Vaissnavi Shukl
Across several months in 2020 and 2021, India witnessed one of its largest protests ever. Three farm laws passed by the Parliament of India received major pushback from farmers around the country. With many of them mobilising in Punjab, and heading to the capital, New Delhi. The farmers were denied entry into the city and were stopped at Singhu, a village at the Haryana and Delhi border. The protest site at this border village turned into a mini city of sorts with a Sikh farmers operating a community kitchen serving meals to 1000s of people every day, including the policemen watching over the very barricades that restricted their entry into Delhi. We have with us today, philosopher and social anthropologist Sarover Zaidi, to talk about the material cultures of this protest site, and how the simple act of serving food has the radical effect of uniting people over a cause.

I am Vaissnavi Shukl and this is Architecture Off-Centre, a podcast where we discuss contemporary discourses that shape the built environment, but do not necessarily occupy the centrestage in our daily lives. We speak to radical designers, thinkers and change makers who are deeply engaged in redefining the way we live and interact with the world around us.

This is my first in person video interview. How do you feel about being that guinea pig?

Sarover Zaidi
guinea pig? Like, thank you? I’m fine. I can deal with it.

Vaissnavi Shukl
Okay, so we are here to talk about your work on a couple of protests sites in and around Delhi. And these are all recent protests that we are looking at. So particularly, we’re talking about the protest that took place as a result of a couple of government laws and policies. And you’ve taken a couple of different perspectives to look at the protests. So not just the act of protesting, but also the makeshift food systems that happened during the protest, how a city almost emerged at the borders of Delhi. And then you’ve written about the materialities of those protests. Right? So… so let’s go one by one, we’ll… we’ll go chronologically, for… for whoever’s not from here and whoever doesn’t know why the farmers protest happened, because this season focuses on food production and, and ways. What was the Farmers’ Protest about?

Sarover Zaidi
Okay, before I answer the specific question, I want to talk a little bit about how I land up on the idea of looking at protest sites. So I’m a social anthropologist who’s worked on religion in the city, who’s worked on carcerality in the city. So how cities become prisons, how cities become spaces of surveillance and control and also spaces of resistance. For me, the work that I did, I don’t know if I can even just say its work, the work that I did on going to two protest sites. One was Shaheenbaug, which happened before the Farmers’ Protest and then the Farmers’ Protest was part of my wanting to understand how people resist spaces which are highly controlled, or where the state plays a certain role of clamping down whether it is through policies, whether it is spatial barricading, whether it is laws, and how do people kind of occupy or kind of take on space in the world. On the  Farmers’ Protest, the farmers are protesting the way the system of procurement would have changed, and who would have procured and at what price. There is, of course, a domination of farmers from the North, who were part of the protests from Punjab. And in a sense, I mean the protest was successful because the laws were taken back by the government procurement rates, etc. Would have been really damaging to the farmers because the government procures a lot of the farmers produce, and it would have harmed the farmers in the long run. I am not an expert on farmer laws, like I have a friend Aniket Daaga, who works on this, who will be able to give you a better sense of what are the pros and cons of the… all sides of the story on what were the cons of the government? What are the cons for the farmers, specifically in the laws that were going to be introduced? My interest at primary level was at the fact that there is such a huge protest that has arisen on the highway of Delhi. And I went into it much more as someone who is interested in how pre people generate spaces of resistance. And for me when I went to Singhu because it was into two different parts of Delhi that this protest started. I’ve I, the protest, in a sense unfold for me as a very large Langar. Also, this is the same highway that I used to travel to my workplace of work, which is in Sonipat. So I have never really noticed the highway. You know, it’s always a place that you speed over. And one of the things that I find, like, how like, I was just going there, because I was like, it’s amazing, the number of barricading that the government had done different kinds of instruments, like the water gun had been used on the farmer, many things happened from on the side of the state trenches had been dug. So they’re not allowed to move forward, many, many different things happened across the year. So I needed to understand how is it and it was also I went, it was a protest, which primarily started in November. So the winter… Delhi winters was very strong and the highway was cooler. And so how is it that people were able to bring together a protest? And what were the forms of logic that one can understand?

