Saakhi is a Sunday column from Mrinal Pande, in which she writes of what she sees and also participates in. That has been her burden to bear ever since she embarked on a life as a journalist, writer, editor, author and as chairperson of Prasar Bharti. Her journey of being a witness-participant continues.
The ancient epic of Mahabharata revolves around the Himalaya, which as the poet Kalidas had said, stand upon the earth as the ultimate standard (Sthitah Prithivyamiv Mandadah) of dharma, truth and justice.
As they set about building their empire, the British discovered the Himalayan area as not just a mine of botanical information, species of wildlife and precious trails; it stood at a space where cultures and empires shared borders. In 1827, after Governor General Lord Amherst spent several salubrious summer months in Simla with his family, the area became a fashionable summer ‘hill station’. Nainital, Landsdowne and Mussoorie followed, and army cantonments like Dehradun, Ranikhet and Landsdowne also cropped up. Simla rose to be the summer capital of the viceroy and his staff. Many treaties were signed here, away from prying eyes.
Illustration: Pariplab Chakraborty
Foucault said that power survives by reproducing structured space. So a serious reconstruction of the Himalayan zone and a reinvention of its culture was undertaken by the colonial rulers in Kolkata and later, after the British shifted the capital westwards, from Delhi. Independent India saw two tiny hill states of Uttarakhand and Himachal carved out of Uttar Pradesh and the Patiala and East Punjab States Union. In the last decade, other states have begun attracting tourists. So it was decided that Himachal and Uttarakhand would be repackaged as resort towns where the rich and the religiously inclined could find ample leisure time along with soul cleansing pilgrimage trails to some of the holiest shrines in India.
The British methods of spatial reorganisation of this delicate terrain under a strict set of operating procedures overseen by geologists and engineers were soon a thing of the past. Vikas had to happen, and fast! No lessons, it seems, were learnt from events like the Great Landslip of 1880 that had decimated the summer resort town of Nainital totally, forcing the British to review and create proper manuals for all building activity. After Nainital was decimated by landslides and rains, the British engineering authorities had raised budgetary estimates considerably and pushed aside the directors’ objections rudely. It is on record that the civil engineers had refused to dilute the high standards of service for their engineers on the grounds of their working under difficult circumstances, or use inferior quality material.
Watching the rescue teams dredging the bodies of the dead workers from power plants inundated and destroyed by several recent floods, one wondered if the central leadership, the corporates and the state government hotly apportioning blame for the tragedies on global warming or on locals flouting building norms, knew the real reason: their constant and mindless push for power projects and tourism. Ironically, the biggest destruction has happened in the valleys of our holiest rivers, Vyas, Satluj in Himachal and Punjab and Ganga (currently playing havoc in Rishikesh) and Yamuna (flooding Gadhwal villages and also plains up to Delhi NCR). Ironically the village of Raini, the birth place of India’s first major public movement against environmental degradation, has also been all but decimated by the floods emanating from the holy Nanda Devi glacier area.
This year, the self-christened “double engine sarkar” in Uttarakhand continued an aggressive widening of roads through sensitive zones and reserve forests, despite protests from local environmentalists. However much they may claim to love the mountains, fact is most politicians and the babus who draft their dreams into blueprints for vikas remain urbane weekend visitors to hilly areas.
When power dams and yatra roads began to come up, locals were told they must sell community assets for a price the buyer will set. But the Hindi versions of important tracts on environmental issues: legal interpretations of internationally binding agreements on environmental protection, detailed bureaucratic guidelines for encouraging community participation and SOPs to be observed used both by officials, social workers and the media in the Hindi belt, are usually badly translated if at all. So even though nations speaking in multiple languages are signatories to these agreements, in the hill states where English is rarely spoken in rural areas, most of the original documents remain puzzlingly obscure even to the operative staff.
Watching on TV the sad state of the once bustling twin states of Uttarakhand and Himachal lying all gouged out and disfigured and listening to owners of homes, home stays, hotels and shopkeepers, one realises that it is a mistake to assume that in democracies like ours people wronged by their chosen leaders (and there are many of those all over India), may be thinking of toppling the dysfunctional government come next election. There have been many natural calamities and man created massacres from Kashmir to Kanyakumari in the last decade. But each one fades out soon and memories of it are reduced to mere drama, eventually. Everyone affected, it appears, is already feverishly looking for a way out: leave the village , go to another, migrate to Delhi-Mumbai-Kolkata-Bengaluru or abroad if you can, or at least encourage your children to fly off and seek citizenship elsewhere, anywhere from Canada to New Zealand.
No one seems determined to dig in their heels and wait for a chance to vote out the culprits. Zameen kahan hai, a woman wailed. There is nothing left. We have to leave. Push comes to shove, most, you can see, will choose calm and the commonplace over adopting different means to wrest back crumbs of their past lives and dignity.
But can an entire nation migrate? Yemen, Nigeria, Pakistan and Afghanistan are proof that they can’t. This realisation feeds all centrally regulated regimes: a deep belief that ultimately, most electorates are abject creatures. The small arsenal of political tricks has not changed from Kremlin to Karachi to Pyongyang. Be visible everywhere on screen. Very seldom in person. Distance yourself from the media. Let them have handouts instead. Freebies will keep ’em happy. Constant entertainment will keep their consumers amused. Occasionally make the masses shout patriotic slogans and denounce the enemies of the state with one voice, over and over again!
But some times, just some times, the unthinkable happens. A well fed and entertained crowd begins to seem restless and disobedient. It says it wants freedom. They demand rights, not grace.
Grace brings us back to the Devbhumi, the Uddhwast Dharmshala of our times lying amid mud and debris. Once upon a time it was less cash rich, but it had a noble grace. Maybe Delhi had wished in all honesty to retain that and also create a holy land on the highest international level here. Delhi presiding over the G20 this year may even have wanted another great spectacle, highlighting an ancient religion and holy rivers. A religion given a makeover already with the beating of gongs, men and women dancing in colourful attires and a thousand lamps and Maha Aratis lighting up the vast river banks.
But rivers and mountains, unlike men, assaulted repeatedly, will get angry and reclaim their sacred space. Rivers against all advice dammed up, grand mountains hollowed out with tunnels with ill-conceived power plants located amid age-old gorges. How capable will a system taught only to defend itself be of fighting back nature?
Mrinal Pande is a writer and veteran journalist.