July 30, 2023
Introduction:
Read more here: https://janataweekly.org/up-gandhian-i ... o-follow/(SabrangIndia via Janata Weekly) On July 22, another legacy of India’s history met with an unfortunate end, and soon, every evidence of its existence will be erased. On Saturday, the Sarva Seva Sangh (SSS), a well-known Gandhian institute that serves as the central office of its various branches all over India, was sealed by the Uttar Pradesh Administration. In an unexpected move, the district officials of Varanasi arrived at the centre around 7 in the morning with over 500 police men with guns, including Rapid Action Force. With the help of some 200 laborers, the police forcibly entered each house in the 12.5 acre campus and removed its residents’ belongings. Thousands of books published by the Sarvodaya publications have been thrown out by the police that now remain lying in the open air wet in the rain. People evicted, with whatever things they could carry, have moved out to their acquaintances.
The said Gandhian institute in Varanasi housed and ran the Kasturba Balvadi School, leaving over 100 poor school children aged 3 to 12 suddenly facing a threat to their education. The SSS conducts a kindergarten school giving free education for the poor children around. When the children arrived for the morning classes on July 22, they found their class room locked by the police.
The Varanasi unit has about 50 members, mostly elderly Gandhians who pay a membership fee and are associated with the Sangh’s work. Some of them taught at its school. The Sangh’s employees too were left jobless and homeless when the police asked them to immediately vacate the premises, where they had lived and worked for 10 to 30 years.
Saturday’s police action came after the railways pasted demolition notices on all the Sangh’s offices on June 27, days after the local administration declared that the land belonged to the railways. The Northern Railways served a notice to the people living in the Sarva Sewa Sangh and alleged that they had encroached upon the land of Northern Railways, adjacent to GT Road, at the northern end of Kashi railway station here.