Vaissnavi Shukl
I want to reference this article that you’ve written, it’s called the ‘Gift of Food’. And in this essay, it’s a very nice, almost anthropological take, because you do write a lot about cities and architecture. And you speak about the Langar which is almost a tenet of Sikhism to it is…

Sarover Zaidi
One of the central tenets of Sikhism, and what I, what I wanted to do, at a very basic level was to understand that, you know, if you think of protests across the world, people will think of the 69 Movement, people will think of Occupy Movement, Black Rights Movement, etc. So they have had very different forms. Somewhere what I wanted to… what I landed up, seeing and experiencing as I was walking through the protest at the Farmers’ Protest was that it was a protest that was primarily reminding you about food and food production and consumption, because they are farmers, you know, so you’re not eating food. Sometimes people can just go and protest, and what they are connected to what they’re protesting about vanishes from the site. And also somewhere the fact that because there is a domination of the Sikh community, in the protest site, and they were able to unite different kinds of groups. They’re from, you know, they could be non Sikhs, they could be people who are from different castes. They could be leftist people who were there as part of the protest. But the protest at the primary level became about cooking together, feeding and running the Langer which is the community kitchen, which are run as part of…

Vaissnavi Shukl
Side by side the product. So they were cooking, serving and eating was built into the act of protesting, because it was a Farmers’ Protest did not really have to call for a separate action of protest because of the very act of sourcing food or food that was being donated by different farmers.

Sarover Zaidi
So there was a very clear system, they were different villages that used to send raw materials, mornings, they were different people who had actually stocked up materials there itself like sugar etc. and grain, who were you know, there was a very clear system that had been made to run the community.

Vaissnavi Shukl
How do you think these systems come up?

Sarover Zaidi
I think the…I think it was a very organised protest at one level because it was very unifying. So, anybody could come and be part of the protest, you could you will be fed. The other thing is that because there was a domination of the Sikh community from Punjab, who is used to running community kitchens, like every Gurudwara will have what is called a hunger so this system of organisation already exists skilled food, cooking and feeding is something that is part of their religious practice. And that translates in a very, kind of easy, systematic way into the site. So nearly 1015 kilometres, you’re walking and they have made, they pulled out the central barricade and they have put tavas on the footpath there is the rotis being made everybody’s cooking, chopping or, you know, distributing food, you know, so, in fact, when you’re walking in the single protest, so there are different things going on simultaneously. They… they will there is a stage there are people speaking on stage there are some people sitting who are listening to this there are some people taking out small jatras.

Vaissnavi Shukl
This is a protest that spans a couple of months right? Yeah nine months. Yeah. One day thing you when you return,

Sarover Zaidi
It’s… it’s actually every city, it’s a little word that has been generated. And the other thing that is fascinating is that there was, I mean, I looked at the material culture of the protest, which was very, very important and also because I teach in the School of Art and Architecture, our interest in materials and making. So, the primary format of spaces of sleeping were the trolleys right, and they were converted into rooms and bedrooms and sleeping places. And some of them had you know, there was clocks tied in a way where it was nearly like a hanger and or veranda in front of it clothes drying and there was in a sense as living quarters and then these trolleys are also converting into being part of something that is going on in the kitchen. So you know, supplies are coming in every day. So different villages have set up a system where different Gurudwaras different villages would send supplies. So one place will send carried somebody will send you know, and it’s fresh produce coming. So there’s also milk coming. And that system is endless, some trolleys are moving away, and the others are coming in. And I have not spoken to the Organising Committee, but I understood this from talking to people when I was there. And also tracing back some of the supply chains. What was… what was amazing was that you were on a highway, and there is this level of cooking going on community cooking. So all kinds of food is being cooked and this tea being made in the morning, there’s parotta, this makki ki roti there, there is also lunchtime, this dal being cooked, there is kheer, which is porridge. And there’s a lot of like, everybody’s kind of involved in the site of protest as cooking is protest and serving food is protest. So then all the kind of pre-existing rationalities, that a protest is supposed to look like something. Or, you know, it’s supposed to be that people gather in the morning and they go in the evening. But this is also a sitting. So this was also very, very important because

Vaissnavi Shukl
I want to focus on that because this is in other forms of protests. This is dharna which means a sitting you… you sit and you stay put till you know your objectives are achieved or whatever. But you think the act of cooking, serving and eating was so central to this protest? Because it was a farmers protest? Do you think it would have been different say it were a protest for a rape victim, for example, or for the Citizenship Amendment Act, for example, or do you think it caught exaggerated and it got highlighted because the protests itself was focused on food and farming?

Sarover Zaidi
No, I think it was a very interesting congruence of the fact that it was farmers. A large number of them being from Punjab being from Sikh community who had a sense of running community kitchens, the fact that they were coming and being blocked at his highway, so they had to kind of figure out a way of surviving living on the highway, rather than turning back because they also had a particular aim, they wanted to enter Delhi or etcetera, etcetera, at different points, they had different tactics, and to sit in and to remind people that we are farmers, that we will cook and serve you food, and that food is such an important part of, of this country. So, so somewhere, it was a kind of a synchronicity of many forces that comes together, that creates a certain uniqueness to the protest, which makes it distinct. And, like, you know, it’s also interesting that, you know, during CNRC protests in Shaheen Bagh, a lot of farmers came from Punjab, and ran some of the community kitchens. And it was very interesting, because then some women from Shaheen Bagh came here to help them. So though the Shaheen Bagh protest  was not a Langar based protest. It was a very different protest. It was a women’s space protest. But yeah, there is a sense of the presence of feeding, cooking, distributing and the continuity of food.

