On a sunny winter day in Dehradun, Kamla Pant, 66, is busy preparing for a meeting of the Insaniyat Manch, which she and her fellow activists set up a few years ago. The organisation holds meetings to foster communal harmony in the city and in Uttarakhand, a state where communal flare-ups have gone up and talk of “love jihad” has grown shriller in recent years.

But these issues were not even on the radar of Pant and her fellow activists when they spearheaded the movement for a separate hill state that led to Uttarakhand being carved out of Uttar Pradesh over two decades ago.

“We had fought for our culture, our identity, our forests, our women, for the future of our children. There was no religious divide then. And today, I hear people from right-wing outfits, ironically many of them from out of the state, saying Devbhoomi is only for us,” she says.

Pant remembers both the happiness and anxiety over the future on November 9, 2000 — when Uttarakhand gained statehood — but she can’t forget the struggle that activists like her underwent to make that day possible. The sense of achievement is tinged with disappointment though.

“Jis soch se, jis vichar se yeh rajya liya tha, woh toh door-door tak nazar nahi aata (the idea of Uttarakhand has not been realised),” says Pant, who started the Uttarakhand Mahila Manch in 1994 and was among the statehood activists who led from the front.

The movement for a separate state had seen an overwhelming participation by women not just from cities, but from far-flung villages up in the hills. Pant, one of the first women lawyers to practise at the Nainital District Court, was also associated with the Chipko Movement (a forest conservation movement).

“Women just came out of their homes to support the statehood movement because they were worried about their children, their job prospects, their future,” says Pant.

The movement for statehood began first as an agitation against the Mulayam Singh government’s decision in 1994 to extend the 27 per cent OBC reservation for admissions to educational institutions.

“The hill regions have a different caste composition from the rest of UP and students in the hills were worried that the seats in their region would go to outsiders. People too supported the students,” says Pant.

But the Pragatisheel Mahila Manch, floated by Pant and others, felt the issue was not just one of reservation. “It was a fight for identity,” she says.

Fighting for the state meant Pant travelled extensively, leaving her husband, a government officer, to hold up the home front.

The October 2, 1994 police firing at Rampur Tiraha crossing at Muzaffarnagar in Uttar Pradesh, where at least seven activists were killed and at least 10 women were allegedly molested, would end up as the biggest flashpoint in the agitation for statehood.

Pant and the other activists were on their way to Delhi to raise their demand for a separate state when the firing happened.

“We were at Narsan (in Haridwar). Suddenly, we were stopped by the police. Then, we heard cylinder blasts in the shops all around us. There were 50-60 women on the bus. There were three buses of our Mahila Manch and other buses too had women. The flames started reaching our buses,” Pant recounts.
In March 2024, in the first judgment in seven cases registered against the police, two former PAC constables were convicted for raping a protester. “There must have been more, but 10 women came forward to register their complaint. They showed great courage. They didn’t even listen to their families and spoke up,” she says.

Pant says her son, who now works in Canada, would have been about four when the incident happened. “Everyone in Dehradun was out that night in shock, anger, waiting for the protesters to return. My son got to know about the firing and asked my husband if I had died. We put our son in a residential school because my schedule was so hectic. I feel bad about that,” she adds.

In the months that followed, women across the state held rallies. The coming together of many women’s groups eventually gave birth to the Uttarakhand Mahila Manch that fought for statehood.

In the decades following Uttarakhand’s creation, the state has undergone several transformations, especially in infrastructure, with the Delhi-Dehradun Expressway nearly ready, the Char Dham Highway under construction and a proposed new rail line. “When we were fighting for a state, we were fighting for our land, our forests and that all stakeholders should have a say in these decisions. Even now, we are fighting for the same issues. So many trees are being cut in the name of development in such a fragile ecosystem,” says Pant. “We were fighting for our identity then and today too, that remains an issue with land being bought by outsiders.”

In a state that was created by a movement led by women, the safety of women, especially after the murder of Ankita Bhandari, 19, in Rishikesh in 2022, in which the son of a BJP leader is an accused, is a serious concern, she says. “Women fought for this state… we hope it becomes a safer place for them,” says Pant.