SUNIL NEGI
Uttarakhand is reeling under the danger of communal tensions and the recent Uttarkashi development vindicates this fact.
Uttarakhand is known as the land of abode of Gods with thousands of deities visiting the four globally famous majority community shrines viz. BADRINATH, KEDARNATH, YAMUNOTRI AND GANGOTRI and renowned Hemkunt Sahib also a renowned shrine of the Sikhs. This year about forty lakhs devotees and tourists from Uttarakhand , various states of India and abroad visited these four religious portals as on October 17.
The Uttarakhand economy majorly depends on tourism, especially on religious ( mythological) tourism.
Uttarakhand has become the first state in the entire country to implement the Uniform Civil Code though BJP which speaks of it from the horses mouth with its governments in majority of the states didn’t took the lead but the hill state did it obviously for no other reason but to derive political advantage at the time of the general elections with the prime minister saying that this will serve as a model for implementation of UCC at the centre.
In Uttarakhand which came into existence on November 9, 2000 de annexing itself from Uttar Pradesh with 43 people sacrificing themselves have never thought that this land of abode of Gods will be the battlefield for communal tensions.
Everyone thought that each and every citizen of this state will be in prosperity with every facility at their disposal may be health, education, job avenues and social as well as physical security.
Nobody ever thought that Uttarakhand, a land of four pious religious shrines will ever see this land turning into the safe haven for hardened criminals, the rich amassing excessive wealth through unfair means buying and selling large tracts of lands, massive sale of liquor, colonisers cutting colonies on large scales with outsiders grabbing major portion of lands and after the lifting of ban on more 12.5 acres of land half of the Uttarakhand lands have been sold to outsiders thus destroying and disturbing the demography of Uttarakhand.
There have been several protest demonstrations and marches in the Uttarakhand capital by thousands of roaring men, women youths and students demanding the concrete land act and 1950 basic birth certificate ( basic citizenship act) to resurrect and save the demography of the state but the Uttarakhand’s saffron party government has backtracked from its pre election promises to implement the concrete land act and has instead exhibited tremendous speed to implement the Uniform Civil code which in no way benefit’s the hilly state but obviously serves the political interest of the ruling party that believes in just rhetorics but not in implementing or fulfilling the people centric promises.
Sounds shocking that in Haldwani several months before communal riots erupted causing loss of lives and properties on massive scale including collosal loss to public exchequer.
There have been mass scale move to unravel the illegal religious structures on government lands which indeed is a good decision but any legal action should not be discriminatory in nature, and should apply with all legal or illegal religious structures on equal footing say some leaders of secularist parties.
In Uttarakhand had our successive governments, whether of Congress or BJP developed Uttarakhand upto the decentralised levels and provided health, educational facilities and job avenues there shouldn’t have been such a massive exodus of villagers and their children to metropolises and other states in such huge numbers,( more than thirty lakhs) making our villages vacant of human beings with more than three thousand villages becoming ghost villages.
This is perhaps for the first time in any part of Uttarakhand as happened in Uttarkashi , also known as a holy township that a massive demonstration with hundreds of majority community demonstrators holding saffron flags and raising slogans forcibly marched towards an illegally built mosque breaking the police cordon with hundreds of policemen stopping them and people from both sides throwing stones on them and policemen trying to stop them.
What is most worrisome is the fact that even the policemen and policewomen has to seek shelter on sideways to save themselves from the pelting stones from both sides.
The District Magistrate and Superintendent of Police have to intervene to control the situation after great efforts but what about the seeds of communal disharmony that has been sowed to polarise communities on religious lines with twenty seven police personnel and several people injured in the melee.
Uttarakhand these days is in real mess with alleged strategies being formulated to communalise the situation in order to sideline the core issues of concrete land act and 1950 MOOL Pramaan Patra say the organising secretary of Uttarakhand Kranti Dal Ashutosh Negi one of the leaders of yesterday’s massive rally at Parade ground Dehradun.
The Uttarakhand state’s fiscal deficit has overlapped its annual budget’s amount crossing Rs 70000 crores with the state not able to generate its own credible sources of income to bridge this gap gradually except spreading the network of liquor sale which according to sources is being targetted to Rs 4,440 crores which is an 11% increase from the previous target. This is not only spoiling the families on large scale but also risking the lives of the present generation who are gradually inculcating in them the habit to consume liquor which in fact is of substandard quality not at all good for their health.
