DNA EXCLUSIVE: In run-up to 2019, BJP to celebrate peasant leaders

With an eye on the 2019 general elections and under fire from Opposition over farmers' plight, BJP is planning to hold nationwide 'Kisan Parliaments' to establish a direct line of communication, or 'kisan samvad', with agriculturists.

What's more, the party is going beyond caste and party lines to appropriate the legacy of India's tallest peasant leaders.

The saffron outfit's Kisan Morcha or farmers' wing will spearhead the campaign in which the party will identify fabled peasant leaders on whose birth anniversary the parliaments will take place. The venue will be the birthplaces of these leaders.

The decision in this respect was taken at a recent meeting called Kisan Samvad Baithak under morcha chief Virendra Singh, and also attended by BJP general secretary Muralidhar Rao, said Kisan Morcha spokesperson Rakesh Singh.

"We are not just trying to strike a direct conversation with the farmers of the country, but at the same time want to celebrate the great tradition of farming and agriculture as reflected in the teachings of these great peasant leaders. We have identified such icons cutting across party lines and across caste lines," Singh said.

The =campaign will be launched on December 23, the birth anniversary of former Prime Minister Chaudhary Charan Singh who, ironically, was staunchly an anti-RSS and anti-Jana Sangh politician. The first Kisan parliament will be organised at Singh's birthplace in Noorpur in Uttar Pradesh.

While the party had celebrated Singh's birth anniversary last year too as a way to garner Jat support in western UP before state polls, this time around the event has been transformed into a pan-India campaign to cover other significant figures too.

Other peasant leaders identified for the campaign include freedom fighter Swami Sahajanand, who was born in Ghazipur in UP, and Jhinguri Singh and Baba Ram Chandra from Awadh.

While Baba Ram Chandra was instrumental in rallying peasants against the Raj and landholding talukdars in general, Singh had organised the first'Kisan Sabha' in his village Rure in Gorakhpur in UP in the early 1920s.

Baba Ram Chandra was originally from Maharashtra but started organising peasants in Pratapgarh in UP after he became a sadhu in Ayodhya. His celebration and the consequent farmers meet will be held in Pratapgarh.