India sterilized 8m men: a town remembers, 50 years later | Human Rights News

Uttawar, India – When everyone ran, towards the jungles and the nearby villages, or submerged in a well to hide from government officials, Mohammad Deenu stayed.

His people, Uttawar, in the Mewat region, from the state of Haryana in northern India, about 90 km (56 miles) from the capital, New Delhi, was surrounded by the police on that cold night in November 1976. His question: The fertile age men must meet in the field of the people.

India was 17 months after its closest brush with the dictatorship, a national state of national emergency imposed by the then Minister of First Indira Gandhi, during which civil liberties were suspended. Thousands of political opponents were imprisoned without trial, a press in another way was censored and, backed by financial incentives of the World Bank and the United States, India embarked on a massive program of forced sterilization.

Deenu and his 14 friends were among his goals. They were pushed to the vehicles of the forces and taken to poorly managed sterilization camps. For Deenu, it was a “sacrifice” that saved the village and its future generations.

“When everyone ran to save themselves, some elders [of the village] He realized that if no one is found, he would create even larger and more durable problems, “Deenu recalled, sitting in a crunk of torn wood.” Then, some men in the village were collected and watered. “

“We save this people for our sacrifice. See around, the people are full of the children of God running today,” he said, now in his 90 years.

As the largest democracy in the world marks 50 years since the imposition of the emergency on June 25, Deenu is the only man who had been attacked in Uttawar as part of the forced sterilization project that is still alive.

More than 8 million men were forced to undergo a vasectomy during that period, which lasted until March 1977, when the state of emergency rose. This included 6 million men in only 1976. Almost 2,000 people died in failed surgeries.

Five decades later, those scars live in Uttawar.

'A cemetery, just silence'

In 1952, only five years after ensuring his freedom of the British, India became the first country in the world to adopt a national family planning program. At that time, the idea was to encourage families not to have more than two children.

In the 1960s, at a time when birth rates were about six children per woman, Indira Gandhi's government began to adopt more aggressive measures. The booming population of India was seen as a burden for its economy, which grew to an average of 4 percent from the 1950s to the 1990s.

The West seemed to share that opinion: the World Bank lent India $ 66 million on sterilization initiatives, and the United States made food aid to an Indian contingent hungry for its success in population control.

But it was during the emergency, with all the eliminated democratic controls and balances, that the Indira Gandhi government entered into overwhelm, using a combination of coercion and punishment to press government officials to implement forced sterilization and communities to accept it.

Government officials received quotas from how many people had to sterilize. Those who failed their goals had their retained wages or faced the threat of dismissal of their work. Meanwhile, irrigation water was cut off the villages that refused to cooperate.

The security forces also unleashed in those who resisted, even in the village of Uttawar, which had a predominantly Muslim population, like many of the directed communities. The Muslim birth rate in India at that time was significantly higher than that of other communities, which makes the members of religion a particular approach to the mass sterilization initiative.

In the lane next to Deenu's house, Mohammad Noor, then a 13 -year -old boy was sleeping in his father's arms in a crib out of his house when the police, some of them riding a horse, raided his house. His father ran towards a nearby jungle, and Noor ran inside.

“They broke the doors and everything that got in their way; they destroyed everything they could see,” said Noor. “To worsen our lives, they mixed sand in flour. There was not even a single home in the town that could cook food for the next four days.”

Noor was collected in the raid, taken to a local police station and beaten before they let it go. He said that because he was less than 15 years old, he was considered too young for a vasectomy.

That night of fright, as the people call it now, also gave birth to a local folklore: Abdul Rehman's words, then the chief of the village. “Outside our people, no one would remember this name, but we,” said Tajamul Mohammad, friend of the childhood of Noor. Both are now 63 years old.

Before assaulting Uttawar, several officials had come to the village, asking Rehman to give some men. “But he remained firm and denied them, saying:” I can't put any family in this place, “Tajamul said, and Noor nodded. Rehman also did not agree to give men from the neighboring areas, who were taking refuge in Uttawar.

According to a local legend of Uttawar, Rehman told officials: “I will not give a dog in my area, and you are demanding from me. Never!”

But Rehman's resolution could not save the village, which was left in a state of mourning after the raids, said Noor, sucking tobacco from a hookah.

