The National Alliance of People’s Movements (NAPM), one of India’s top civil rights network led by well-known social activist Medha Patkar, has organised what it has called Samvidhan Samman Yatra, starting at Dandi, Gujarat, on October 2, Mahatma Gandhi’s birth anniversary, and ending in Delhi on December 10, the International Human Rights Day, a news report said on August 13.
The aim of the “yatra”, says NAPM, is to highlight the need for safeguarding India’s Constitutional values, democracy, secularism, diversity, equity and justice, even as campaigning against what it calls the atmosphere of hate, inequality, violence and loot of resources allegedly created by the government under Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
The text of the NAPM note on the yatra said inter alia:
In order to invisiblise its draconian, corporate-friendly, anti-people economic and political policy and to drown out popular awareness, questioning and resistance to the burning issues, the present Government and its ‘parivar’ have used slogans, statements, diversion, obfuscation, brute force, troll armies, lynch-mobs etc. to misguide, dis-empower, attack, arrest, loot and even kill people, in particular Muslims and Dalits, repress farmers, workers, women, students and other sections, silence & jail (also shoot) academia, activists, writers, thinkers and anyone who dares question….
We have been witness to foul politics at play, bending democratic electoral processes and violation of constitutional norms in states of Uttarakhand, Manipur, Meghalaya, Delhi and Goa; subversion and hijacking of judicial processes, misuse of the investigating agencies and systematically eroding the credibility and legitimacy of every autonomous institutions in the country, even as every institution, every space is sought to be communalised….
The need of the hour is to create understanding and tolerance in society, by peaceful, democratic and constitutional means. It is equally vital to aim for economic equity, social parity, environmental protection, sustainable development, establishment of people’s rights over access of resources and annihilation of caste and patriarchy.
The yatra will travel through various states in the country, holding meetings, discussions, public events, supporting struggles, sharing grief of victims of the violence and hate and spreading message of plurality, love and peace and shall culminate in Jan Sansad in Delhi on December 10, 2018.
Representatives of peoples’ movements, prominent activists, thinkers, academics, cultural activists, students and others will participate. We invite other comrades, sathis, movements, institutions, organisations and forums to come along with us and endorse the yatra. Everybody who subscribes to the core values of the yatra are welcome to participate either for the full period of the yatra or partially.
The yatra would be undertaken in the following phases:
- Phase-I: From 2nd October to 15th October 2018 – Gujarat, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Vidarbha-Gadchiroli & Chhattisgarh
- Phase-II: 20th October to 5th November, 2018 – Maharashtra, Goa, Karnataka, Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh & Telangana
- Phase-III: 11th November to 10th December 2018 – Jharkhand, Odisha, West Bengal, North Eastern states, Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Himachal Pradesh, Punjab, Haryana & Delhi
- Kashmir Phase: Proposed to be undertaken between Phase-I and Phase-II