India - Chukki Nanjundaswamy

Interview Details

• PGA Affiliation: Karnataka Rajya Raitha Sangha (KRRS)

• Region: Asia - India

• Language: English

• Interviewee: Lesley Wood

• Interviewer: Terry Dunne and Mags Liddy

• Date: 2017

• Bio: Chukki Nanjundaswamy has been actively participating in (Karnataka State Farmers Movement, or KRRS) for over 20 years. Her father who had founded the organization died when she was 23, and she decided to carry on the struggle which her father left behind. Since then, she has been actively involved in the farmers’ movement at the local level as well as at the national and international levels. She is now a member of the Presidential Council of the Karnataka State Farmers Movement and National Convener of the All India Coordination Committee of Farmers Movements and has worked as a member of the International Coordination Committee of La Via Campesina from 2004-2008. She is also heading the International Center for Sustainable Development called Amrita Bhoomi which means the Eternal Earth which also hosts the South Asian Agro-ecology School of La Via Campesina.

Transcript

ML: All good to go

TD: [00:00:04] Hi Chukki thanks for doing this interview. We’ll start off by asking you to explain what your role in PGA was.

Chukki: [00:00:24] Well I was 16 years old when PGA began. So I was always, I was indirectly involved in PGA but I was very much close to the process. And my father was the one who was directly involved in the process from KRRS, the KRRS was the convener for India, for South Asia, if I remember right, from the beginning. Yeah. So I did help in the logistics, in the communication, in the organization of the Intercontinental Caravan.

ML: Were you a participant in the caravan?

Chukki: I did participate as well.

ML: So that was in the summer of ‘99?

Chukki: ‘99 Yeah yeah

TD: if I have it correct- KRRS was one of the main organizations that was behind the idea of setting up Peoples’ Global Action yeah? What was the idea behind it? What did people from KRRS want?

Chukki: Well KRRS was born in 1980, and till 2000 we went on fighting against the anti-farmer policies and anti-rural policies within India, with the state government as well as the central government. So from… let say from 1989-90 those were the years India started discussing the new economic policies, which was a neo-liberal policy. And you know the Uruguay Round was under negotiation and GATT was becoming WTO and this was the time. So KRRS together with other organizations who are working on alternatives and on sustainable agriculture and things like that, had organized an international conference on sustainable agriculture in 1993 itself. So in the early 90s itself KRRS had understood that this struggle is not going to be any more a local struggle and it has to get global. So that’s when KRRS started targeting also the multinational corporations which were slowly entering the agricultural sector in India. So the first direct action that we did was against an American seed company called Cargill. They had their office for whole India in Bangalore, in the capital of Karnataka. We ransacked that office in 1991, if I remember right and later on their laboratory in the central Karnataka.

In 1995, the 30th of January, on the martyr day of Mahatma Gandhi, the day he was shot dead, KRRS observed that day by ransacking Kentucky Fried Chicken. The first outlet which was opened in India, which was again in Bangalore. Bangalore was becoming like an entry point for all these multinational corporations so we wanted to give them a strong message that you cannot enter India.

In this way we know we started working with the other social movements inside the country as well as opening its interest to work with other movements all over the world. So I guess in the 90s, there was a wave of this kind of coalitions and alliances happening in different parts of the world as well. I remember my father travelling in Europe, in Japan, in China and other Southeast Asian countries, from 1994 itself.

ML: And he was meeting groups or organizations or communities who were very … the same kind of focus, anti-GM, anti-industrialization of agriculture. And the use of chemicals and these kinds of groups that were working on these kind of issues.

Chukki: Yes. After the direct action that we did against Cargill, and Kentucky Fried Chicken KRRS got globally known, like the Guardian of the U.K. wrote about the direct actions and the BBC spoke about it and other international journals and media started talking about it. So there was sort of like an immediate connection with the like-minded organizations and movements in different parts of the world.

TD: What do you think the Peoples’ Global Action did well? What was its success?

Chukki: See, bringing not just one sector, cross sectorial movement, but all types of movements together, on one agenda. I think it was the first effort of its kind. So there were two major kinds of alliance as happened at that time. One was PGA and there was Via Campesina and KRRS was a founder member in both these alliances.

