Protesting the Present: Memory, Affect and Infrastructure in the Farmers’ Movement, India, 2020–2021

Abstract

What kind of protest cultures became visible in the farmers’ movement? What modes of resistance did the movement draw upon in the context of Punjab, the Northern part of India? Did the resistance present a response to the neoliberal ethos of the current political and economic environment? Tracing the rituals of resistance in Punjab through the songs, print and digital material, this paper shows that the movement was a response beyond the call to repeal the farm laws, claiming a higher moral ground based on the passion for farming and military service; and an expression and mobilisation of the past through the affective registers of despair, enthusiasm and betrayal. In doing so, the movement (2020–2021) generated enriched meanings and imaginaries of traffic that otherwise only comprised sites of speed and singular mobilities. Traffic became an intersection of history and memory embodied through performance mapping the ‘non-place’ infrastructures creating temporarily ‘settled places’.