Ramachandra Guha
Hindustan Times, April 26, 2014
On May 25, 1974, four young men set out on a long march across the Himalayas. They were activists in the Uttarakhand Andolan, a popular movement that asked for a separate state to be constituted from the hill districts of Uttar Pradesh. These districts had long felt victimised and condescended to: Used as a source of cheap labour and natural resources, yet never treated with dignity or respect. In both cultural and ecological terms, the Pahar considered itself distinct and different from the Maidan.
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