Haldwani Eviction Issue Archives - Lokmarg

Rakesh Agrawal, a writer and activist based in Uttarakhand, says the planned marking of Muslim households in Uttarakhand brings back memories of Nazi era. His views

A section of Uttarakhand citizens are concerned and anguished over the recent attacks on Muslim households in Uttarkashi. The ‘marked attack’ on the shopkeepers, whereby their shops are marked, bring back bad memories of a similar phenomenon during the Nazi era in Germany and Europe. The disgraceful design is clear. It is meant to camouflage the failure of the current BJP government in the state, and at the Centre, on the economic and social front.

The Centre and state governments have failed to provide secured employment, health and education to the youth, and the ordinary folks in far-flung hill villages. There have been repeated leaks in the entrance exams, while young people have protested in Dehradun demanding a CBI probe into the recruitment scams in February, 2023. They were brutally attacked by the police. Now connect the dots.

Earlier, a teenage girl, Ankita Bhandari, was brutally murdered, after she refused to ‘comfort’ the wealthy guests at a resort in Haridwar, owned illegally by the brothers of a BJP minister. . Also, there is a case of a Dalit man who was first abducted, then killed by his in-laws for marrying their upper-caste daughter in Almora district; Jagdish Chandra (39), a Dalit political activist from Panuadhokhan village, was found dead in a car in Bhikiasain town in early September last year.

Then, in Haldwani, thousands of, deprived and disenfranchised people, mostly Muslims, and also poor Hindus, were given the order to vacate their homes. Consequently, the Supreme Court intervened and stayed it. In Joshimath, the entrance to Badrinath, one of the holiest char-dhams of the Hindus, thousands have been protesting since months, as hundreds of homes have developed cracks and sunk, thanks to the so-called top-heavy and corrupt development model, along with the many dams and hydro-electrify projects, including the 520 MW Tapovan-Vishnugad project.

Besides, hundreds of homes have developed cracks en-route to the Rishikesh-Karnprayag Railway Lines. Since this government has nothing positive to show, the time-tested communal card, while targeting the peaceful minorities, seems to be the preparation for 2024 elections, using the tried and tested Hindu-Muslim hate narrative. This also shows the desperation of the BJP, Uttarakhand being a small state, sending merely five MPs.

Is Uttarkhand a peaceful state? It may appear on the surface to a casual tourist, given its cool, green and serene atmosphere, but if you scratch the surface a bit, you can see a different picture. Uttarakhand is the only state in the country where upper caste Hindus are in the majority. Thakurs constitute 35 per cent of the total population, followed by Brahmins (25 per cent); together, they constitute over 60% of the population. Most of them stood solidly behind the BJP in the last assembly elections.

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The upper caste communities have been largely prejudiced, not against Muslims only, but also against Dalits and Adivasis, whom they call Shilpkars and Doms. It must be mentioned that the minor girl in Purola was a Dalit; she was having a consensual relationship with a Saini youngster, who was running a shop originally in Najibabad, UP.

Then, in every hill village, the hate campaign is silently going on since decades, where RSS-controlled Saraswati Shishu Mandirs are working and regular RSS shakhas are being held, brainwashing people, who may have never seen or met a Muslim, but are deeply prejudiced against them. So, the entire Muslim community is being targeted, though they are just about 1% of the population, as per the 2011 census. Hence, it seems a bit too desperate for the BJP!

Some forward-looking and peace-loving people have been protesting, including members of the Uttarakhand Insaniyat Manch. They submitted a memorandum against the hate campaign to the District Magistrate of Dehradun on June 7. A group of Supreme Court lawyers have written an open letter to Uttarakhand Governor, Lieutenant General Gurmit Singh, about the government’s inaction on repeated instances of hate speech in the state. A state-wide conference is being organised in Dehradun to oppose the hounding of Muslim citizens. The Left parties have been openly campaigning against it.

The CM is also organising a meeting on it on July 1 in Srinagar, Garhwal, a major hill town in Garhwal. But, the main opposition party, Congress, which is the only party which assumes power periodically, is maintaining a strategic silence. They are clearly scared of losing the Hindu votes, despite Rahul Gandhi’s ‘Mohabbat ka Caravan’!

The narrator, a doctorate in international relations from JNU, is an ecologist who writes for TerraGreen, Civil Society, Economic and Political Weekly (EPW), Mainstream and the Indian Journal of Social Work brought out by the Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TSSS). He is the author of Voices from the Ground: Unsung Heroes of Uttarakhand, (Aakar Books), a novel, Elated Dreams (BFC Publication), and an anthology of poems, Luster of Love (KDP).

