While writing about the sugarcane agitation it is important to mention Vijay Parulkar, a renowned cinematographer who had worked with German Television for five years and with United Nations for ten years. He had taken voluntary retirement and along with his wife Saroja had returned to India in September 1977. With their two daughters they lived in Pune. He had a chance meeting with Joshi in September 1980 and so enamoured was he that he left everything and travelled with Joshi for nine continuous months of this sugarcane agitation. He wrote a series of articles covering this struggle in a well-known Marathi weekly called Manoos and it was also published as a book called Yoddha Shetkari (warrior farmer) in June 1981. It was a lively day-to-day account of that agitation which was widely appreciated. Joshi often gave credit to Parulkar in his meetings saying, ‘Half the job of spreading thoughts of Shetkari Sanghatana was done by Yoddha Shetkari.’ Advocate Daulatrao Ghumare of Nashik is another person who should be mentioned here. A former communist, he had worked with the rice-growing farmers in Igatpuri area. Of course Joshi did not have any idea of his background when the two met for the first time as a lawyer and a client. He went on to write glowingly about Joshi in his English autobiography Lawyer to which Joshi wrote the preface and which was released by renowned lawyer Ram Jethmalani. In this sugarcane agitation Joshi was arrested along with 31,000 farmers and they were produced in the Nashik Court on 11 November. To present their case in the court was a herculean task. Most of the farmers arrested did not have even five-ten rupees with them and Joshi himself had just about hundred. The Court Fee itself was a large sum. Advocate Ghumare took full responsibility of handling that case. Because of his efforts all the lawyers fought that case without charging even a rupee. In fact the lawyers themselves paid the court fee and bore other expenses.
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Sharad Joshi : Leading Farmers to the Centre Stage
