Mumbai, April 29: When Maharashtra’s politicians launch into competitive jingoism on the 50th year of the formation of the state, they should reflect on the shoddy way they have treated history.
Many documents relating to those tumultuous days both during and after the Samyukta Maharashtra agitation that cost 105 lives are invisible in the public domain today.
Worse, nobody in officialdom is clear about who has those documents, or whether they exist at all. Simple queries on the papers relating to the agitation, its initial suppression, and the various letters passed between political leaders and bureaucrats receive non-committal replies.
The state’s formation had several significant aspects the active role of textile mill workers in the movement, the roles of and speeches made by SA Dange, Acharya Atre, SM Joshi and other leading luminaries of the time, the shoot order on protesters near Flora Fountain made by the government of the day in January 1956. Written records of these events are practically unavailable in the public domain.
When tried to access government records and other documents pertaining to the movement at the directorate of archives located on the premises of Elphinstone College in south Mumbai, the director and officials were of little help.
“Most of the documents are with the home department. All the records concerning the movement between 1957 and 1960 were brought under the home ministry,” said Bhaskar Dhatavkar, director, archives. “We have records in the form of books and a few documents. We have documentation of the central government giving sanction for a unified state of Maharashtra,’’ he added.
Interestingly, despite not having any original or even photocopied documents of the formation of Maharashtra, the archives department has “successfully” conducted exhibitions across the state in the last one year on the subject.
Dhatavkar admitted that they have exhibited only information sourced from secondary sources. “No original paper was put out in the exhibition Asa Ghadla Maharashtra. The secondary source was Lokrajya, the government’s official magazine,” he said.
According to the Maharashtra Government Records Act, “it is binding on the state government to hand over records of non-current files to the archives”. Non-current means records more than five years old.
Meanwhile, officials in the home department said documents regarding the Samyukta movement are with the intelligence department. There could be ‘sensitive’ information which, if leaked, could create trouble in society, they said.
“All records concerning Mumbai are with Special Branch 1, while documents relating to other districts are with the state intelligence unit in the record room at the police headquarters. Very little material went to the department of archives in 1947,” a senior IPS officer from the intelligence wing told.
“Who told you the documents are with the intelligence department? I will verify and give you information on it,” said Fauzia Khan, minister of state for cultural affairs.
According to archives officials, “The last person who was allowed access to these papers and documents regarding the Samyukta Maharashtra movement was YD Phadke.” Phadke, a noted Marathi writer and intellectual, died in 2008.
-Agencies