Veteran Uttarakhand Aandolankari Mathura Prasad Bamrara, no more

The veteran Uttarakhand movement activist Baba Mathura Prasad Bamrara is no more. It’s really a very sad, shocking and disheartening news and an end of a protracted chapter of relentless struggle. I personally knew Baba Mathura Prasad Bamrada who breathed his last today.

He was a relentless fighter who was imprisoned number of times in separate Uttarakhand movement. In 1978 under the leadership of then MP from Tehri Garhwal, late Trepan Singh Negi Mathura Prasad Bamrara voluntrily courted arrest at Boat Club while forcibly marchig towards parliament and was in Tihar Jail for ten days.

Since then he was involved in every struggle and movement of separate Uttarakhand state having dedicated his entire life for this noble cause. Mathura Prasad Bamrara in actual sense was a symbol of struggle who dedicated his entire life for Uttarakhand and its problems at the expense of his family who suffered tremendously, financially and otherwise. During the separate Uttarakhand phase during the nineties too till the formation of the separate state he was fully involved in the struggle to achieve separate Uttarakhand state.

His entire family was in financial jeopardy during his entire phase of struggle. In addition to this sordid story, what is more shocking and anguishing is the fact that the successive governments that ruled Uttarakhand during the last 18 years provided no financial assistence to him or his financially shattered family, not also for his basic treatment of various ailments he was suffering from.

The tragedy of the whole episode is that he was constrained to sit on hunger strike during the previous Congress chief minister Harish Rawat’s tenure to include him as a recognized ANNDOLANKARI officially and provide employment to his son. He even held several press conferences with the help of his well wishers to draw the attentiontowards his genuine plight but of no awail. Baba Bamrara’s old age phase was extremely challenging carrying so many ailments with no facility for privileged government treatment.

After suffering so much despite his lifelong relentless struggle neither was he declared an official Uttarakhand andolankari, nor his son got employment in any of the government department and he finally met a sad end today. Sounds really bad for a veteran movement activist to meet such a sad end. Om Shanti. May God give peace to the departed soul and sufficient strength to the bereaved family tobear this most irrepetable loss.
SUNIL NEGI