Gursharan Singh Memorial Lecture Committee will screen the award winning documentary Inquilab Di Kheti on October 5 in Surrey. Inqilab di Kheti (Farming the Revolution) is a documentary on the massive year-long farmers’ agitation (2020-21) against the Indian government’s unjust farm laws.

By DESIBUZZCanada Staff

SURREY - Gursharan Singh Memorial Lecture Committee will screen the award winning documentary Inquilab Di Kheti on October 5 in Surrey.

Inqilab di Kheti (Farming the Revolution) is a documentary on the massive year-long farmers’ agitation (2020-21) against the Indian government’s unjust farm laws.

Amidst COVID lockdowns, India’s farmers rise up on an unprecedented scale against unjust new laws. Over half a million farmers—men and women from all generations, religions, classes and castes—gather and reinvent co-existence and win a rare victory over the state.

The agitating farmers braved inclement weather and state-sponsored violence in 2020-21 as they left their homes and set up tents on the outskirts of New Delhi. They remained resolute on the highways for 13 months, until the unjust laws were withdrawn.

The farmers’ agitation for the repeal of the pro-corporate farm laws had become the largest and longest sustained non-violent movement in Indian history, surpassing Mahatma Gandhi’s historic Dandi March against the abhorrent Salt Law of the British colonial regime.

The documentary records the untiring resilience of Indian farmers’ resistance against the pro-corporate farm laws enacted by the Indian government to advance the interests of crony capitalists such as Ambani and Adani.

Nishtha Jain, the filmmaker, was with the protesters throughout the entire period, documenting their struggles, recording more than 600 hours of footage. The film has won several prestigious awards including the Best International Feature Documentary Film award at the HotDocs Festival, Toronto in 2024.

The screening will take place on Sunday, October 5, 2025, 3.00 PM in Room SRYC2600 (Prospera Credit Union Theatre) at SFU at Central City, #250-13450 102nd Avenue, Surrey, BC.

The screening is free to the public and will be followed by a Q&A session with the director Nishtha Jain who will be arriving from India specifically to participate in the screening. 

Although the Modi government had withdrawn the three farm laws and agreed to the farmers’ demands, it has yet to fulfill the demand for minimum support price for all farm products.

The farmers’ agitation had received tremendous support from the South Asian community in Canada and Canada’s trade unions including the Canadian Labour Congress, the BC Federation of Labour, the BC Teachers Federation and Unifor.

Some of the trade union leaders who supported the farmers’ agitation, including Sussanne Skidmore, President of the BC Federation of Labour, and Hermender Singh Kailley, Secretary-Treasurer of the BC Federation of Labour, will attend the screening on October 5. In fact, Sussanne Skidmore will make concluding remarks at the conclusion of the screening.

The screening is co-sponsored by Dr. Hari Sharma Foundation, the Institute for the Humanities (Simon Fraser University), and the South Asian Network for Secularism and Democracy (SANSAD).