ABSTRACT
Demands for the creation of a new state of Uttaranchal comprising eight Himalayan districts, presently part of the state of Uttar Pradesh in India, have recently escalated in stridency and violence. Grafitti on the walls of public buildings in the region’s towns and cities proclaim, “We ask today [for the creation of Uttaranchal] in a friendly spirit; tomorrow we’ll demand it with guns.” Youths have raided police outposts for rifles and ammunition; government buildings have been vandalized and torched. There is, in the words of a national newspaper, a movement “slowly but surely taking on the dimensions of a bloody stir” (Sunday 1994:44-7). For the men and women from Garhwal and Kumaon Himalayas who picket the central government offices in New Delhi, statehood is the means of extricating their region from its current backwardness. Lack of development coupled with inefficient administration, they assert, is the cause of high unemployment and increasing marginalization of hill regions in the state of Uttar Pradesh.
