Page:Sharad Joshi - Leading Farmers to the Centre Stage.pdf/264

 After seeing the tremendous response to the agitation of onion growers and sugarcane growers, some opposition party leaders wanted to get involved in this struggle. For example, George Fernandes, renowned Socialist trade union leader and a leader of newly formed Lok Dal party, had travelled to Nashik and taken out a procession to the Collector’s Office to show his support to the agitating farmers. He was charged and presented in the court. But instead of providing bail which was granted, he preferred to go to jail. This was quite in keeping with his fighter image but somehow Joshi and others felt he was there only to increase his own power base and therefore preferred to keep distance from him. Most politicians also had intense dislike for Joshi. Suspicion was mutual. They were disturbed by the mass support he was getting and tried their level best to first ridicule him and later abuse him. They even used the fact of him being a Brahmin to woo away farmers from his hold. While analyzing the reasons for their hatred, Joshi had said, ‘The success of Shetkari Sanghatana is the failure of the lifelong work of politicians. They wasted several years in saying that farmers should be awakened but never managed to do that. But our farmers’ struggle was raised in barely ten months. All farmers, big and small, irrespective of their caste, religion or political leaning plunged into our struggle. And there precisely lies the failure of those political parties. This is the reason why they opposed us.’ In many of his meetings in the early days he used to say, ‘I will never come to you asking for your vote. If ever I did come, then hit me with your shoe.’ That sentence used to win over the farmers but it proved to be embarrassing in later years when he did join politics and solicited votes of the farmers. That time, politicians used to quote that sentence to disprove his credibility. However, it is worth mentioning that in the first convention of On Political Front

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