
The government has presented these laws as major agriculture sector reforms aimed at helping farmers and increasing their income, but the protesting unions fear that the new legislations will leave them at the mercy of big corporates by weakening the MSP and mandi systems.