So PGA - the difference we saw between PGA and Via Campesina at that time was that PGA was more energetic and radical in its positions… and very diverse and widespread. Via Campesina was more moderate, just farmers or the peasants who work with the land, indigenous people and so on. And also when it came to the slogans of PGA and Via Campesina, I still remember Via Campesina said WTO out of agriculture or rather agriculture out of WTO and PGA said kill WTO otherwise it kills you.

[00:08:49] And in PGA there was the presence of lot of young people, especially in Europe. People who were involved in Europe were mostly young people. So that was also quite an attractive thing for the Indian movements because Indian movements - we don’t have so many young people. So there is an effort that we are continuously trying to give a space for young people and to attract young people to come and take over the movement and so on. But here [in Europe] it’s very naturally happening. Young people are independent and they can take their own decisions and they are free to decide their life. Perhaps culturally that also gives them an opportunity to get active and in politics. I think this was one of the positive things about PGA

ML: and when you say it brought together different sectors. So it were… it wasn’t just agriculture and land-based movements. It was an I should say yeah- when did KRRS and those involved in the movement, move beyond land and agriculture to bigger broader globalization, international finance, these kind of … other issues. Was there a gradual kind of process or it was?

Chukki: I think having a larger perspective, wider perspective about what is a movement and not just confining the farmers into just a union type of politics, was there very consciously in the character of the founders of KRRS, because the founders of KRRS was the socialists who organized all types of struggles before starting KRRS, but in 1980 there was a great need of bringing the farmers together.

[11:33] It was a great need of organizing the farmers, so till 1980 in India farmers were not an organized sector. So to politicise the concept, to politicise their rights and their issues. So that is why these socialists, including my father, decided to take farmers issues on priority and organize them. But it doesn’t mean that they got confined to just farmers’ issues, you know KRRS addresses issues of caste, for example, in India and promoted inter-caste and inter-religious marriages as a solution to the abolition of caste. And it addressed issues of women, it addressed the issues of Dalits, the landless people and so on. So in this way I think KRRS had this wider perspective and that was I think the main reason for going out of its frame and joining hands with the other sectors.

TD: you spoke of what was the great positive of PGA - was there any negative, negatives or any weaknesses that come to mind?

Chukki: Oh well yes I did feel some negative aspects. As I was slowly growing up with PGA, for example, you know, I was not a grown up with a lot of experience to assess what was the positive and negative. But as a person who had the opportunity of growing up with PGA and with the movement in general, as a young person I remember discussing with my father that, how long will this network survive? Because there was also another model on the other side which was Via Campesina, which we could compare, from time to time.

One of the things was there was no focus on organizational structure. There was sort of a loose, it was a loose network with some convenors and so on but nothing was binding them, physically. Of course the ideology was something which was bringing these movements together and that the enemy was WTO. The complete name was Peoples’ Global Action against Free Trade and WTO, right? Against free trade and WTO, so it was a very focused movement and it was also an issue-based, like wherever the international summits were happening related to free trade or World Economic Forum or this kind of thing. So the people gathered, marched and protested.

At the same time, I felt that it did not really have a long-term perspective. I think for any movement we should be able to address issues of also the next century and that was PGA for me was a very momentary thing. So I knew I couldn’t really understand what was that long perspective? what as a network wanted to do in another 20 years, in another 30 years. How do you want to address the issues which will come in another 20 years? I think this was lacking

ML: a vision of a kind?

Chukki: There was a very general very holistic vision. But at the same time in terms of concrete work it was lacking, perhaps it was it was also sort of part of the experience and you learn from this experience, you know maybe it was a first effort, the first time something like this was happening in the world. The people who were involved were mostly grassroot movements so they also had to learn how to actually build a network like this at a global level.

So this gave us an experience and from this experience today maybe, we will not do the same mistakes that we did in the past.

TD: So you would say maybe there was a lack of organizational structure and a lack of kinda long-term vision of where you’re going to be in 20 years’ time, 30 years’ time, 40 years’ time…

Chukki: yeah that’s what I felt that it was lacking.

