India forcibly sterilized 8 million men: remember one village, after 50 years Human Rights News

Ottar, India – When everyone ran towards the bush and nearby villages, or flooded in a well to hide from government officials, Muhammad Dino remained in his position.

His village, Ottar, was in the Miwat area of ​​Northern Haryana state, about 90 km (56 miles) from the capital, New Delhi, surrounded by the police on that cold night in November 1976.

India was 17 months in its nearest brush with the dictatorship-a national emergency imposed by the then Minister of Ministers, Indira Gandhi, during which civil freedoms were suspended. Thousands of political opponents were imprisoned without trial, and the amazing press was monitored otherwise, and financial incentives were supported by the World Bank and the United States, and India began a huge forced sterilization program.

Dino and his 14 friends were among his goals. They were pushed into the vehicles of the forces and were transferred to the unintended sterilization camps. For Dino, it was a “sacrifice” that saved the village and its future generations.

“When everyone was running to save themselves, some of the elderly (from the village) realized that if no one is found, this would create larger and long -term problems,” Deno recalls, sitting on a torn wooden bed. “Therefore, some men were collected from the village and gave them.”

He now said in the late 1990s: “We have saved this village with our sacrifices. Look at it, the village is full of the children of God running today.”

As the world’s largest democracy 50 years of emergency imposition on June 25, Deenu is the only man who was targeted in Ottar as part of the forced sterilization project that is still alive.

It was more than 8 million men Forced to submit to the removal of the evening During that period, which lasted until March 1977, when the state of emergency was raised. This included only 6 million men in 1976. Nearly 2000 people died in failed surgeries.

After five decades, these scars live in Ottar state.

“Cemetery, just silence”

In 1952, just five years after securing its British freedom, India became the first country in the world to adopt a national program for family planning. At that time, the idea was to encourage families to have more than two children.

By the 1960s, as birth rates were close to six children for every woman, the government of Indira Gandhi began to adopt more aggressive measures. The population of the booming population was a burden on its economy, which grew at 4 percent from the 1950s.

The West appears to participate in this opinion: The World Bank Loan India is $ 66 million for sterilization initiatives, and the United States provided food aid to hunger in India with its success in controlling the population.

However, during the state of emergency, with the removal of all democratic checks and balances, the Indira Gandhi government has largely entered, using a mixture of coercion and punishment for pressure on government officials to implement forced sterilization and societies to accept it.

I gave government officials to the number of people who had to sterilize them. Those who failed their goals have blocked their salaries or faced the threat of separation from their jobs. Meanwhile, irrigation water was cut off from the villages that refused to cooperate.

The security forces were also launched on those who resisted – including in the village of Ottar, which were mostly the Muslim population, such as many targeted societies. The average Muslim birth in India at the time was much higher than other societies, making religion members a special focus on the collective sterilization initiative.

In the corridor adjacent to the Dino house, Mohamed Nour, who was 13 years old, was sleeping in his father’s arms in a bed outside their house when the policemen raided, and some of them riding horses, their house. His father ran towards a nearby forest, and Nour rushed inside.

Nour recalls: “They broke the doors and all that came on their way; they destroyed everything they could see,” Nour recalls. “To make our lives worse, they mixed the sand in the flour. There was no even one in the village that could cook the food for the next four days.”

Nour was captured in the raid, and he was transferred to a local police station and hit before he left it. He said that because he was less than 15 years old, he was very young to eradicate the evening.

On that night of fear, as the village is now called, it also gave birth to local folklore: the words of Abd al -Rahman, then the head of the village. “Outside our village, no one will remember this name, but we do,” said Tajul Mohamed, a childhood friend in Nour. Both are now 63 years.

Before Ottar raided, many officials came to the village, and asked the apostasy to give up some men. “But he remained steadfast and denied them, saying:” I can’t put any family in this place. “Rahman also did not agree to abandon men from the surrounding areas as well, who were owned in Ottar.

According to the legend of the local state of Ottar, Rahman told the officials: “I will not give up a dog from my area, and you are asking people from me. Never!”