Vaissnavi Shukl
But… but in your essay and your study, something that I found very, very fascinating and very contentious and also filled with tension was the fact that in this protest, because it was people versus the state this this particular protest in the site happened at the border of the different states and Delhi. So, the government or the state had restricted these people from entering the city of Delhi, which is why they had to stay put outside. And you bring out this very interesting incident or a very interesting relationship between the police, which is there to enforce the control or to enforce the restriction and the protester and as you said, there were these farmers were there to show that, you know, the other ones are produced the food and they are there to serve. In your, in your se, you also mentioned that it is this way, same farmers who offered it to the policeman, policeman with…

Sarover Zaidi
A sense of hunger is a very inclusive act. Everybody used to be fed. And what was it like, if you one time when I was single it was really cold January morning, and the police, and the security and all the government different kinds of security, which I don’t even know what all was there. They needed… they were coming into the protest at the entry of the protest site. And like getting tea from them. They were even borrowing wood, wood fire because they had even organised the wood. And there was a kind of a, there was no animosity or anything between the protesters in the of course, it was a power relationship. It’s not I’m not denying that. But it kind of looked like you know, all the policemen are coming, it’s cold, they’re getting a cup of tea, taking it with them. And in a sense, serving the idea of Langar, which is supposed to be for everybody. So that is again, something that I felt was very distinct about this protest.

Vaissnavi Shukl
Before people had their own roles, they could come together and break bread together. Yeah, yeah. A normal human either will come the protester or the enforcer.

Sarover Zaidi
Totally. And yeah, and that’s also kind of a, you know, the philosophy in Sikhism is like that, the Langar is something that is not supposed to discriminate on the basis of anything, everybody. And very interestingly, it was very egalitarian, the protest, also the fact that there were so many different factions of farmers groups, whether the leftist groups, or the centrists, the religious groups, the different caste groups, etc. This protest was probably one of the places that I saw, I guess, nearly every group represented. And everybody at… Langar was open to everyone. So and…

Vaissnavi Shukl
You’ve also, I mean, we aren’t of course, the food culture and the food service of the party site, you’ve written extensively about the the material culture that there is well and about ephemerality of the space but also how this protest site over the time because it lasted for a couple of months became a city in its own so you, you’ve written about how they were makeshift libraries there, how they were, communal courtyard space, public spaces,

Sarover Zaidi
And also like, there was like washing machines installed in one part by calcite and there was what is, so one of the things that I found really interesting is that, you know, to us, it was a Farmers’ Protest. One side, it is the remainder of food by feeding everyone. The other side, they used one of their primary modes of transport, which is the trolley to milk living spaces, and the tractor in the trolley was all there. So, you have two tractors and somebody would have hung some piece of cloth and we put a bed inside or the trolleys were covered up and like six people can sleep inside the trolley. How something which was part of the this and yes, there were some people who did like crazy things like get a container and build aid etc, but a majority or 80% or 90% of the built space, the built environment of this place was based on farmer modes of transport, you know, where they store things, how they get things through the city to the mandi you know, those are the things that they use in adapted into living spaces. I mean, I mean to think that you know, that the cold winter and the, you know, the iron trolleys, and then to you know, this these days used to put in lots of rajais, blankets, and, and they were really warm spaces, there was a certain warmth through the protest, which was of course also related to being constantly fed and taken care of, or it had a sense of being a courtyard of being a longer of being you know, Your sense of familiarity and to imagine then suddenly that you’re actually standing in the middle of a highway with 10 kilometres of farmers trolleys back there. And tractors is like amazing because cloth and food and all of that was softening the tall protest side.

Vaissnavi Shukl
Now my question as an architect and somebody who is interested in just learning more about the organisation of these places, of course, Rahul Mehrotra writes a lot about the ephemeral city in relation to the Kumbh and what goes into the planning of the Kumbh and how, you know, once the event is done, everybody just backs up, I leave, I’m curious to know, if you had the chance to even map what the site was once the protest warmed up. So once the protest objective had been achieved, and people, you know, packed up the trolleys and left, what was that site like after that it didn’t just go back to being normal. Did you see a shift in places where the new economies that had popped up around the protest site?

Sarover Zaidi
Interestingly, called new economies popped up in while the site was on. So you had people all little shops, people, people setting up little shops across the site, all of which has vanished. And this is this again, as I said, this is the highway I take to work. And once the protest was over, what I saw was that there was no sense of it went back to the old Highway, except the government is now like constructing flyovers in that space.