TD: And Via Campesina has that? How is Via Campesina organized?

Chukki: Via Campesina is also trying to articulate things in the right moment, when it is needed. But Via Campesina is good, it is strong when it comes to its organization. So things are very well organized. And I mean we do have lots of criticisms of Via Campesina - I’m not saying that it’s an extraordinary model that we have to look up to. So, for example, Via Campesina, many people feel that it is all dominated by the technical support, that the leaders are not really active and so on.

But at the same time the PGA also could survive for so many years because of the technical support team that it had, the support group or whatever it was called.

Because it’s just impossible for the leaders of movements who are committed both locally and at other levels, national and international levels, to be equally committed in all the levels. So you need sort of technical support. I mean there was also addressing some issues like Southern movements, most of the leaders, grassroot leaders of the Southern movements, did not speak English so that was one of the reasons why they couldn’t get active on the international level, though they had a perfect understanding of politics and so on.

And there was efforts of bringing, training the leaders in English, for example there is a leader called C.K. Janu, she is a leader of an indigenous peoples’ movement in Kerala, in South India. We tried to organize her to bring her to U.K., to put her in squat and get her some English lessons and so on. Now that didn’t really happen because she had issues with the passport and so on because that’s also another reason for people, for the leaders of the movement, because they are so radical and they have lots of charges against them. They just can’t get passports to go to go abroad and so on.

ML: Yeah yeah. Which makes the international meetings difficult to do, to get out of the trouble of language and PGA was quite English-language dominated?

Chukki: I felt it was mostly Spanish dominated, O.K. if I’m not wrong yeah, and I know it’s the same thing also in Via Campesina. Yeah because Latin Americans are blessed with one language and that is both their mother tongue as well as their international language. So that’s why they are so internationalized and so on, for Asians, and maybe also for Africans, it is a very big issue because our languages are so regional-based as well as learning English itself is a very big challenge.

TD: [00:20:40] So the International Caravan there was one Indian experience of it anyways which was that the greater involvement of youth in movements in Europe was very attractive, what other Indian experiences or opinions were there, what did people think of this project?

Chukki: The Intercontinental Caravan was an amazing experience. When the project began, it was like is it going to happen? I mean we were all wondering, this is something like a dream project. Yeah. When they started speaking about it, they had no name in the beginning and they called it Intercontinental Caravan 1999 or something like that.

ML: And you say they- who were they? KRRS?

Chukki: KRRS yes, and my father was mainly involved in this process and Sergio, Olivier, and Kolya - and then there was another lady called Frederica from Germany. I think these were the people and Bea from Spain. I remember my father coming back from Europe. He was part of a speakers’ tour here in 1996, or in 1997 there was a speakers’ tours in the universities and meeting different organisations and so on. So he came back and there was this project. First it was called TCP. So we used to receive lots of emails, there was an e-mail group called TCP 1999, means Totally Crazy Project [laughter], that was the name.

Yeah I guess Kolya was the one who named it. Yeah. And so yeah the first idea was to hire a ship and put a flag of the movement and come to Venice, yes, to sail and so. And then we checked and it was costing really high so and more mainly the people who travel were farmers who couldn’t really afford so much now and then we had to fly. Yeah.

ML: So how many and many traveled from India approximately

Chukki: 400 I think.

ML: and spent one month or longer.

Chukki: I think one month. It was really impressive. Yes. Yeah. To see like so many people as you know hosts, organizing, waiting for the Indians to come. And they were really looking up to the activists from India and they very curious to talk to them. Yeah. And we were all hosted in so many different countries in so many different ways, in some places. We were hosted in squats, some places in activist houses and farms and so on, it was a very different experience.

ML: And there was a good a good reaction from the communities in Europe.

Chukki: Yes. We felt very welcomed, and also the kind of solidarity that they were expressing with movements, our struggles. In fact, in France there was a direct action, happened with the Confederation Paysanne, the movement of Jose Bove. The farmers from Karnataka as well as the farmers from France and some other activists as well went and ransacked GM rice or something like that.