But Rahman’s determination was unable to save the village, which was left in mourning after the raids. Nour said, absorbing tobacco from a Hookah.

“The people who fled, or those who were transferred by the police, are no longer for weeks,” he said. “Ottar was like a cemetery, just silence.”

In the following years, the effect became more clear and delicious. The neighboring villages will not allow marriage with the men of Ottar, even those who have not been sterilized, while some have broken their current connections.

“Some people (men in the state of Ottar) have not been able to recover from this mental shock, and they spent years of their lives concerned or troubled.” “Tension and social warriors killed them and cut off their lives.”

Echoes in India today

Today, India no longer has coercive Population Control ProgramThe country’s fertility rate is now more than two children for every woman.

But the atmosphere of fear and intimidation that represented the state of emergency returned in the new symbolism, during the era of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, some experts believe.

For the 75 -year -old Fifanathan, a famous Indian social scientist, the emergency helped to perpetuate tyranny.

In the face of the increasing student movement and the refreshing political opposition, the Olaya Court of God, on June 12, 1975, found Edira Gandhi, a comet in the abuse of government machines to win the 1971 elections. The referee was awarded by the one who held his elected position for six years. Thirteen days later, Gandhi announced the state of emergency.

“It was the disposal of tyranny that created a state of emergency, without a moment of remorse,” Fevanathan told Al -Jazeera. “In fact, the emergency created the emergency cases that were followed in India today. It was the basis for India after modernity.”

The loyalists in Indira Gandhi compared it with the Hindu gods Durga, and in a play with audio, India, the country itself, such as supporters of Modi, compared the current Prime Minister with the Hindu god Fishno.

Visvanathan said that the culture of personality worship has grown under the leadership of Andra Gandhi, “The country has lost a feeling of understanding.” “With the state of emergency, authoritarianism has become a tool for judgment.”

Visvanathan believes that although the state of emergency was raised in 1977, India has slipped towards full tyranny. “Along the way from Indira Gandhi to Narindra Modi, each of them contributed and created an authoritarian society while pretending to be democratic.”

Since Modi arrived in power in 2014, India’s rankings have quickly fell on democratic indicators and freedom of the press, due to the imprisonment of political and journalists dissidents, as well as imposing restrictions on speech.

Jetta Secho, a group of collective expression, a group calling for freedom of expression in India, said that the similarity between the years of emergency and India today lies in the “way caused by the main media.”

And she said: “Then, now, the effect of denying the information to people is feeling.” “After that, civil freedoms were suspended under the law, but today, the law was armed. Fear and self -control prevailed today, although the official emergency is not declared.”

For ASIM Ali, a political analyst, the distinguished inheritance of the emergency state “is the ease of melting institutional checks in the face of a specific and powerful executive leadership.”

He said that the last of the emergency legacy is the successful reaction that followed. IDra Gandhi and her party were voted on the authority in a landslide in 1977, as the opposition shed light on the government’s excesses – including mass sterilization engines – in the stadium of its campaign.

Ali said: “(Like the seventies), whether the Indian democracy is able to overcome this stage and renew it again (after Modi) still should be seen.”

“Seven generations!”

Once again in November 1976, Dino said he only thought about his pregnant wife, Soytta, and he sat inside the police car while removing it. Soytta was at home at the time.

“Many men, unmarried or without children, appealed to the police to allow them to leave,” Dino recalls. None of Deenu 14 friends were left. (Sterilization is a curse that chases Ottar every night since.)

Eight days later under the police custody, Deenu was transferred to a sterilization camp in Palwal, the closest city to Ottar, where it was operated.

A month later, after returning from the removal of the evening, Sweita gave birth to her only child, a son.

Today, Deenu has three grandchildren and many grandchildren.

“We who saved this village,” he said. “Otherwise, Andra had set this village on fire.”

In 2024, Soytta died after a long illness. Dino, at the same time, reveals its longevity. He once used to play with his grandfather, and now play with his grandchildren.

“Seven generations!” He said, wearing a plastic cup of a cold drink. “How many people have you seen enjoy this privilege?”