The farmers agitation and India's Father Gapons

By Justice Markandey Katju

 A farmers' agitation is going on in parts of north India, demanding Minimum Support Price ( MSP ) for their produce.

I have sympathy for the agitating farmers, who should get adequate prices for their agricultural produce, but I don't see how this agitation can achieve this goal?

MSP will not be granted by the government due to this protest, and I fear that the agitation will only end in violence, as on Bloody Sunday in January 1905 in St Petersburg, Russia or in Vendemiarie in Paris, France in October 1795. A 'whiff of grapeshot', as fired by Napoleon's canons, will probably disperse these agitators

The leaders of the agitating farmers may well be Father Gapons, who was secretly a policeagent

Several so-called ''independent intellectuals'and 'independent' journalists seem to be agent provacateurs, who to show their 'free' thinking, and concern for the farmers, are only inciting the misguided innocent farmers to become sacrificial lambs

The Congress party, which is always seeking for some issue to berate the government, and fish in troubled waters, will of course not be left far behind

Let us see how things turn out. I myself am very sceptical about this agitation.

As Shakespeare said in Macbeth, ''It is a tale, told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.''

(Justice Katju is a retired judge of the Supreme Court of India. These are his personal views.)