September 2004

I have recently received news about an old issue that was covered on the uttarakhand web site over 4 years ago. VB Rawat, an old colleague and human rights activist, just informed me that a supreme court judgement has ordered the Uttaranchal government to evacuate a parcel of land belonging to Dalit communities that was usurped by an industrial house in Udham Singh Nagar district.

As you may remember, statehood was originally held up by opposition from big landowners living in Udham Singh Nagar. The government at the time bent over backwards to placate the community which has settled Udham Singh Nagar in the last 40 years, mainly through the illegal acquisition of land and dispossession of the original tribal inhabitants.

Anyways, 4 years on, the the Uttaranchal government is still at the mercy of the powerful landowners of Udham Singh Nagar. Even worse, the dalit and tribal inhabitants of the district continue to suffer, as the largely upper caste dominated government (BJP and then Congress) have thus far failed to take action. In fact, the government can't even enact basic land and agrarian reforms that would give the land back to the original peoples, as they are so afraid of the land mafia operating in the terai. In Uttar Pradesh, the situation is even more confused as the SP and BSP have forsaken the dalit villagers, courting instead the wealthy landowners in their opposition to inclusion in "Uttaranchal".

I am thus forwarding letters sent to ND Tiwari, Sonia Gandhi, and other constitutional authorities about the situation. As put by my colleague, "the time has come for all of us to ensure the participation of Dalits in Uttaranchal's mainstream." Please do write to ND Tiwari for implementing land reform in Uttaranchal that will expose all those politicians not only from Uttaranchal but also from Punjab and Uttar Pradesh who have huge benami land in the Tarai, which is why this basic issue of justice has been so communalized. In truth, this is a case of the powerful exploiting and disappearing the powerless, and not of community against community as the protectors of power would make it seem.

Thus please read the following documents and consider writing your own letter to the CM.