“The people who escaped, or those who were taken by the police, did not return for weeks,” he said. “Uttawar was like a cemetery, just silence.”

In the following years, the impact became more visible and terrible. The neighboring villages would not allow marriages with men from Uttawar, even those who were not sterilized, while some broke their existing commitments.

“Some people [men in Uttawar] They could never recover from that mental shock, and spent years of their anxious or disturbed lives, “said Kasim, a local social worker who is made by his first name.” The tension and the social taboo killed them and shortened their lives. “

Eco in India today

Today, India no longer has a coercive population control program, and the country's fertility rate is now more than two children per woman.

But the atmosphere of fear and intimidation that marked the emergency has returned in a new avatar, under Prime Minister Narendra Modi, believes that some experts.

For Shiv Visvanathan, 75, a renowned Indian social scientist, the emergency helped perpetuate authoritarianism.

Before a rising student movement and a resurgistic political opposition, the Superior Court of Allahabad on June 12, 1975, found Indira Gandhi guilty of making a bad state machinery to win the 1971 elections. The verdict disqualified her to occupy an elected office for six years. Thirteen days later, Gandhi declared an emergency state.

“It was the banalization of authoritarianism that created the emergency, without any time for repentance,” Visvanathan told Al Jazeera. “In fact, the emergency has created the emergencies that have followed in India today. It was the basis of postmodern India.”

The loyal of Indira Gandhi compared her to the Hindu Durga goddess and, in a play with the phonetics, with India, the country itself, as well as the supporters of Modi, have compared the current prime minister with the Hindu God Vishnu.

As the culture of personality cult grew under Indira Gandhi, “the country lost the sense of understanding,” Visvanathan said. “With the emergency, authoritarianism became an instrument of government.”

Visvanathan believes that despite the fact that the state of emergency was raised in 1977, India has slipped towards complete authoritarianism. “From Indira Gandhi to Narendra Modi, each of them contributed and created an authoritarian society while intended to be a democracy.”

Since Modi came to power in 2014, the classifications of India have quickly fallen into democratic rates and press release lists, due to the imprisonment of political dissidents and journalists, as well as the imposition of curbs in speech.

Geeta Seshu, the co -founder of Leting Speech Collective, a group that advocates freedom of expression in India, said that a similarity between the emergency years and today's India is in “the way in which the main media have yielded.”

“Then and now, the impact feels on the denial of information to people,” he said. “Then, civil liberties were suspended by law, but today, the law has been armed. Fear and prevailing self -censorship is experienced today, although there is no formal emergency statement.”

For ali ali, political analyst, the defining legacy of the emergency “is the ease with which institutional controls melted against a specific and powerful executive leadership.”

But another emergency legacies is the successful reaction that followed, he said. Indira Gandhi and his Congress party were voted outside of power in a landslide in 1977, since the opposition highlighted the excesses of the government, including the mass sterilization units, in their campaign speech.

“[Like the 1970s]If Indian democracy can go beyond this phase and regenerate again [after Modi] It remains to be seen, ”said Ali.

'Seven generations!'

In November 1976, Deenu said he only thought of his pregnant wife, Salema, while satting inside the police truck while they wore him. Salema was at home at that time.

“Many men, single or without children, begged the police to let them go,” Deenu recalled. None of Deenu's friends was released. “Nasbandi Ek Aisa up Hai Jisne Uttawar Ko Tabse Har Raat Pareshan Kiya Hai,” he said. (Sterilization is a curse that has persecuted Uttawar every night since then).

After eight days in police custody, Deenu was taken to a sterilization field in Palwal, the city closest to Uttawar, where it was operated.

A month later, after returning from vasectomy, Salema gave birth to his only son, a son.

Today, Deenu has three grandchildren and several great -grandchildren.

“We are the ones who save this village,” he said, smiling. “Otherwise, Indira would have lit this town on fire.”

In 2024, Salema died after prolonged disease. Deenu, meanwhile, delights in his longevity. Once he used to play with his grandfather, and now he plays with his great -grandchildren.

“Seven generations!” He said, drinking from his plastic cup of a cold bubbly drink. “How many people have you seen that they enjoy this privilege?”