What is Udham Singh Nagar (map)? What is the genesis of the current controversy over this district's inclusion in the future Uttarakhand state? As part of the lush Terai belt, Udham Singh Nagar occupies the southern portion of the Nainital district. Why does the Chief Minister of Punjab demand its exclusion from the future hill state? What interests are involved?

Here's a short, perhaps fragmented synopsis of the history of the Terai over the last four decades. Most of the text is excerpted directly from Chapter 5 (Terai: The Volcano) of Zakir Husain's "The Uttarakhand Movement: The Politics of Identity & Frustration" published by Prakash Book Depot in Bareilly (1995).

Also please visit the Probe Panel Report on the recent displacement and dispossession of a Dalit village in Udham Singh Nagar. The case study is just one example of the intimidation and violence committed against those standing in the way of the land mafias that control the district.

"The Bhabar lands are fertile and the climate good the year round. As soon as India got independence, Bhabar began to attract outsiders with money and without scruples. These intruders respected no laws and began penetrating the homogeneous Bhabar villages and violently upset the course of peaceful and honest life of the existing inhabitants… Outsiders with no rightful claims to the Terai lands began to secure big allotments and started modern farms. The original inhabitants of the Terai had had the privilege of being mere onlookers of this "green revolution" in the Terai and had to fight with their backs against the wall to save their ancestral plots from being seized by the new land-grabbers. This phenomenon was only a part, though in human terms, the most unjust, of the vast Terai canvas…"

"Modern use of the Terai belt begins with plans drawn up during the Second World War. The British government formulated a "Colonisation Scheme" to settle the lush Terai region with demobilised Kumaoni and Garhwali soldiers who had been recruited in large numbers and had served valourously. At this time, the Terai Scheme was meant exclusively for Pahari soldiers, being within their ancestral land."

What exactly happened was quite the opposite:

"By 1970, the whole Terai region was settled. Lands in only a dozen villages had been alloted to the Jawans. Among these Jawans, Kumaoni-Garhwali Jawans were again the minority. The overwhelming majority consisted of Punjabi Sikhs and Western UP Jats, in violation of the original purpose of the scheme."

Between 1956-1958, 13,000 Pahari Jawans and other landless applied for their due land allotment. Not more than 1,000 succeeded in procuring land, and that to between 5-7.5 acres each.

Refugees from West Pakistan in fact consisted of only a fraction of the Punjabi migrants. Many were aggressive intruders of the criminal variety or profiteers with connections to high officials. As seen in various other nations where large landowners hold sway, bullying and terrorising the landless and small landowners had become a common practice to keep and grab more land. Through their connections and influence with politicians of all shades of political opinion, the large landowners were able to expropriate more land, and evade prosecution under the various Land Ceiling Acts enacted to ensure some modicum of economic justice in landownership. Indeed, the politicians themselves came to own large productive plots spanning hundreds of acres.

Various UP governments were allied closely with the big landowners. As such, the government proceeded to legalise illegal land occupations repeatedly throughout the 1960s. Very soon illegal occupation became a profitable business racket.

The remaining forested land came under the purvey of the Forest Department, that also was beset by corruption. Forest contractors and big farmers exploited their closeness to the government by converting more land to agriculture and depriving landless and land-starved Uttarakhandis of their forest rights…

"Strange enough, against manifold injustices done to the inhabitants of the hills and the Terai-Bhabar, the hill-men never reacted in the same manner as they faced them with greater toleration and reservation. The reason was simple. By nature, they were non-violent and far away from the evil of criminality… Unfortunately, in the latter days, this moral aspect of the hill-men was exploited by the new class of oppressors belonging to the world of "modernism" and industrialisation..."

Today, as the people of Uttarakhand appear verged on achieving some form of the decades-old dream of autonomy, powerful forces have emerged to challenge them, whipping up communalist tensions where little existed before, and exploiting every opportunity to divide the people.

Indeed, no attempt at solving the myriad problems of the Himalayas will succeed without addressing the issues of the Terai, once wholly part of the erstwhile Himalayan states, but now occupied by a wealthy class of landowners from other parts of India, commonly known as the land mafia by the locals.

However, as elsewhere, the need for land reform may be buried by the expedient compulsions of political parties, influenced by wealthy interests at the expense of poor landless people. No political party seems immune to these pulls, and, if past history teaches us anything, they will emerge as the chief exacerbators of discord and polarisation, and the interests of ordinary people will again lose out.

As such, historic injustices cannot long be ignored, before communal strife, so endemic to the Indian subcontinent, is foisted upon the people. Land reform and enforcement of the law, basic precepts of social justice and any civil society, are not even an issue in this case, but ironically, those whose wealth is great tend to be the most ruthless at pinching pennies and the poor be damned. As such, those interested in the welfare of the Himalayas, Pahari or not, must stand together for justice and against the communalism of the plains, or the hills will become corrupted and their tranquility destroyed. The condition of the Ganga should serve as a metaphor for this, where it emerges pure and clean from Garhwali and Kumaoni glaciers, only to be increasingly polluted as it makes it way through the plains to Bengal. In the same way, the communalist pollution threatens to creep up into the hills, and must be pushed back, perhaps all the way! This can only be done with an united Uttarakhand where all its people can work together for the rebirth of freedom and justice in all the lands south and north of the Himalayas.