Remembering Umesh Dobhal

Have you heard the name of Umesh Dobhal. Many of you must be aware that he was murdered on 25th March 1988 .He was a Hindi journalist from Pauri Garhwal for Amar Ujala. There was a mass movement after the death of Umesh Dobhal. In the months of June and July widespread and intense protest demonstrations, rallies and petitions were vocally taken up by journalists from Kumaon, Garhwal and Delhi. A 'Patrakar Sangharsh Samiti' was also formed which filed a petition in the Supreme Court for producing Umesh Dobhal or for investigations to be taken up by the CBI against those responsible.

The mid eighties had witnessed large scale mobilisation against liquor in the neighbouring districts of Almora and Nainital. The life-blood of this movement were thousands of women and men from remote villages and small towns throughout Kumaon and Garhwal. Their protest was not merely an emotive assertion of the ills of liquor but a rich understanding of the complex inter-relatedness of the system - from the local liquor vendors to the powerful liquor lobby and the policies of the state. Umesh who was working with Aman Ujala at that time wrote various articles against that Liquor mafia and sacrificed his life for the sake of the people.

Umesh was born in Pauri Garhwal. on 7th February 1952 . He was born in Siroli village of Dhangu Patti.

Umesh was a poet also . As per one of the report. " Cold rage is that essential minimum which must survive, when nothing else can, in the face of sheer power and its ruthless exercise. Words must rage on if nothing else can, for human courage is too precious to be relegated to dusty corners of memory. And so this tribute, in sorrow and anger, to Umesh Dobhal, a Hindi journalist from Pauri Garhwal, who in his turn had lived the sorrow, the anger, the courage; who was murdered at the age of 38 in March 1988; whose body was never found. The subsequent trial proceedings came to an end last month -April 1994. All the accused were acquitted. Umesh Dobhal was, among other things, an unsung poet of those "who are everywhere, with the fragrance of their labour". For them he celebrated a spring "in silent turbulence, being prepared by the earth, secretly". For them he "saw the world". It follows that in his capacity as a journalist he wrote pieces that were alive with a people oriented sensibility and with the truths of social economic and political malaise."

Some of the poem of Umesh was published in the recent edition of Nanital samachar and listed in my next post.