Farmers' Protest LIVE Updates
The 'pizza langar' was organised by a group of five friends from Amritsar. They didn't have much time to organise regular 'langar', so they collected 'regular-sized' pizzas from a Haryana mall and set up a stall at the Singhu border, according to PTI. They distributed around 400 pizzas within a short span of time as a huge crowd, including the protesting farmers and residents from nearby areas, queued up.
The 'pizza langar' has since hogged headlines and garnered compliments from different quarters, and also criticism from a certain section. "The farmers who gave the dough for pizzas can also afford to have one themselves," said Shanbir Singh Sandhu, who organised the 'pizza langar' with his four friends for the peasants protesting at the Delhi-Haryana border against agri laws.
"We didn't have much time to organise regular lentils-chapatti langar... So we came up with this idea," Sandhu, who is himself a farmer and an economics student at Guru Nanak Dev University in Amritsar, told news agency PTI.
Unfortunate the people are ridiculing farmers: Organiser of Pizza Langar
"Few people just cannot digest that a farmer can have a car, wear good clothes, and have a pizza. The farmer has moved on from dhoti-kurta to jeans and T-shirt," the 25-year-old student said. "It's about time these people grew up."
One of the reasons for organising a "pizza langar" was to change the public perception about farmers, he added.
Gill says no one has the right to comment on what a farmer should eat or wear.
"People have been calling us "so-called farmers". Before making any such comment, they should come and meet us first, he says. "They will get to know that our thinking is much better than theirs."
The farmers have been protesting at several border points into Delhi for over two weeks over their demands to repeal the new legislation.