Capturing The Gestalt Of The Farmers' Protest

൩Documentary filmmaker Varrun S was at a gathering in a residential society in Mumbai when the 2020 farmers’ agitation began making him restless. It happened after a neighbour said something to the tune of how all the protesting farmers needed to be shot dead. Another person said: “They’re old folks; if you just break a few bones, the protests will disperse overnight.” After he said this, they all started giggling, recounts Varrun.  

🔯Having previously worked on a film around farmer suicides in Maharashtra and being well-versed in their plight, the 36-year-old filmmaker admits that he couldn’t sleep that night. The next morning, a discussion with his wife resulted in the idea for a documentary about what’s going on at the protest sites around Delhi’s borders.  

“She told me how I couldn’t begrudge the people saying insensitive things because they were merely echoing what they’d heard in primetime news. She went on to say, ‘Why don’t you go and tell the people what is actually happening at the protests—it could educate them.’” At a time when the mainstream TV news held half-hour-long episodes speculating about whether these farmers were ‘real’, who was ‘funding the protests’ and why they were eating pizza—with a generous seasoning of conspiracy theories about how most protesters were ‘Khalistanis’ (separatists)—the responsibility fell on the shoulders of documentary filmmakers to correct the narrative. Three years later, it feels like a miracle that Varrun’s Too Much Democracy, Nishtha Jain’s Farming The Revolution and Gurvinder Singh’s Trolley Times🔯 all premiered within a span of six months.  

꧃All terrific films, they capture the beats of the 15-month-long agitation which ended in December 2021 when the prime minister announced that the three farm laws (passed in September 2020) were repealed. While the contents of the films are similar, the differing treatment makes them all compelling in their own way.  

🅷Varrun’s film has the peppiness of a satirical vlog, while Jain’s film is a relatively more formal documentary, showcasing visual flair to demarcate the extreme seasons at the protest site. Singh’s film has his introspective, sparse style, prioritising mood and observation over information. Singh’s film is named after the publication started by the farmers and supporters to combat the misinformation campaign against them.   

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Jain was following the movement since the farm laws had been introduced in Parliament 🍌in June 2020. But it was only after the farmers reached Singhu and Tikri borders in November 2020 did she request her collaborator, Akash Basumatari, to scout the scene on her behalf. “Akash reported having a very different experience with the people of BKU (Ekta Ugrahan),” says Jain and adds, “that’s when I decided to come down to Delhi.” Jain, who has previously filmed several peoples’ movements before, conceded that the scenes at Tikri border were unlike anything she’d ever seen. Jain and her crew would go on to film for 135 days.  

When Varrun set off from Maharashtra Bhavan to the Delhi border, he was warned by an attendant that the protest sites were filled with goons. His cabbie warned him that they might break his camera and split his head open. Ignoring them for regurgitating the venom spewed on WhatsApp forwards and some TV channels, he went around surveying the area for the first few days. “They (farmers) were a bit antsy about cameras because of their run-ins with some of the TV media, who were using false, provocative language in their stories,” remembers Varrun. But soon he began getting what he calls the son-in-law treatment at the protest site, where everyone was just intent on feeding him. “It felt like I’d entered a shaadi ka ghar. There were people lying on mattresses, food being served, some people were singing.” 

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🦂All three films touch upon the Sikh philosophy embraced by the protesters, making it almost a poetic clapback against a government that likes to divide on the basis of religion. Jain’s film begins with a speech by Joginder Singh Ugrahan, president of the BKU (Ekta Ugrahan), on Sikh martyrs’ day. She explains that choice as her way of drawing attention to how things had gone back to medieval times of religious forces undermining democracy. Jain doesn’t see religion playing a part in the protests, but attributes it to the stoicism advocated by Sikhism.  

Varrun bemoans how the word ‘religion’ is liberally used to describe dogmatism. He thinks religion certainly played a part in the movement tiding through a long period, considering the inherently Sikh concept of langar (an open kitchen). “Now langar could be seen through a religious or a social lens; the lines are a little blurred,” says Varrun. “I saw women over there, who would come in there and help with chopping vegetables, making rotis before heading to their full-time employment. They did it because they saw it as seva🎐—a noble deed. I met this lady studying to be a doctor, who would give free consultations at the site.” 

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๊We live in strange times, and there’s obviously the possibility that the documentaries might be labelled as pro-farmer propaganda. Did the filmmakers ever worry about that and did they take any measures to showcase the messier parts of the movement? “If there was a valid and legitimate point of view in favour of the farm laws, it would have somehow made it to the film. I didn't come across any,” notes Jain. Not being an accredited member of the press, Jain says that often she also finds it difficult to get ministers or bureaucrats to speak to her on camera. However, she mentions that the film does give ample room to the footage of mainstream TV channels whom she considers as a mouthpiece for the government.  

It’s something even Varrun has done in his film too, without caring about how it sounds. “I’ve never pretended from the time I put out the film that it is a pro-farmer film. I’m not coming into this to offer a balanced point of view. In fact, if the TV media had done its job of offering a balanced perspective on the protests, maybe I wouldn’t have to make the film,” he adds. Varrun’s goal with Too Much Democracy, he says, was to counter ugly generalisations repeated about the protesters till they became widely accepted ‘facts’. In the film, his cabbie tells him how people drink alcohol at night, and he cuts to a scene of elderly protesters doing their nightly ritual of a naam jap (meditation).  

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These films are crucial from an archival point-of-view, given that otherwise the historic agitation—that ended in December 2021 and resumed in February 2024—would be slandered as a mischief of anti-national elements. The government still controls the exhibition of these films through its censor board. Despite winning Best International Documentary at Hot Docs (Toronto) in 2024, Jain’s film is yet to find a platform in India. Similarly, after having its premiere in IFFR (Rotterdam), Singh’s film is yet to find mainstream distribution. Thanks to Kunal Kamra’s YouTube channel, Varrun’s is the only film to have found an audience. Releasing right before the 2024 General Elections, Too Much Democracy has almost 8 lakh views on YouTube.  

These films might have not garnered the viewership of primetime news channels, but they are still doing their bit as the proverbial drops in an ocean. Like Varrun notes about a screening in Maharashtra—which was supposed to be Too Much Democracy🌼’s last screening before he moved on to his next project—a young man raised his hand after watching the film. “He said that he was a professional troll on social media for the BJP. He’d accidentally wandered into the screening and told me I shouldn’t stop doing them. The film had taught him that there were always multiple perspectives to any subject, and that it could educate others.” Varrun got messages from across the border too, who told him that the film had renewed their hopes in democracy as a process. 

ꦬWith the resumed protests going on for almost a year now, the euphoria of 2021 seems to have noticeably died down. Three years later, the movement has been paralysed. “There are faces in my film who were advocating farmers’ rights, who have now joined the ruling party,” observes Varrun.  

﷽As things look bleak from here on, we should probably remember the words of Ravish Kumar as a way to honour these films daring to record something for public memory: “Not all battles are fought for victory. Some are fought simply to tell the world that someone was there on the battlefield.”