Vaissnavi Shukl
But that would not have been consequential to the protest. It was just like something that was already planned.

Sarover Zaidi
I think there is a sense that this should not happen again. And I think the flyover idea in that area is somewhere that okay, if there is a protest, then it will just be under the flyover and not a word. And that kind of anxieties, I think governments always have, but this it didn’t affect local economies, because they were groups around. And it’s a… it’s a highway. So it’s not like there was a town around per se. There are these small shanties and small villages on the highway, which were… which had been very helpful to people seems, that’s what was written in a lot of newspaper reports. But it is kind of just completely vanishes. Like, no trace,

Vaissnavi Shukl
No trace, so people actually, like picked up their stuff and just wiped it clean.

Sarover Zaidi
There was a very strong system because there was a lot of food production happening. So there was trash produced, they will, they will, they were trying to organise a lot of ways of getting rid of trash, etc. But yeah, there was no sense of it was just all gone. And I think there was something being built in the system of this kind of a protest where they, you know, the farmers, they kind of knew they’ve come with this thing, some of them had come back with stuff, green and sugar for 10 months. And they said we’re not leaving till the, you know, farm laws have changed. But what was interesting is that there was a sense of a lot of old people, older farmers also there there was a sense that they did not want to, they were not there to take over anybody’s land or space. They just needed the point to be made. You know, so, like, scholars, historians from Punjab had said that, you know, in Delhi, the Sikhs have always had Punjab and have always had issues with the rulers of Delhi, not the people. So, you know, so he recounted about, like, the wars with the Mughal as with Aurganzeb, especially. And he said, you know, then we had issues with sata, which means the one who is in power in Delhi. So then, well, Indira Gandhi, they had issues. So they were like, you know, we’ve always had issues with the person who comes to power in Delhi, but we don’t have the not the people. So, and this is a kind of a very clear sense that you have to get certain things done. And yeah, it did not change anything. And I still go on that highway. And it’s there and there is nothing which is different. From pre prot…It looks like the pre protest highway.

Vaissnavi Shukl
So before I asked you the last question, I just want to read two lines from how you in one of your essays say, in regards to the product side and the material cultures of the product side, you said and I quote, “The scent is served as hot cooked meal as a tea. And as a humbling reminder of the work and life of the farmers.” You end by saying , “this new apparatus of protest based on fortitude and work settles for us new infrastructures of thinking and creating the revolution on code” and I thought This was very profound is just comparing how like dissent is compared to hot cooked meal. And how food really can bring together people even though they are united against the same cause, but also invite others who are not necessarily on the same side, I think is No, I did…

Sarover Zaidi
want to de-centre , the ideas of thinking about protests, right? And I try that in both. When I write about Shaheen Bagh, and your and it’s, it’s a difficult to sometimes see because you know, we have our prefix categories of what a protest looks like, when people are supposed to do so this. For me, the Farmers’ Protest  was a very interesting reminder of how something like food is, and is also a form of protest. So the cooking and serving of food.

Vaissnavi Shukl
So then the last question I got is one more. This is my favourite. This is like the best question. What’s next and what are you working on? It’s the easiest. It’s a question that requires no preparation.

Sarover Zaidi
Okay. So one of the things I’m trying to work on is a history of demolitions in India,

Vaissnavi Shukl
Like forced government demolitions or…

Sarover Zaidi
From Iota to nine centralists to Sterling towers in Noida. It’s kind of like everybody loves a good demolition kind of shot. But yeah, I also want to be like I have, because I don’t want to isolate the work that I’ve done on the protests from my work I have done on carcere-ality in cities. So I worked on the idea of barricades in the city. I work on many different things on Delhi – 84’ riots and how this is completely erased from public medical memory. So one part of my work that I want to do is look at the idea of carcere-ality and resistance, which is the work that is shown to protest. And the other work that I wanted to take forward is the relationship of demolitions. And also, like currently, in Allahabad, they demolished someone’s house because they were part of a different political affiliation. Then the ruling party, so all the things range of demolitions that are happening and who, what does demolition due to memory to politics to people when you lose your signifiers that comes in our semiotic favour.

Vaissnavi Shukl
Yeah. Well, this is awesome. So thank you for your service. Thank you for.. for being in Ahmedabad.

Sarover Zaidi
Thank you for inviting me and being your first video person.

Vaissnavi Shukl
Special thanks to Ayushi Thakur for the research and design support, and Kahaan Shah for the background score. For guests and topic suggestions, you can get in touch with us through instagram or our website through our website archoffcentre.com, both of which are ‘archoffcentre’. And thank you for listening.