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Hansraj Vij is 83 years old. He is a little hard of hearing. His memory has also become weak, but he does not forget one day about 71 years ago.
It was January 10, 1948. Barely four months had passed since India’s independence. There was sudden chaos in Bannu district of the then North-West Frontier Province or NWFP (now Pakistan’s Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province), where Vij lived. Members of his family said that they would have to leave the house. His father said they would be heading to India.
Vij reached Peshawar with his family and from there, he was put on a train. The next day, on January 11, a massacre started on the moving train. Many people were killed, including his aunt’s son who was shot by someone. But Vij and his family somehow hid themselves and reached a camp set up for evacuees in Faridabad near Delhi. Within no time, a city arose there.
Faridabad, as a settlement, dates back to the era of Jehangir, the fourth of the six Great Mughals. But after the Partition of British India, an empty area near this old city was chosen to settle the refugees who came from Pakistan. It was named by the first Prime Minister of India, Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru, as New Industrial Town (NIT) Faridabad.
It is estimated that about eight million people fled from the newly-created Dominion of Pakistan and came to India. Of these, about 80,000 people were from NWFP. Among these, about 30,000 people were first accommodated in the main refugee camp at Kurukshetra and then Faridabad (which was a tehsil of Punjab at that time and is now in Haryana), situated at a short distance from the capital Delhi. Pandit Nehru himself supervised this camp, as these people who came from NWFP were followers of Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan or Bacha Khan. Bacha Khan was known as ‘Frontier Gandhi’ and was very close to Mahatma Gandhi and Pandit Nehru.
LC Jain, who was associated with the Quit India Movement during his student life and took part in the rehabilitation of displaced people after independence, has written the entire story of the settlement of Faridabad in the book, The City of Hope: The Faridabad Story. He writes that Faridabad became an example for India in many respects. The people living here built houses for themselves (self-help). They also built roads, parks, schools and hospitals.
These people had been uprooted. But they refused to take the government’s dole and told the authorities that they would work as labourers and build the city for themselves.
Isn’t this exactly what happened in the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MNREGA), which started in February 2006? In MNREGA, people are given the task of developing their village and its surrounding areas.
Although Nehru wanted to get the work of building the new city done by the public works department, the Indian Cooperative Union (ICU) had been formed by then to give official status to the cooperative movement and Kamladevi Chattopadhyay was made the president. It was proposed by ICU that the new city be constructed through ICU, which was approved by Nehru.
The first prime minister was very serious about Faridabad. He wrote a letter to the then Chief Minister of Punjab, Bhim Sen Sachar, on April 17, 1949, “Perhaps you may be aware that there is a refugee camp in Faridabad, 15 miles from Delhi, where there is now a plan to build a township, but the work is going on slowly. Yes, I want Punjab to participate in this work and the Centre will give the money. To complete the work quickly, the Army should also be involved; apart from the camps, it should also work on building new townships. Due to its proximity to Delhi, all the work will be handled from Delhi.”
A cabinet meeting was called on May 25, 1949, and the formation of the Faridabad Development Board was approved. After this decision, the Board was formed on June 10, 1949. President Rajendra Prasad was appointed its chairman. Nehru himself was its invited member. As the Chief Administrator of the Board, Nehru appointed Sudhir Ghosh, who was very close to Mahatma Gandhi and had worked as a liaison between the British Government and Gandhi.
Another letter of Nehru gives an idea of what the first city of newly independent India should be like. This letter of May 12, 1949, is also mentioned in LC Jain’s book. Nehru wrote that there were two important issues: First, planning of the town and second, the number of people for whom the town should be built. The planning department will have to keep in mind that there will not only be houses in the township. Arrangements will have to be made for playgrounds where children can play and develop. There should also be open spaces. Besides, space will also have to be kept for schools and markets.
Faridabad was the first industrial city to be established in post-independent India. Therefore, it would be interesting to know what Nehru thought about industries. He wrote, “How to set up small, big or both industries in the township? If this work is not carefully planned, workers will not be able to find a place to live and slums will flourish. Big industries are not bad, but they have to give an undertaking that they will build quarters for their workers, like it happens in Europe.”
The administration of the refugee camp was with the Army. This was troubling the displaced people. They talked to their leaders about it. When Pandit Nehru came to know about it, he gave instructions to form an advisory committee. Salar Sukhram was made its chairman. His 81-year-old son Jamanlal Vij recalls, “Eleven members of the committee were elected, which was the first election to be held in the independent country.” This is also mentioned in Jain’s book.
Vij says that after all the administrative preparations, the foundation of New Town Faridabad was laid on October 17, 1949. The advisory committee was given the responsibility of building the city as well as maintaining law and order. People were asked to form cooperative institutions according to their capacity. Seven people together formed a cooperative society and got themselves registered with the ICU. Contracts started being given to the cooperative institutions. People employed by these institutions were paid wages of one-and-a-half rupees per day.
Jyoti Sang, an elderly author living in Faridabad, says, “Nehru was so fond of the city that he participated in 21 of the 24 meetings of the Faridabad Development Board. It was decided to build 5,196 houses on 233 square yards in the city. A budget of Rs 5 crore was allocated for this. But since people were building their own city, the final cost came to Rs 4.64 crore, and the rest of the money was returned to the government.”
The price of a house was kept at Rs 1,800 and people were asked to repay the money in monthly installments of 11 rupees and 14 annas. The city was divided into five sectors. These were called Neighborhoods (NH). NH-4 was left for government offices and residences of officers and employees. A powerhouse was built at some distance from the city. About 20 miles of roads were built. Apart from this, eight big schools, a big hospital, health centre, water works, drainage system, a cinema house and an industrial sector were built. All this work was completed in just 2.5 years. Within no time, Faridabad gained recognition as an industrial city not only in the country but also abroad.
Sang says, “We came from Pakistan as displaced people and were deridingly called ‘refugees’. But we liked to call ourselves goal-driven human beings. The work of those who were building the city by forming a cooperative society started being appreciated in Delhi too and they started being called for construction work in many areas of Delhi. The first Bata Shoe factory was established in Faridabad. Within no time, hundreds of factories started coming up. Some of those who left everything behind, set up their own factories and today, many of them are big industrialists of the country. KC Lakhani of Lakhani Industries Group is one among them.”
This is a translated version of the original article published on December 30, 2019. Read the original article here