Samajwadi Party (SP) President Akhilesh Yadav that said if a film like ‘The Kashmir Files’ could be made, then there should also be one on the October 2021 Lakhimpur Kheri violence.

Akhilesh’s comment came in response to a question by reporters on the sidelines of a function in Sitapur on Wednesday evening. “Your Sitapur is a neighbouring district of Lakhimpur Kheri. If a movie has come up on Kashmir, then a film can be made on the Lakhimpur Kheri incident also,” he said.

This was his first visit outside Lucknow since the recently-held Uttar Pradesh Assembly polls in which the BJP-led NDA alliance swept back to power with 273 seats. Akhilesh’s SP-led alliance came a distant second with 125 seats. He, however, claimed his party had achieved a ‘moral victory’ in the polls.

Truth of the Lakhimpur Kheri incident

On October 3, 2021, protesting ‘farmers’ had blocked helipad and roads to disrupt arrival of UP’s deputy CM KP Maurya, for inaugurating some govt scheme and prize distribution of an annual wrestling competition organized by Union Minister of State for Home Ajay Mishra Teni at his home village.

The anarchic ‘farmers protest’ at Delhi’s borders had dragged on for almost an year by that time. The protests against the much-needed farms laws, which almost all experts and stake-holders had been demanding for the last decade or more, were organized by a coalition of rich farmer lobbies and middle-men (arhtiyas) in Punjab. In no time, they were infiltrated by pro-Khalistan supremacists and leftists, and unscrupulous opportunists and political rejects like Rakesh Tikait dragged in some farmers from Haryana and West UP too.

The protests witnessed shocking violence at various times, none worse than what the nation watched in horror unfold in Delhi and Red Fort on January 26, 2021. Support from the intellectual class, media, and Opposition leaders emboldened these anarchists no end, and the judiciary’s meek entreaties to suspend the protests were brushed aside with contempt. 

Lakhimpur Kheri falls in the Terai belt of UP and Uttarakhand. It has high proportion of Sikhs who were settled here post partition by the local Hindu royals. During the peak of the Khalistani terror, the Terai belt was used as a base and hide-out by terrorists.

Religious radicalization of the Sikh population in Terai over the ‘farmers protest’ was as high as that seen in Punjab, with a Sikh cleric heard praising Taliban on August 30, 2021 while preaching at a Gurudwara located in the Terai region. There were also local reports of unrest among section of Sikh farmers after minister Ajay Mishra had spoken of taking action against illegal encroachment by farm houses in the area. So the situation was explosive, and the ‘farmers’ were itching for a fight and any excuse to unseat Ajay Mishra by the time of his annual event on October 3.

Scores of farmers with black flags, some wearing T-shirts with terrorist Bhindranwale’s photo, lined the roads after blocking the Tikunia helipad in Lakhimpur with tractors. With the deputy CM’s arrival by chopper thus blocked, a convoy of cars with BJP supporters left to receive him. This convoy had to pass through a hostile crowd that was waving flags and some even pelted stones and hit the vehicles with sticks. The driver of one SUV allegedly lost control and rammed into 4 farmers and a local journalist who died. What happened next is the most chilling, yet least discussed, aspect of the incident.

An angry mob descended on the vehicles which had ground to a halt. They started assaulting whoever they could lay their hands on and dragged out 3 occupants of the lead car – 2 BJP workers and the driver. All three were brutally lynched, vehicles torched and videos of the incident soon went viral. But the entire secular-liberal ecosystem declared the protestors as ‘innocent’ victims who were ‘mowed down’ by Ajay Mishra’s SUV. The minister’s son Ashish Mishra was declared the villain of the piece, and entire attention of media and judiciary has been focused entirely on him ever since, with negligible interest in those who lynched the BJP workers and driver on camera.

13 people, including Ashish Mishra, were arrested for the death of the 4 farmers by the SIT probing the issue. SIT called it a ‘deliberate act’ and this has been widely reported in mainstream media as ‘proof’ of Mishra’s guilt. The coverage of the 7 ‘farmers’ arrested for the brutal lynching of the 3 BJP workers/driver was comparatively muted.

When Mishra received bail from UP High Court, all hell broke loose among the liberal cabal, and the SC was immediately approached by Lutyens’ lawyers like Dushyant Dave on behalf of farmers’ families. The liberal lobby exercises outsize influence on higher judiciary and it was no surprise when SC toed their line and barked at the UP state govt counsel to file a detailed affidavit, setting the next date of hearing as March 24. One rarely sees such responsive from higher judiciary when lower courts grant bail for Delhi riots accused or IS terrorist ‘returnees’!

Due to reported threats of ‘worsening security situation’ in Punjab, the central govt. caved in and the three farm laws were subsequently withdrew ahead of the 2022 Assembly polls. The entire propaganda of the protestors from UP, that they represented ‘genuine anger’ among farmers against the BJP, came crashing down as farmers in West UP voted overwhelmingly for the BJP.

Conclusion

So here we have a senior politician, a potential CM of the largest state in Bharat, comparing a single incident of violence where 2 opposing sides each suffered and the state acted with alacrity, to the horrific genocide/ethno-religious cleansing of an entire community, 5 lakh Kashmiri Hindus, from their millennia-old ancestral home.

This is the level to which the secular political discourse has sunk.

It is no surprise that the same Akhilesh Yadav has exposed his ideological bankruptcy in the past, when he said “Pakistan is not the real enemy, its just a political enemy”, and praised Jinnah for “helping get freedom”. 

The travesty is that politicians like Akhilesh Yadav, who have zero sense of civilization or nationhood, manage to garner 32% of total votes cast, including almost 90% of the Yadav vote. What a tragedy that a proud people who have sacrificed so much for this civilization and nation are today fooled by vested interests into supporting an unscrupulous, opportunist dynast.