It has been more than two weeks since farmers are protesting against the new farm laws. Several rounds of talks have happened between the farmer leaders and the central leadership but to no avail, as the farmers don’t want to settle for anything less than the repeal of three farm laws. Amid these protests several pictures have emerged from the protest site at Singhu border, one of them being of pizza being served to the protesting farmers and other one of foot massagers at the protesting site.

Many people appeared to have not taken these pictures positively and started trolling the protesting farmers. Farmers, in our country are stereotyped with a certain image. When a video of Punjabi actor Deep Sidhu surfaced on social media in which he was seen talking to a policeman in english, there were several nasty comments about it. Twitter was filled with comments like, “Is he really a farmer?”, “How can a farmer speak in english?”. While Deep Sidhu is not a farmer, but there are many farmers in Punjab who are well educated, graduates and can easily converse in english. The fact that we are so used to seeing farmers as some uneducated, skinny, old man, in maybe a lungi, with a gamchha around his neck, that any farmer being even a little bit different from the usual type, seems less genuine to us, is actually concerning. While most farmers in India can actually be the same as the one described above, but discrediting others because they don’t fit our criteria just shows our ignorance about the lifestyles of people from different parts of the country. Punjab’s culture, it’s demography, and geopolitics is very different from that of other parts of India.

Similar reactions emerged on social media with the pictures of ‘pizza’ at protest site. While the foot massagers are setup by an NGO, Khalsa Aid, the ‘pizza langar’ was organized by a group of friends from Amritsar. In a normal society the source of these massagers, pizza, langar, tents should not be a matter of debate at all. But people are enquiring about the ‘funding’ of these commodities so eagerly as if it’s not food but some deadly explosive or weapons of mass rioting. We saw exactly the same reactions last year too when biryani was being served at Shaheen Bagh for women protesting against CAA. It’s actually ironic how people find it completely normal for protestors to get lathicharged, shelled with tear gas and water canons, but protestors eating pizza immediately becomes the talk of the town. This also highlights the classist mindset of our society, “who is worthy of eating what?” Farmers, or for that matter, anyone can eat anything they want. A person’s occupation cannot decide what they are worthy of eating, wearing, or places they can go to. In a democracy, nobody can dictate what a protest site should look like, unless it is causing harm to fellow citizens or the law and order situation.

It connot be denied that there are constant efforts from the political leadership to dial down the cause of the protests, but such agitations also serve as a mirror in the face of the society. If a pizza makes us ask questions instead of the death of fifteen protesting farmers till date, then that says a lot about our dead instincts.