The arrival of the British in India marked the beginning of the exploitation of the forested Kumaon and Garhwal regions for commercial purposes. This exploitation deprived local peasants and artisans of their livelihoods, as they were no longer allowed to access resources from the now-protected forests.
Initially, the primary concern was the lack of progress on addressing the demands of the hill people. However, dissatisfaction among the locals soon transformed into a call for an autonomous hill state. In a significant meeting held in 1946 at Haldwani, Kumaon leaders such as Badri Dutt Pande and Puran Chand Tiwari voiced the demand for a separate administrative unit for the hills.
After independence, these regions were consolidated under the Uttarakhand region of the United Province. This region consisted largely of the princely state of Tehri Garhwal and the districts of Garhwal and Kumaon.
Unlike other states in India, where demands for autonomy were primarily rooted in linguistic differences, the demand for autonomy in Uttarakhand stemmed from its unique geographical and cultural distinctions from the United Province. As a result, the case for Uttarakhand's autonomy went unheard by the States Reorganization Commission.
The late 1960s and early 1970s saw the emergence of regional political parties in Uttar Pradesh that served as platforms for conversations about preserving natural resources, addressing the marginalization of hill regions, and protecting the rights of local communities.
The rise of the Janata Party at the national level in the late 1970s renewed hope for the creation of Uttarakhand as a separate state, as the party was vocal about reorganizing state boundaries for administrative convenience, particularly in the case of Uttar Pradesh.
In 1979, the Uttarakhand Kranti Dal (UKD) emerged as a political party with the sole agenda of campaigning for Uttarakhand's statehood. Other parties, such as the Uttarakhand Sangharsh Vahini (USV), also formed with the same objective.
The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) later expressed interest in the demand for Uttarakhand but proposed the name Uttaranchal for the new state.
In 1994, the coalition government in Uttar Pradesh, led by the Samajwadi Party (SP) and Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP), appointed the Kaushik Committee to study the grievances of the people living in the hill regions. The Kaushik Committee recommended that the eight mountain districts of Garhwal and Kumaon be consolidated into the state of Uttarakhand, with Gairsain proposed as the centrally located capital.
The final push for Uttarakhand's statehood occurred in response to a controversial reservation policy for Other Backward Classes (OBCs) in government jobs and educational institutions. The communities of Garhwal and Kumaon opposed the policy, as only 2% of their population was officially categorized as OBC, making the policy further marginalize them.
The state government's harsh response to the protests solidified Uttarakhand's regional identity and transformed the agitation into a mass movement without any single leader. In December 1998, when the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) came to power at the national level, a bill to create Uttarakhand was introduced in the Lok Sabha. After being reintroduced post-elections in 1999, the bill received presidential assent in August 2000.
With the Uttar Pradesh Reorganisation Act of 2000, the state of Uttaranchal was officially created as the 27th state of India on 9 November 2000, comprising thirteen districts. Nityanand Swami, a BJP legislator from Dehradun, was sworn in as the first Chief Minister.
The struggle, however, did not end with statehood. Discontent arose when the Chief Minister was not from the hills, and the capital of the state was designated as Dehradun, not Gairsain as activists had hoped. Additionally, there was a demand to restore the state’s original name, Uttarakhand.
When momentum was building for this change, the State Assembly, under ND Tiwari, passed a unanimous resolution to officially rename the state Uttarakhand, effective from 1 January 2007.
Sources: Administrative Atlas of India (2011); Origin Story of India’s States (2020) Venkata Raghavan; We the People of the States of Bharat (2022) Chopra Sanjeev
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