The TLDR: Republic Day celebrations turned into a pitched battle between the police and farmers—who broke past their barriers, and entered the heart of Delhi. The reporting (and opinionating) was every bit as chaotic as the events. We pieced together what we know the day after to understand what happened and why.

A quick timeline

The Samyukt Kisan Morcha (SKM)—the umbrella organisation of 500 unions—had negotiated both the route of the rally, and its timing, from 12-5 pm. But that agreement broke down almost immediately:

• Late Monday night, hundreds of UP farmers on tractors tried to enter Delhi—claiming they wanted to go to Red Fort. 
• Early Tuesday morning, farmers start to swarm the barricades—way in advance of the agreed time. By 8:45 am, they've broken through at Singhu and Tikri on the Haryana border and Ghazipur on the UP border. 
• By around 12:30 pm, the cops were engaged in a fierce battle at ITO—with farmers from Ghazipur and Singhu.
• Soon after, many of them turned toward Red Fort—where the protesters hoisted the Nishan Sahib, the holy Sikh flag traditionally flown over gurudwaras. 
• By 7.30 p.m, union leaders had returned to their border protest sites—where they issued a statement calling off the parade, and asking farmers to come back as well.

The big breakaway, explained

Let’s start with why so many farmers broke away from the agreed route and decided to storm Delhi.

Confusion: Both sides confirm that many of the UP farmers did not know what they were doing—or where they were going. The police described them as “directionless and leaderless.” One reason: many arrived late at the border without proper instructions or supervision. As one Ghazipur organiser explained:

“They might not have known what the route was. Everybody also wanted to be at the front of the rally. Wherever they found a way, they pushed forward. The numbers were so large that coordinators couldn’t keep track of who went where.”

Impatience: After months of failed talks, many of the farmers simply lost patience—both with the government and their leaders. This was true of both the late arrivals from Ghazipur:

“There are people who arrived from 400 km away just before this rally. They arrived despite being pressured not to by police back in their villages. They might have felt that circling back to Ghazipur after following a route decided by the police is not what they came for. It also needs to be understood that 70-80% of the farmers are not members of any farmers’ union and they might not have felt bound to directives issued.”

And it was true for those sitting for months on the border:

“We can continue this protest for even two years, we have enough community support for that. We can all eat at langars here… but we have to build pressure, we cannot keep sitting here.”

Also this: Once news spread of other breakaway groups reaching the Red Fort, it made others more determined to do the same.

Rebellion: As we noted, many farmers who arrived late did not belong to unions. More importantly, one farmer group—Kisan Mazdoor Sangharsh Committee—clearly signalled on Monday morning that it will not accept the negotiated route. While it is not a member of the SKM, the union’s decision apparently had the support of at least eight of the 40 SKM leaders. And once the KMSC farmers broke through, it became difficult for other unions to stop others from following suit.

Point to note: SKM was quick to point their finger at KMSC once all hell broke loose:

"The Kisan Mazdoor Sangharsh Committee is not a main part of the movement… Those farmers who are doing this are betrayers to the farmers' cause. Someone who is breaking the rules like this, causing disturbance, actually helps the government to win, and they cannot be called part of the movement.”

The death at ITO

In the midst of the most violent clash of the day at the Income Tax Office junction, a young UP farmer was killed. The Telegraph, Hindu and Indian Express each cite different names and ages for him 🤦🏽‍♀️. OTOH, Times of India omits all mention of him in its overview, and instead has a small report where he is called “a protesting farmer.”

Apart from such details, there is great disagreement over the cause of his death—which is now a point of heated dispute. The Delhi police released the CCTV clip below to show that he lost control of his tractor—as he tried to barrel through the barricades:

But protesters on the scene told The Telegraph that he had been shot in the head—but the reporter did not ask for a visual confirmation. An eyewitness told The Hindu he was blinded by tear gas. Indian Express merely notes he was killed “allegedly when his tractor overturned”—without citing a source.

The farmers held on to the body—which they draped in the Indian flag—refusing to turn it over to the police for a post-mortem. So it’s likely that the cause of death will remain unresolved.

The flag on Red Fort

• As the farmers swarmed Lal Qila, a large group of them hoisted the holy Nishan Sahib on two of its empty poles. 
• Twitter was awash with false reports that they took down the tricolour to do so. The likes of Rahul Shivshankar and Barkha Dutt took the opportunity to express their outrage. 
• But ANI’s own photo shows that the Indian flag remained untouched (see below). Alt News also offers an extended factcheck.
• Of course, one can still argue—like Shashi Tharoor—that “no flag but the sacred tiranga should fly aloft the Red Fort.”
• Or disagree like Caravan’s Hartosh Singh Bal—who points out that the Sikh regiment salutes twice each Republic Day, once for the tricolour and then again for the Nishan Sahib.
• Some clips show that many on the scene tried to stop the flag hoisters—but to little effect.