TD: What impact do you think the PGA had locally on Karnataka? like how did being part of this international network affect the movement locally?

Chukki: Well as I said before we were very impressed by the participation of the young people here [in Europe]. So that became very clear that we have to carry over the movement to the young people, the present generation. And also because we met many marvelous movements like the Zapatistas and the movement of Sem Terra because of PGA network. So in 2000 there was an effort to start a separate platform for the young people in KRRS called the Green Brigade, and that was inspired by the brigade concept, the army concept, of the Zapatistas. But as we are a nonviolent organization, we are a Gandhian organisation, we said we would not keep arms. But there was also a sort of a thinking aloud that we can maybe we can keep something not guns or these kind of things but we don’t have to use them. So that was inspired by both the youth in Europe and the Zapatista there. And yeah and the horizontal structure because other movements in India they’re all based on purely personalities. So we understood that there was a great need of bringing the horizontal structure, we had to bring the collective leadership inside and so on. But still it’s not, it hasn’t happened, because people don’t seem to agree with it, because there is a cultural taboo to it, because y’know people are - culturally people are looking to - the freedom movement was because of Gandhi or y’know there was these kind of examples.

ML: of key leaders?

Chukki: Key leaders, they strongly believe that key leaders are very essential because of their character, because of their commitment, because of their charisma, these sort of things. So the grassroots did not really accept it, but there was this proposal inspired by PGA.

TD: So just to generalize - yeah? maybe it’s wrong to generalize, because in the Indian context there which is quite different say from a Latin American context. But what were the challenges in bringing these kind of, in bringing an international network together? from the global south and the global north, and from India and Latin America, involving people with different organizational cultures. What were the challenges and were they able to be overcome?

Chukki: I don’t know - to start with the tools you require to work at the international level - which are the language, the ability to travel outside your country, and also the capacity of keeping the local struggle as well as the international struggle at a time. And trying to synchronize them. Most of the times what happens, because I have been involved in international work since now 12 years, and what happens is that sometimes the international agenda starts dominating the local agendas and we seem to lose our local struggles. So local struggles are very important.

And what I also think it’s very important is whoever is actively involved at the international level it should be a very important criteria for him or her to be involved in the local struggle. Otherwise most of the times what happens the people who get involved at the international level are mostly individuals who are not really rooted in their local struggles, or even in their countries, they don’t really know what’s happening in their own countries. And so on. They just end up saying their international people - you can be international when you are really rooted in your region and your country, you can’t just fall from the sky. So that is the one danger to an international movement.

And so I think one that’s one thing when I feel that people, the facilitators, the key people who are who are very important at the international level should be part of at least one local struggle.

And well PGA have tried to encourage that. And I don’t know how practically it was possible because if the process doesn’t start from the bottom up then it doesn’t seem to carry on.

ML: yes I see what you mean.

TD: At the Cochabamba meeting in 2001, from my understanding there was a sort of a criticism coming from the organizations in the global South of a focus on summit protests, and there was a move to having sustained campaigns. Do you know what happened with that?

Chukki: No. After the Intercontinental Caravan, we got busy with our own local struggles. So we didn’t really follow what happened in Cochabamba and so on. We are from 1Prague. In Cochabamba we were absent. Okay.

ML: But you continued, KRRS continued as their convener?

Chukki: [00:33:38] Yeah but we couldn’t really play an active role.

TD: Well as I understand it there was a kind of a regionalization process then where there was a strong PGA, continued to be a strong PGA presence in Asia.

Chukki: There were some efforts. There was a PGA Asia conference in Bangladesh in 2004. Again, frankly speaking it was initiated and led by the support group. The people the movements which were committed locally in Bangladesh were from other parts of the country and they couldn’t really continue the commitment, so after the PGA conference in Bangladesh nothing happened, nothing actually happened. The support group had been insisting, they’ve been writing to us that we should organise a caravan, you know, within Asia on the issue of climate change or something like that. But the local organisations doesn’t seem to have either the time or the capacity to take this agenda on board

ML: That would be a big undertaking. A big undertaking a caravan.

Chukki: yeah yeah yeah.

