Uttarakhand Foundation Day: The long struggle for the hill state

In 2016, the then Chief Minister Harish Rawat constituted the Uttarakhand Ratna, one of the two highest civilian awards of the state.

Apart from Uttarakhand, two other states were formed in November 2000: Chhattisgarh, on November 1, and Jharkhand, on November 15. The former was carved out of Madhya Pradesh and the latter out of Bihar.

Pre-Independence

Prominent Uttarakhand historian Shekhar Pathak writes in his 1999 article ‘Beyond an autonomous state: Background and preliminary analysis of Uttarakhand movement’ that with the capture of Kumaon hills in 1815 by the East India Company, demands were raised for special rights and concessions for the region and its people. However, before these demands could gain momentum, the person behind them, Harsh Dev Joshi, died.

After this, small movements and public discussions continued for more autonomy and special rights for the Garhwal and Kumaon regions of the Himalayas along with the Dehradun valley— all three were governed under the administrative unit of United Provinces (UP) in colonial times.

A major event in the movement’s history was a special session of the Indian National Congress in Srinagar in 1938, where a demand for Uttarakhand’s statehood was made. During that session, India’s future first Prime Minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, favoured the demand raised by residents of the hill regions for having agency to make their own decisions, as per their circumstances.

This marked a public acknowledgement that the lifestyles, customs, and cultures of the mountains were different from those of the plains. However, Uttarakhand continued to be part of Uttar Pradesh in post-Independence India.

Uttarakhand Divisions Map (Wikimedia Commons)

Post-Independence

The first political party after Independence to support and initiate statehood demands for Uttarakhand was the Communist Party of India (CPI). According to Pathak, PC Joshi (who was from Kumaon), then the party’s Secretary, raised the issue of autonomy and self-governance for the hill districts of UP. Pathak quotes him as saying in one of his articles: “The Paharis (mountain people) are not only unhappy but angry. The demand for the autonomous region is our way out, the way of self-help.”

Joshi also refers to Nehru’s acknowledgment of Uttarakhand’s need for a separate identity. “We draw strength from the fact that the master architect of independent India not only passionately loved the Himalayas, but shared our restlessness against our unbearable poverty,” he wrote in the same article.

In 1966-67, the CPI started campaigning for an autonomous hill state, which included the preparation of a document containing a proposed three-tier system of governance. However, this failed to have any political impact in the 1967 elections.

The question of statehood for Uttarakhand in various political parties was seen in the backdrop of reorganisation of Indian states in the decades following Independence. While some outfits (eg. Socialist Party, Hindu Mahasabha) saw the need to organise states on linguistic basis, the Congress stood firm on its stand that reorganisation should be considered keeping factors such as unity, national security, linguistic and cultural affinities in mind. This, however, did not stop local leaders like Badri Datt Pande, Pratap Singh and Indra Singh Nayal from supporting the Uttarakhand cause.

Uttarakhand Kranti Dal

Probably the biggest impetus to the statehood movement came from the formation of the region’s first political party, the Uttarakhand Kranti Dal (Uttarakhand Revolutionary Party), on July 26, 1979. UKD was established by Bipin Chandra Tripathi, Indramani Badoni, Kashi Singh Airy (who is the current party chief) and Professor Devi Datt Pant, former Vice-Chancellor of Kumaon University.

According to Professor SP Sati, who teaches Environment Science at Veer Chandra Singh Garhwali Uttarakhand University of Horticulture & Forestry, Bharsar Pauri Garhwal, the UKD was responsible for bringing the cause for statehood to “every door in the region”. Sati himself was politically active, as a member-convenor of the Uttarakhand Sanyukt Sangharsh Samiti, and was imprisoned by the then-UP government during the Uttarakhand Movement.

In May 1982, a UKD delegation met Indira Gandhi, and in August 1986, Rajiv Gandhi. The party also organised large rallies around the state during this time. According to Pathak, a huge rally was organised in Delhi on November 23, 1987, and a memorandum was presented to the President.

Sati says that the agitation increased manifold under UKD, which also had political presence in undivided UP with a few electoral representatives. However, Sati adds, UKD was content to be a revolutionary outfit, and could not translate its activities into that of a major political party. This, he says, is a loss for the region in general— unlike other similar movements in the country where a regional political party emerged as the voice of the people (like Jharkhand Mukti Morcha and Telangana Rashtra Samithi), no such party emerged out of Uttarakhand, despite UKD having potential and appeal.

UKD had other problems as well. According to Pathak, “leaders and workers joined and deserted it at various points of time”. He adds that there was constant infighting between the party cadres and leadership, which led to factionalism, a problem the party is struggling with even today.

The 90s

The 1990s proved to be the most decisive decade in the history of the Uttarakhand movement. In 1991, the Bharatiya Janata Party began supporting the movement, despite having criticised it as being divisive earlier. This support also translated into a strong presence for the party in the hill state— other reasons included the Ram Mandir agitations, decline of the traditionally dominant Congress, and the lack of strong impact by the Samajwadi Party (SP) and Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP).

The CPI continued with its support for the movement, with its General Secretary Indrajit Gupta placing a Bill regarding Uttarakhand statehood in Parliament in 1993. According to Pathak, almost every political party except CPM and Congress supported the movement— however, the local workers and leaders of even these parties sided with Uttarakhand.

Pathak cites the example of Congress district presidents and block pramukhs sending resolutions supporting the movement to the Governor of UP and President of India, completely opposing their party’s official line.

The SP, headed by Mulayam Singh Yadav, took various twists and turns on Uttarakhand. In his first term as Chief Minister (1989-91), Yadav was completely opposed to the formation of a new state. However, in his second term (1993-95), his government passed a resolution in favour of Uttarakhand formation and even constituted a high-level ministerial committee to study the issue.

However, from 1994 onwards, Yadav became ‘prejudiced’ against the movement and actively tried to harm it with ‘misinformation’, according to Pathak. Apart from this, he declared 27 per cent reservation in government jobs and educational seats for Other Backward Classes (OBCs) in 1994. This, along with existing reservation for the Scheduled Castes (SCs) and the Scheduled Tribes (STs), brought total quota in jobs and education to about 50 per cent in UP.

A widespread anti-reservation agitation was unleashed in the hill region — which has been dominated culturally and demographically by upper castes — resulting in violent clashes between protesters and the police, involving firing incidents in Khatima, Mussoorie, and Muzaffarnagar. The reservation strife further strengthened and fuelled the long-standing demand of a separate Uttarakhand.

In 1996, the then-PM HD Deve Gowda announced the formation of ‘Uttaranchal’ (renamed as Uttarakhand in 2007, which was also the traditional way of referring to it), on the occasion of Independence Day celebrations at Red Fort. In 1998, the Atal Bihari Vajpayee-led government sent the Uttaranchal Bill to the UP government, following which the legislation was passed with 26 amendments by the state’s Assembly. After this Bill was passed by Parliament and approved by the President, the new state came into existence as ‘Uttaranchal’ on November 9, 2000.