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02-12-2020
By SJA Jafri + Bureau Report
NEW DELHI/ OTTAWA: Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s remarks on the continuing farmers’ protests in India have not gone down well with the Hindu nationalist government, which dubbed his comments as “unwarranted”.
“We have seen some ill-informed comments by Canadian leaders relating to farmers in India. Such comments are unwarranted, especially when pertaining to the internal affairs of a democratic country,” India’s Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) spokesperson Anurag Srivastava said on Tuesday.
“It is also best that diplomatic conversations are not misrepresented for political purposes.”
Speaking at an online event to mark the 551st birth anniversary of Guru Nanak, the founder of Sikhism, the 
Canadian leader said that the news coming out of India was “concerning” and his country would “always be there to defend the rights of peaceful protest”.
Thousands of farmers have been camping outside the Indian capital, New Delhi, for almost a week now, demanding the scrapping of controversial agriculture laws enacted by the governing Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).
The government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi defended the laws and accused the opposition parties of misleading the farmers, who have dubbed the bills “anti-farmer”. His government says the new laws will bring much-needed private investment to the crisis-hit agricultural sector.
Over the past several decades the share of agriculture in the country’s gross domestic product (GDP) has dwindled as the farm sector has been hit with high indebtedness, crop failure, drought and low prices for produce. The sector accounts for 15 percent of the economy but employs more than half of the country’s 1.3 billion people.
Farmers fear that the minimum support price (MSP) – the price at which the government buys farm produce – will be abolished gradually and they will be left at the mercy of private players.
A number of politicians from the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia and the United States have expressed their solidarity with Indian farmers over the past few days and criticized the Modi government’s handling of the biggest protests in years but Trudeau became the first head of a country to comment on the issue that has set the Modi government on the back foot.
On Tuesday, #Canada was trending on Twitter as Indians shared their views on social media in the wake of Trudeau’s comments.
“He is not responsible for law and order in our country. It’s something which the government of the day has to take care of and the government is taking care of everything and engaging the farmers,” BJP Spokesperson Syed Zafar Islam told media.
A spokesperson of the Shiv Sena party, which governs the western state of Maharashtra, said “India’s internal issue is not fodder for another nation’s politics”.
“Please respect the courtesies that we always extend to other nations,” Priyanka Chaturvedi said on Trudeau’s comments.
