of their brilliant minds and cadres to the sikh movement in 1980s and these were latter who then posed big ideological challenges for them said senior punjabi journalist major singh the ultraleft groups later worked extensively among farmers and formed their unions in this task former employees also joined and their organisational skills and passion worked they worked on issues like debt traps farmers suicides and compensation most of their support base remains among sikh farmers who have not much to do with their ideology said ajmer adding these groups though remain committed to communist ideology but using revolutionary tactics is a thing of the past it has been widely known that over a dozen farmers unions are led by leftist or ultraleft groups but they have confined themselves to farmers issues only said major singhold story and the new twistinitially the ghadri babas who started the left movement in punjab were practising sikhs bhai santokh singh who started punjabi monthly kirti in1920s dedicated it to the cause of peasants and workers he even put a line from gurbani on it which was later removed after his death akali stalwart master tara singh even wrote his obituary later on the gap between sikhs and communists kept on increasing but still they were not opposed to each other in 1980s mainstream communist parties also lost considerable base among sikhs and they never recovered the farmers movement has a combination of sikh spirit and organisational skills of left groups which is more a product of circumstances than any design that is why bitterness is visible between the two sides at times said author and commentator gurbachan singh