ML: that was an idea being kind of brought from outside shall we say - not emerging from the grassroots?

Chukki: Yeah

TD: KRRS would have strong links with other Asian organizations? outside India?

Chukki: Yes, thanks to PGA and Via Campesina. We are now very closely working with the MST, Movimento Sem Terra in Brazil, and yeah we do have strong links with them.

ML: we were going to ask about Via Campesina but you’ve been speaking a good bit about it. we were speaking earlier about challenges within PGA, you mentioned time - was there something you wanted to say? [00:36:22]

Chukki: Yes I wanted to say something about that because immediately, what happens in the global movement, of course there’s a time change and so on because of the geography and so on. Apart from that culturally time is seen in different ways. So that there used to be a lot of criticism of the Indian movements for not following time we are not punctual like the Germans, for example.

Yeah and we do agree that it’s important to respect to the punctuality but at the same time there is also so many other aspects that you have to also learn to consider. You know when people are involved in the local struggle, and trying to work at the international level, there are so many other challenges.

As somebody who is actively involved and completely committed at the international level should be able to understand the rhythm of the other movements because the rhythm of an individual is different from the rhythm of the group. So if you don’t understand there are different rhythms and sometimes someone who is going forward has to take some steps back to be able to bring the group together. If you don’t learn this kind of things you end up just going alone, later on. So in many cases I find that that was happening. And after that after some time the person who’s going forward gets frustrated because they are not following. It’s not their mistake it’s because he went very fast. [00:38:37]

This is this is something which any leader who is working at any level even at the village level should understand. Yeah. I’m more. TD: What do you think the legacy… if there was a Peoples’ Global Action today or similar organization or some similar network rather built in the future-what lesson do you think it should take the experience of Peoples’ Global Action in 1999 and 2000.

Chukki: Definitely the idea of bringing all sorts of peoples’ movements and people organizations together at the global level, network and create a platform where people, the movements get to know each other. And when you understand that the struggle that you’re finding in your country is nothing different from the struggle which the Bolivians are fighting, or the South Africans are fighting. That gives you a very big strength for you to know that it’s a global struggle and we are aligned with the movements from all over the world. I mean that’s the biggest strength that you can have as an activist and as a person who is trying to build something.

And at the same time alternative proposals - like when the whole world is going on one direction, you know, that there are peoples’ movements without any money, without any power, except the people’s power, except the organizational power, and they are talking about building a new world. I mean this is amazing. Not even the governments are doing this and they have everything, they have money, they have power, they have everything. And the strength to dream of a new world which it may not happen in your own generation but it may happen in the next generation to come. But still you want to build this world.

There is a will to do it together with other parts of the world, irrespective of the language, irrespective of their race, irrespective of your culture. I think, this is, these are the biggest strengths to start with.

Of course as you grow as a movement, you have to improve a lot of things, systems of communication in terms of, because one of the criticisms you always hear is that oh we don’t get to know what’s happening at international level, at the grassroots level because things are not communicated to the grassroots level. So this is what I meant before. You have to synchronize the communication and so on.

So most of the communications happen at the email. Now everything is online and so on. But the biggest population, the majority of the people in the countryside, in the southern part of the world, they still don’t know to read and write. So there’s a big gap between y’know the kind of movement that you’re building

So most of the time what happens, people, even the urban people or people in the West they seem to do everything online. So PGA everything happened online. So there was no effort to bring in the communication to the grassroots level. I think that was also one of the major failures that I would identify.

And of course it’s not the responsibility of the Europeans or whoever is taking care of the communications at the international level. It is the responsibility of our own movements who are involved, to identify the capacities and so on and work on it. But sometimes you don’t have that capacity also. [00:43:17]

So in this sense the people with resources, people with knowledge and skills, should be able to strengthen this kind of aspects of local movements. Otherwise you can’t change the structure of the game.

ML: You’re just replicating. Yeah yeah.

TD: And is there anything else that you would like us to speak about specifically to do with Peoples’ Global Action. Anything do you think we should have covered?

