Dehradun. On 9 November 2000, the state of Uttarakhand was separated from Uttar Pradesh. Formation of separate Uttarakhand state was not so easy. There was a movement for the formation of Uttarakhand for many years in which 42 people lost their lives. Jagmohan Singh Negi, President of Uttarakhand Rajya Andolan Manch, remembering those days, said that when he along with his colleagues came out of Uttarakhand to Jantar Mantar in Delhi demanding the formation of the state, the women sent him after getting vaccinated. They felt that something positive would happen but tried to stop it in Mohand, Biharigarh and Narsan but due to large crowd the police could not control it.
After this, a young fellow was shot in the leg at Gurukul Narsan. After this the blood of all of us started boiling. Police started lathi charge. Stones were pelted from the fields there. Just like the Jallianwala Bagh massacre took place during the time of General Dyer, bullets were fired on unarmed people, similarly firing started without any warning, in which 7 of our comrades were martyred and many people were injured. He had to struggle day and night during the winter season.
pain hard to describe
State agitator and public poet Dr. Atul Sharma told that he saw the struggle of his comrades with his own eyes. Once when he was in Nainital, Girda and he were locked in a dhaba and he started writing the same poems. The song of the state movement ‘Boyek Lenge, Chheenkar Lenge Uttarakhand’ was also quite famous during that period. He said that no one could remain silent after seeing the atrocities on men and exploitation of women. He said that the pain cannot be expressed which is heartbreaking.
bad effect on kidneys
State agitator Latafat Hussain says that we have struggled a lot. When 14 people sat on hunger strike for the first time under the leadership of Indramani Badoni, the “Gandhi” of Uttarakhand, demanding the formation of Uttarakhand state, Latafat Hussain was one of them. He told that he started the movement from Pauri for which he also had to go to jail. He was arrested at many places including Tehri, Dehradun. He told that we were called separatists and terrorists. Due to being on hunger strike for a long time, it also had a bad effect on his kidneys.
Memories are still fresh today
Latafat Hussain told that during that time the police and administration committed many atrocities on the state agitators. The attitude of the police towards us was such that they used to catch us and take us to the police line, we were made to sit there for a long time, in the heat of June they felt very thirsty. A bucket was filled and brought to him but it was dropped on the ground. He told that when we had warned of boycotting the elections with the slogan ‘No state, no elections’, we were put in jail. Then elections were conducted. We were lathicharged and more than 50 cases were filed. He said that even though time has passed, that scene does not disappear from his mind even today.
Tags: Dehradun news, Local18, Uttarakhand news
FIRST PUBLISHED : November 9, 2024, 3:45 PM IST
