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| A Haryana village laments British betrayal | | |
BL KAK
NEW DELHI, JULY 19: Quite an interesting piece of news: Residents of a nondescript village in Haryana lament a great betrayal perpetuated on their forefathers by the British. The colonial British rulers had forced residents of the Malcha village to construct their Viceroy House which was renamed as the Rashtrapati Bhavan after India attained independence in 1947.
Residents of the Malcha village lodged their protests recently in their own way with the village chief, Satish, making an abortive attempt to contest the Presidential election. His nomination was rejected since he could not get the requisite number of lawmakers to propose and second his candidature.
Malcha used to be a sprawling and prosperous village with people of all castes and communities living there. Their trouble started after British emperor George V announced shifting of the capital from Calcutta, now Kolkata, to Delhi on December 12, 1911.
The British authorities selected Malcha and the nearby Kushak villages to construct the new capital. The only reminder of the two villages is two roads named as Malcha Marg and Kushak Marg in south Delhi. "British used all methods to drive our forefathers out of the village. While they promised monetary compensation to some, which was never paid, they forced others out by posting their guns all around the village", recalls Satish, whose grandfather had left the village along with hundreds of others overnight, fearing annihilation.
Besides the village's strategic location near the old Delhi and nestling between a hillock, Raisina Hills, and a forest, the villagers had also earned the wrath of the British by giving shelter to the last Mughal emperor Bahadurshah Zafar when he fled the Red Fort after British forces laid siege during the 1857 mutiny.
The village youth fought a guerrilla war by hiding in the forest now known as the Central Ridge. Most of the villagers shifted to a barren land near Sonepat in Haryana and set up a new village with the old name Malcha. "We cannot get back the land of our forefathers. But our only lament is that even after independence, the new dispensation never thought of giving us our due in any form whatsoever", says Satish.
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