As told to Amit Sengupta

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Rajni Joshi, the convener of Basti Bachao Sangharsh Samiti in Banphoolpura, explains the origin of alleged encroachment issue in Haldwani, and the media’s attempt to communalise it

The issue of eviction in Banphoolpura, Haldwani which abruptly got national attention in the last week of 2022 and drawn the Supreme Court attention, is something that we have been engaged in since 2007 with Krantikari Lok Adhikar Sangathan, a socio-political organisation. This issue needs to be understood in two parts.

The total population of Banphoolpura is around 60,000 with a total of 4,365 families residing in various colonies and hamlets. A part of this is Ghafoor Basti and Dholak Basti, which comprises around 3,000 people. These two hamlets are claimed by the Railway as encroached land due to their proximity to the railway line. In 2007, the district administration wanted to evict these people and demolish the two settlements. We opposed this move and demanded fair rehabilitation before eviction.

The then Chief Minister ND Tiwari wrote a letter for the rehabilitation of these two settlements. The High Court also directed the District Magistrate to rehabilitate these people on the other side of the Gwala river. However, the rehabilitation process was not carried out in a proper manner.

When people started relocating to the other side of the Gwala river on oral orders, the forest department claimed that it was their land and would not allow them to settle. Eventually, the relocated people were sent back. They again raised hutments and slums adjacent to the railway wall.

So, what was essentially an encroachment issue way back in 2007 did not get resolved in the absence of a relocation policy. The people of Ghafoor Basti and Dholak Basti are living there for over 50 years though it is also true that they are possibly encroachers they need to be properly rehabilitated and relocated. This is our demand to date.

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As for the other lot that comprises around 57,000 people of Banphoolpura, it is clear that most of them have formal ownership and land titles dating back to 1914. This settlement is as old as 1815 and the Railways is claiming this land on the basis of a map dated 1959. Here, people pay taxes; they have functional government schools, dispensaries, and other institutional structures that speak at the outset that this is a legalized settlement. So there is no point in them getting relocated anywhere. We are demanding that they not be evicted in the first place.

These two issues got mixed up in the course of a 2013 PIL filed in the High Court by the BJP leader Ravishankar Joshi over a bridge collapse on the Gwala river. The High Court had ordered the setting up of a team to inquire about the reasons behind the bridge collapse. The team observed that it happened because of illegal mining by encroachers on railway land. The whole matter then got diverted to the encroachment.

In 2016 the state government claimed that it was their land and in fact, the railway was encroaching by expanding its limits. In 2022, Joshi again filed a petition but this time it had nothing to do with the bridge; rather he demanded the eviction of encroachers on the railway land. The state government changed its stance and agreed that the land belonged to the Railways.

In March 2022 we formed the Basti Bachao Sangharxh Samiti with representatives from many socio-political organizations of Haldwani. The Samiti filed an independent case in the High Court demanding relocation and rehabilitation for Ghafoor Basti and Dholak Basti residents while stopping the eviction of the rest. These two demands were entirely different depending on the character of the settlement but somehow they got mixed up in the course of the hearing. We approached Senior Advocate Colin Gonsalves to pursue the matter in a higher court.

The media and outsiders came into the picture when Ghafoor Basti and Dholak Basti were highlighted by a section of people as predominantly Muslim settlements. The media jumped on the scene and projected the narrative as Muslim settlers. Essentially, all these people are from the working class, whether encroachers or not. We have treated them as a single entity. There is no division inside the Banphoolpura community but the media has been trying to divide it into communal lines.

There is hope after the SC stays on the eviction notice. We do not care who gets credit for this success. Being a socio-political activist, I only care about people’s lives and their concerns. Essentially people’s resistance and peoples organizations are behind this success, like Uttarakhand Parivartan Party, Inqalabi Majdoor Kendra, Pragatisheel Mahila Ekta Kendra, Pragatisheel Chhatra Sangathan, Samajwadi Lok Manch, and many more. We all are trying to convert this resistance into a larger movement at the state level.

As told to Abhishek Srivastava

Tag: Haldwani Eviction Issue

‘Hounding Uttarkashi Muslims Is An Attempt To Hide Govt Failure on Jobs, Joshimath, Other Fronts’

‘Media Looks At Haldwani Eviction Issue From A Communal Lens’