Ashwani Kumar Former Union Minister for Law & Justice THE nation has witnessed an unprecedented agitation by farmers over the past several weeks against what are widely perceived as unjust farm laws rushed through by the Central Government. The sight of farmers — peacefully voicing their conscientious opposition to these laws — being subjected to tear gas shells and water cannons has shamed the nation. The use of the State’s brute power against distraught farmers exercising their fundamental right of peaceful protest represents the ugly face of a dysfunctional democracy. It is a painful reminder of the Pagri Sambhal Jatta and the Champaran satyagraha movements led by Sardar Ajit Singh, the uncle of Shaheed Bhagat Singh, and Mahatma Gandhi, respectively, against the unjust agrarian laws imposed on a subject nation by the British colonialists. In reminding us that might without justice is tyrannical, these movements provided the foundational basis of free India’s republican charter. Tragically, it has fallen upon the heroic and venerated farming community of our country to remind the ruling dispensation of the lessons learnt under colonial rule.