Mamta Kalia

communication, labour force, etc. have
become now strongly linked with the
national and international systems, on
the other, its consciousness and
understanding at the popular level and
politics, based on them, instead of
evolving parallely with the developments
at the national and international levels
are regressing into localism. That is to
say, while the physical basis of existence
is becoming increasingly national and
international, this consciousness,
constricting itself in a reverse direction,
is getting localised. What explains this
strange, paradoxical phenomenon? The
intelligentsia has given little thought to
it.
In the colonial period, the two streams
of localism and nationalism supplemented
each other. Why are they emerging
as mutually antagonistic today? And why
is the effervescence of localism providing
strength to obscurantist and revivalist
elements and not to developmentoriented,
progressive forces? This is a
very important but difficult question of
which we have to find an answer. I feel
this regression has some basic sources
and it is the duty of the intelligentsia
to identify these sources and present
them before the people. I feel what Karl
Marx had said about the British regime
in India also provides the key to an
understanding of the present situation.
He had said that after the British invasion
of India, the Indians were in a state
of melancholy and the reason was that
while as a result of the British rule the
40 :: April-June 2010
country’s traditional socio-economic
structure had been destroyed, no new
modern system had come up as its
substitute. The Indians had been faced
with a vacuum which would have to
wait for independence to be filled up.
What happened in the entire country
also happened in our hills. But the hills
had certain geographical attributes which
did not permit the British to bring about
the basic changes here which they had
brought about in the plains. The process
of modernisation here started rapidly
only after independence. Particularly the
changes that took place in the wake of
the India-China tension on the northern
border and the network of roads spread
out in the region for reasons of security,
and, to some extent, of development,
opened Uttarakhand to commercial,
administrative and cultural influences
from outside and deprived it of the
protection its geography had provided
to it. Perhaps, from a long-term point
of view, this end to this isolated existence
and exclusiveness may turn out to be
a boon. From its immediate results, it
has proved to be a curse. The common
people with their simple means of
livelihood, and the educated persons
seeking security in government service
could neither take to new vocations like
truck and bus driving, running hotels
and restaurants, horticulture, dairying,
commercial exploitation of forest
resources, trading etc. in a big way,
nor save their vocations in the case
of competition from more skillful and