Attacks on the police: But there were other all-too-real casualties—like the 41 policemen who were injured because they were forced to jump from a height of 20 feet into a drain to save their lives (See clip below). A police officer said they were attacked with iron rods, sticks and stones.

The Deep Sidhu factor: Sunny Deol’s cousin was once again in the spotlight. He first went viral for a clip where he defended farmers in public school English. Then Barkha Dutt decided to interview him—even though he has no relationship to the unions, and has been banned from speaking on their stage. He obliged her efforts by defending Bhindranwale.

This time around, Sidhu was at ground zero at Red Fort. Both sides agree he—and a gangster-turned-social worker named Lakha Sidhana—were the likely ringleaders of the flag-hoisting stunt. The unions have accused him of trying to delegitimize the movement:

“Our andolan (protest) is of the farmers only and a mass movement, which is not at all a religious one. And whatever Deep Sidhu has done, we condemn it in strong words and we feel that he is a dalal (agent) of the government who is messing up from many days. Every time, he speaks against the farm leaders and misleads against them. Whatever he did today is highly condemnable as we had not given any such call of going to Lal Qila.”

Sidhu later defended his actions at length in this video. We suggest you watch this bizarre clip of him hamming for the cameras at Red Fort and decide for yourself:

What’s next for unions

They’ve immediately distanced themselves from the violence, saying:

“We dissociate ourselves from all such elements that have violated our discipline. Antisocial elements infiltrated our otherwise peaceful movement. We condemn and regret undesirable and unacceptable events that have taken place today during farmers’ protest.”

Even the rebel KMSC blamed others for the ungodly mess:

“We strongly condemned the incident. It’s an act of anti-social elements. We never had any plan to go to the Red fort and stage any kind of protest over there. The aim of these anti-social elements seems to weaken the ongoing farmers’ movement.”

The unions also pointed out that majority of the protests have remained peaceful: "If you look all across the country, there may be over a crore people on the streets. There are a few hundred who are breaking rules here.” FYI: here’s a clip of the rally at Bangalore.

Point to note: The farmers still plan to march to the Parliament on February 1, which is Union Budget day. And they are standing firm on their demands: the repeal of the three farm laws plus a guaranteed minimum support price. It remains to be seen what kind of support they will receive from opposition parties in Parliament—since many have condemned the violence. And of course, neither the government nor the Supreme Court is likely to support any such plan.

Advantage, government?

There has been no official statement on the violence. Unnamed BJP sources used it to raise questions about the unions’ motives:

“BJP has maintained right from the beginning that it is committed to the welfare of farmers. However, the way Red Fort was desecrated, the whole nation has watched it and there is nothing left to say about the hidden agenda of the farm union leaders, who are acting as per the dictation of opposition parties.”

Others in the government challenged the unions’ claim to leadership:

“Our strategy going forward will definitely change… You cannot enter Red Fort by force, plant a flag there and then say let’s talk about the laws… If farmer leaders arrive at an agreement with us and these people (agitators) do not accept that, what will these leaders do? Today’s incidents show their writ may not even run.”

Point to note: Not all are as gung-ho about pressing their advantage:

“However, at least two senior party leaders pointed out that the Government will have to ‘tread cautiously’ as it ‘cannot be seen as anti-farmer’ or take any action that will provide a trigger for the farming community in other parts of the country to escalate the protests.”

That may be prudent if—as some union leaders believe—the chaotic scenes enthused rather than discouraged farmers who were watching around the country.

The bottomline: Here’s the very small silver lining. Eight people were killed—including a constable of head injuries—in Bangalore in 2006 when riots broke out after the death of a movie star. Despite the mayhem and boiling tempers, there has only been one casualty in Delhi so far. That is surely astonishing, and shows that neither side lost their head even in the heat of battle. And surely they deserve credit for that. Hey, we take what we can get.

Reading list

• Read The Hindu and Times of India for the unions’ response. 
• Watch a union leader explain at length how SKM lost control on NDTV.
• Indian Express has the most quotes from government sources.
• The Telegraph has the most details on the farmer’s death.
• For the Deep Sidhu angle, read The Telegraph and Times of India.
• Also read: our explainer on the farms laws and MSP to get a better handle on the farmers’ demands.