By Soumitra Banerji
It was the 1st of May 2025, I got dressed up in smart casuals…which I rarely do… and got prepared to visit the Raj Bhawan; and then the CM Niwas, in Dehradun; where I, my wife, and my team of sponsor friends and Satish Sharma of the Garhwal Post were invited for a book gifting of the special edition of ‘Liminal Tides’, authored by me.
It was my first visit to a Political Establishment, in my entire life and career, which I dare say, is reasonably substantial in size, if not in content…and that too in a State which I keep quite close to my heart. Not only is my first published book, Liminal Tides, devoted quite an extent to Garhwal; another of my manuscripts, which is in the process of getting published is a quintessentially Garhwal Novel…and finally, I am married into a reasonably well-known Garhwali family.
When I reached the Raj Bhawan; and then the CM Niwas, almost half a century of a People’s Movement…an intense desire of the inhabitants of Garhwal and Kumaon to have their own home, to share it within themselves, decide by themselves the vision and course of their own state…flashed before me like a video clip. What I was seeing now was a dream come true and good.
Our CM, Pushkar Singh Dhami, wearing his traditional headgear, stood with us representing the Uttarakhand people and their leaders who spearheaded this essentially People’s Movement, giving them direction and leading them to where he was now…an separate state…a home for the Garhwalis, Kumaonis and all the associated tribes and sects living in the Devabhumi.
The journey formally started on 24 July 1979, when the ‘Uttarakhand Kranti Dal’ (UKD) was finally launched in Mussoorie, with a People’s Mandate of creating a separate Hill State…Indramani Badoni, often referred to as the ‘Gandhi of Uttarakhand’ was a highly respected leader and a key figure in the UKD. His 105 days foot march (Pad Yatra) in 1988 under the UKD banner significantly mobilised public support.
Professor Devi Datt Pant, a former Vice Chancellor of Kumaon University, was one of the founding members and the first President of the UKD…Bipin Chandra Tripathi…Kashi Singh Airy issued a manifesto for Uttarakhand State in 1992, which was instrumental in public agitations. Then there were Surendra Kukreti and Diwakar Bhatt lending momentum to the movement.
Today, the State’s incumbent Chief Minister, Pushkar Singh Dhami, deserves his pride of place in having been successful in doing justice to the millions of people of his Hill State…in giving them a stable home…a stable state; and trying his very best to maintain the identity, culture and the inherent mysticism of the Divine. When we reached his Niwas, he had just returned from a trip to the revered Gangotri Dham to declare it open. Very symbolically touching, taking into consideration that the foundation of this State is its connect to the Divine…may it be the occult…the Mother…The Shiva…The Narayan…or the very nature…the Forests and her wild denizens.
Today Dhamiji is also working hard to live up to the aspirations of not only Dwarika Prasad Uniyal, a renowned journalist who played a key role in assembling the ‘Parvatiya Jan Sammelan’ in Mussoorie in 1979, which led to the formation of the UKD…but also HH Manvinder Shah who organised one of the first agitations for a Hill State, way back in 1957.
And when I met Lt Gen Gurmit Singh (Retd), the Governor of the State, the feeling came straight from the heart…the right person in the right state on the right seat. A proud Army Man representing all the Devas of this divine Devabhoomi….what a symbol of syncretism.
The final icing on the cake was that I was having this experience and flood of emotions alongside the Editor of Garhwal Post…the mercurial Satish Sharma…a classic chronicle having led Uttarakhand right from her birth to today…in its 30th year of ‘Making her People Know’….
