India forcibly sterilized 8m men: one village remembers, 50 years later | Human Rights News

Uttawar, India – When everyone ran towards the jungle or nearby villages, or when they hid from government officials and jumped into the well, Mohammad Dien was left in place.

His village, Uttawar, located in the Miwat region of Haryana in northern India, was surrounded by police on a cold night in November 1976, about 90 km (56 miles) from the capital New Delhi.

India is now 17 months after the closest brush to a dictatorship. This was a state of national emergency imposed by then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, during which civil liberties were suspended. Thousands of political enemies were jailed without trial, otherwise violent presses were censored and supported by financial incentives from the World Bank and the US, India embarked on a massive forced sterilization programme.

Deenu and his 14 friends were one of their targets. They were pushed into the troop’s vehicles and taken to an inappropriate sterilization camp. For Deenu, it was a “sacrifice” that saved the village and its future generations.

“When everyone was running to save themselves, some elders [of the village] I realized that if no one can find it, it will cause even bigger and long-lasting troubles,” Deenu sat on a torn wooden bed.

“We saved this village by sacrifice.

As the world’s biggest democracy has been 50 years since the June 25 emergency levies, Deenu is the only man targeted at Uttawar as part of a still-lived forced sterilization project.

Over 8 million men were forced to undergo vasectomy during that period. This continued until March 1977, when the emergency was lifted. This included only six million men in 1976. Almost 2,000 people died from unsuccessful surgery.

Fifty years later, these scars live in Uttawar.

“Cemetery, just silence.”

In 1952, just five years after ensuring freedom from the UK, India became the world’s first country to adopt a national family planning program. At the time, the idea was to encourage families to have fewer than two children.

By the 1960s, when the birth rate was close to six children per woman, the government of Indira Gandhi began to adopt more aggressive measures. India’s booming population is considered an economic burden, growing at an average of 4% from the 1950s to the 1990s.

The West seemed to share that view. The World Bank lends $66 million to India for its sterilization initiative, and the US has provided food aid to hungry India, which comes with success in population control.

However, in emergencies, all democratic checks and balances were removed, and the Indira Gandhi government was overdrive, using a mixture of forced and punishment, putting pressure on government officials to implement forced sterilization, and the community began to accept it.

Government officials were given an allocation of the number of people they had to sterilize. Those who failed their goals either withhold their pay or faced the threat of being fired from their jobs. Meanwhile, irrigation water was cut off from villages that refused to cooperate.

Security forces were also released to those who resisted. This has been targeted like many communities, including the village of Uttawar, which had a predominantly Muslim population. The birth rates of Muslims in India at the time were significantly higher than those in other communities, making religious members a specific focus for mass sterilization initiatives.

In the lane next to Deenu’s house, 13-year-old Mohammad Noor was sleeping in his father’s arms in his bed outside the house when some of the horse-riding police officers attacked the house. His father ran towards the nearby jungle, and Noor ran in.

“They smashed the doors and everything that got in the way. They smashed everything they could see,” recalls Noah. “To make our lives worse, they mixed the flour with sand. There was no single house in the village where they could cook food for the next four days.”

Noor was greeted in an assault, taken to a local police station and beaten before being let go. He said he was deemed too young for vasectomy because he was under the age of 15.

That night, local folklore also gave birth to her, just as the village is calling it now. “No one remembers this name outside our village, but we do,” said Noor’s childhood friend Tajamur Mohammad. Both are 63 years old.

Before raiding Uttawar, several officials came to the village and asked Rehman to hand over some men. “But he remained immovable and denied them by saying, ‘I can’t put my family here,'” Noor said, nodding passionately. Rehman also disagreed to hand over the men from the neighbouring area where he had been refuge in Uttawar.

According to local Uttawar legend, Lehman told officials:

However, Rehman’s resolve did not save the village. The village was left in mourning after the attack, and Noor said he was smoking a cigarette from a hookah.

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

Over the next few years, the effects became more noticeable and frightening. Nearby villages did not allow marriage to a man in Uttawar. Some people broke their existing engagements, and even non-sterilized people did not allow them.

“Some people [men in Uttawar] Kasim, a local social worker who goes by his name, said:

Echo in India today

Today, India no longer has a mandatory population management program. And the country’s birth rate is currently more than two children per woman.

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

For 75-year-old Shiv Visvanathan, a well-known Indian social scientist, this emergency helped perpetuate authoritarianism.

On June 12, 1975, the Allahabad High Court admitted that he had committed a crime of misusing the state machinery to win the 1971 election in the face of rising student movements and revived political opposition. The verdict disqualified her from holding an elected office for six years. Thirteen days later, Gandhi declared a state of emergency.

“It was authoritarian banalization that caused the emergency, with no moments of regret,” Visvanathan told Al Jazeera. “In fact, this emergency created the emergency that has continued in India today. It was the foundation of postmodern India.”

Indira Gandhi’s loyalty compares her to the Hindu goddess Durga and plays with loud voices, comparing her to the country itself, as Modi supporters compared it to the current prime minister and the Hindu god Vishnu.

As cult culture grew under Indira Gandhi, “the country lost its sense of understanding,” Visbanathan said. “The emergency has made authoritarianism an instrument of governance.”

Visvanathan believes India is sliding towards full authoritarianism despite the emergency lifted in 1977. “Everything from Indira Gandhi to Narendra Modi, each of them contributed and created an authoritarian society while pretending to be democratic.”

Since Modi came to power in 2014, India’s rankings have quickly fallen to democratic indicators and freedom of press charts due to the imprisonment of political dissidents and journalists, and the curb imposition of speech.

Geetasesh, co-founder of Free Speech Collective, a group defending freedom of expression in India, said the similarity between emergencies and India today is in the “how mainstream media fell into place.”

“At that time and now, I feel the impact on people’s denial of information,” she said. “Civil liberties have since been suspended by law, but today the law is weaponized. There has been no formal declaration of an emergency since then, but there has been a general horror and self-censorship experience since.”

For political analyst Asim Ali, defining the legacy of an emergency is “how easily institutional checks melt in the face of decisive and strong executive leadership.”

But another legacy of the emergency is the successful backlash that followed, he said. Indira Gandhi and her Congress party were voted in power in a landslide in 1977. This is because opposition highlighted the campaign pitch by government overload, including mass sterilization drive.

“[Like the 1970s]whether Indian democracy can move beyond this stage and revive again. [after Modi] Ali said.

“7th generation!”

In November 1976, Deenu said he only thought of his pregnant wife Saleema as he sat in a police van while he was being taken away. Salema was at home at the time.

“Many unmarried or children-free men urged officers to let them go,” recalls Diene. None of Deenu’s 14 friends were allowed to go. “I am not a fan of you,” he said. (Sterilization is a curse that has haunted Uttawar every night since.)

Eight days after being taken under police custody, Dien was taken to a sterile camp in Palwal, the closest town to Uttawar, where he was run.

A month later, after he returned from a vasectomy, Salema gave birth to their only child, a son.

Today, Deenu has three grandchildren and several great grandchildren.

“We are the people who saved this village,” he said with a laugh. “If not, Indira would have burned this village.”

In 2024, Salema passed away after a long-term illness. Meanwhile, Deenu enjoys his longevity. He used to play with his grandfather, but now he’s playing with his great grandson.

“Seven generation!” he said, sipping from the plastic cup of cheerful cold drinks. “How many have you seen people enjoy this privilege?”