Chukki: I don’t know - that is there is need of reviving the idea now. Yeah. Because the capital is getting global so resistance also has to get global. There are some fights that you have to fight there [i.e. locally] but there are also some fights that you have to carry on here at the international level.

ML: And do you know of any- are there any groups or organizations or ideas emerging of these kinds of connections at the moment?

Chukki: there is a proposal recently from the MST not from not necessarily from MST alone, but from the movements of Latin America, to bring all sorts of peoples’ movements, the leftist peoples’ movements, trade unions, political parties together, in starting a new initiative.

ML: That you mentioned… and is there anything else?

Chukki: No. I think I said everything… I made some notes that I can just go through. Yeah when you asked about the, what inspired us right. [00:45:58] I spoke about the youth, the participation of youth and the capacity of self-organisation. Like everybody was, they were not depending on anybody, they were not depending on any direction. For us culturally that, was you know very surprising and also very inspiring. Because in India you are, you actually wait for somebody to tell you what to do. You’re not really, it’s not there in the culture to do things yourself. So I mean women do it, but the men don’t really do it. So when we came here and everybody was doing something or the other. There’s no this hierarchy that we are …we are not the workers. In India there is a cultural hierarchy, the workers have to do the work like cleaning in the kitchen, cleaning in the bathrooms and things like that. And there are other people who do not do these kind of things.

But here no matter who they were they were doing things, these kind of things. And this was very inspiring. When we were here at the Intercontinental Caravan. And also the kind of mobilisations and demonstrations organized here in Europe - it is very lively. It’s not just slogans, it’s not just angry, it’s not just you know, it’s also a way of celebration. People are dancing, there is music. There are so many colors. There are children in the mobilisations. And so in India you don’t get to see that - it’s still a very patriarchal society, you’ll see more men in the demonstrations and mobilisations. Very few women - and all these women are left in the front, as a defence because the police will not touch the women. So they are basically like used. So but here it’s all mixed. [00:47:54] And there’s so much of mutual respect and there like, if somebody’s children is crying, someone else is taking care. And this was really like very inspiring. I mean something to learn from. Yeah.

One thing which we had some problems with was the attitude towards the police and vice versa the attitude of the police towards the activists. Because in India we have been trying, at least in KRRS, I wouldn’t say in India, that the police they come to our protest and mobilizations and so on, and they become very much part of it, because they are all from farmers’ families. And when the leaders address the speeches, some of those things are also addressed to the police. There isn’t.

ML: They’re included. Chukki: Yeah, they’re included. You are there just for your own daily bread to earn your bread and butter, not because you really believe in what are you doing.

ML: So it is different.

Chukki: So you have to leave your farm and join this horrible job because there is a crisis in agriculture because there is a crisis in rural India and so on. So in this way they are also included in the struggles, many times they sit and eat our food that we bring in the mobilizations. But here no it’s like a war - it’s like the police and activists like really hate each other. And this is something we witnessed in many, in many demonstrations during the caravan. In Cologne, it was very funny because they let some, a group of people to go to the place of the protest. But they blocked another group. [00:49:51] And I was part of the second group and we were blocked in the train station and the trains were all stopped.

So we didn’t know what to do and we just started doing laughing satyagraha. So this was something that we had tried in Bangalore in the 90s. So we just squatted there the parliament, the State parliament and we just started laughing at the government.

ML: OK yeah.

Chukki: So somebody was making lots of jokes about the chief minister, the education minister, the agriculture minister, and so people were just laughing. Twenty-five thousand people laughing at the government. So this is something which we replicated here. So the police used give us a very angry look and we tried to get friendly with them but it didn’t really work. This was something which really shocked us.

And then you know the focus on actions because the name itself says Peoples’ Global Action, right? So these people were really focusing on doing some action and getting some results, not just making protests and so on and in KRRS this is also something what we believe in doing, we did lots of direct actions.

There was also a concept called Global Days of Action in PGA. You know there were so many actions taking place on the same day in different parts of world, that was also really inspiring. To know that today in Seattle there is a WTO protest and people are in the street all over the world and so on, so that that that would strengthen... I think these are all the things...

ML: Anything else? Leave it at that, thank you Chukki.