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LONG long ago, in a place far away, a king married his eldest daughter to the first man who walked in through the city gates on a cold, misty morning. Jasma Devi had made the mistake of telling her father that she was an independent woman perfectly capable of looking after herself. Predictably, the king was not pleased. The lucky man was Rooda Oud, who had wandered into the city looking for his lost donkey.
Present-day Ouds trace their lineage right back to this fortunate and coincidental union of Jasma and Rooda. The temple at Sanjay Colony, Bhatti Mines, has rich frescos of Jasma, the mother goddess of the Ouds. Sanjay Colony, Indira Nagar and Balbir Nagar, located a stone's throw from each other on the Delhi-Haryana border, collectively form the largest Oud settlement in the country. "Bhatti Mines is the home of the Ouds," proclaims Chandrapal Singh, a resident of Sanjay Colony.
But it was not always so. Traditionally, the Ouds were a nomadic people specialising in earthwork. They wandered through the plains of undivided Punjab, Rajasthan and Gujarat to Delhi digging ponds, lakes, canals, tunnels and trenches. Well known for their expertise, they never spent more than a few months in the same spot; they constantly moved from district to district in search of work.
While the British left the Ouds to their own devices, Partition proved to be their last great journey. Accustomed to the unfettered mobility of nomads, the Ouds were suddenly forced to choose one side of the border. Thus most of the settlers in Bhatti Mines today came from present-day Pakistan.
The first groups of Partition migrants crossed over at the Rajasthan border in 1947 and were given land near Alwar. However, the land was far from fertile. Possessed by a primordial wanderlust, the Ouds left Alwar in search of the life that they had always known. In 1951 they started building the Bhakra Nangal dam, one of the first "temples of modern India". In 1964 they gouged deep trenches through the dusty plains of Rajasthan, bringing water to the desert via the Indira Canal. Over two decades, the Ouds traversed the length and breadth of the country, tearing into the earth with a fury handed down to them from the time of Jasma and Rooda. But by 1970 they had had enough.
In 1975, the Delhi State Industrial Development Corporation (DSIDC) took over the city's emerging stone quarries and Bhatti was transformed from an unimportant clump of trees along the Delhi Ridge to a major producer of Badarpur building materials. At that time Delhi was changing from a picturesque administrative city into a massive, sprawling metropolis with an ever-growing demand for real estate and construction materials. Soon, the mines were employing close to 4,000 workers. With their traditional skill with stone, the Ouds quickly monopolised the quarry work.
Ouds from all over the north flocked to Bhatti, some even came from Pakistan. Over the years they built themselves three ramshackle colonies, and, in the absence of any formal state support, demarcated plots, cleared roads and started work on the Jasma Devi temple.
There are conflicting reports of how Sanjay Gandhi chanced upon the Ouds at Bhatti Mines. Some say he was out on a shikar in the jungles surrounding the mines, others say he had come on government work; but everyone agrees that Sanjay Gandhi was good to them. A foundation stone in the central street stands testimony to the fact that in 1975 Sanjay Colony, Indira Nagar and Balbir Nagar became legal, legitimate colonies.
Over the years Bhatti Mines inched along, providing the stones that built New Delhi. A police post came up, then a primary school, then a secondary school, a dispensary. Traditional mud huts gave way to concrete houses. Community leaders held meetings under trees, money was collected, sewerage lines were laid, houses were electrified, and then, in 1990, the mines shut down.
The stone quarries were closed for a number of reasons - a spate of mining accidents had put the whole project under a cloud, Delhi's explosive growth had made green spaces a treasured commodity, and many mines had eaten so deep into the earth that the trenches had punctured underground aquifers.
Deprived of work at the mines, the villagers, with much difficulty, found employment at construction sites in the city. Apart from routine tasks like digging basements and trenches, the Ouds had found a new specialisation. "You must think of us as the `special forces' of the construction industry," says Ashok Kumar Gargat, a local contractor. "When a mission is too complex for daily wage labourers, we step in."
Internet cabling is one such mission. Like his father who built Jawaharlal Nehru's dreams of stone, tar and concrete, Gargat is building the latest "temple of Modern India" - the information super highway. Laying fibre-optic cables is a delicate and formidable task. All cabling is laid underground and, under the latest guidelines issued by the municipal authorities, road disruption must be kept to a minimum. "Depending on the area, we use one of three different methods," explains Chiman Lal, an Oud labourer. The simplest and least expensive method is the open trench, which is employed inside colonies and areas with minimal traffic flow. The trench is about five feet deep and two feet across, and costs about Rs.50 per labourer per metre. The costs include that of digging, laying the wires and "back-filling" the trench. More common, however, is the technique of "bogeying", where vertical holes are dug at the terminals of the proposed trench. Two teams start digging at either end using long steel poles and gradually work their way towards the centre. At Rs. 75-100 per person per metre bogeying is very popular as it causes no disruption at the surface. It is also cheaper than the third option, outright tunnelling in which workers literally burrow their way under the surface.
While companies such as Tata, Bharti and Reliance hand out cabling contracts to large reputed contractors, the work eventually finds its way through a hierarchy of sub-contractors to the petty contractors at Bhatti Mines. Today, all cabling work in Delhi is done by the Ouds. However, sub-contracting comes at a price. "With every level of management extracting a percentage of the money allocated, there is nothing left for the labourer who actually does the work," says Chiman Lal.
The Ouds at Bhatti Mines have built quite a reputation for themselves. Many petty contractors have now built dense reference networks throughout the country. Ouds from Bhatti have worked in construction projects in Jaipur, Bangalore and even Chennai. So, the Ouds are on the move again. With one crucial difference: Bhatti Mines is not seen as a temporary resting spot, but almost as a spiritual abode. Fixed residency has allowed the Ouds to send their children to school and build permanent houses and has warded off some of the insecurity of nomadic existence. Men and women still move out to work but come back to Bhatti once the job is complete.
However, the peaceful village is under threat. In April 1991, unknown to the residents, the Bhatti Mines area was designated "Reserve Forest". Notification was issued under the Wildlife Protection Act, 1972, declaring the area a wildlife sanctuary. At the time no immediate action was taken, but in 1996 the Delhi Development Authority (DDA) and the Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD) issued their first notice of eviction. The residents appealed against the directive, but their appeal was dismissed in October the same year.
The case has now been taken to the Supreme Court and is being fought by the Human Rights Law Network. Their lawyer, Vipin Matthew Benjamin, explains that initially the Ouds were to be resettled at Jaunapur, a village seven kilometres away. However, after 61 acres of land and Rs.20 crores were allocated, the project was abandoned and the resettlement site shifted to Bawana, more than 50 km away. According to the applications filed by the DDA in the Supreme Court, the Jaunapur Project was abandoned owing to inadequate availability of groundwater.
In their defence, the Ouds have pointed out that Bawana also has a groundwater shortage. Moreover, a survey by Hazard Centre, a non-governmental organisation (NGO), has found that a major reason for water shortage in the Jaunapur area is the proliferation of elite-owned farmhouses and swimming pools.
Benjamin and the Ouds have also pointed out that in spite of being a protected area, Bhatti Mines has also been listed in the 2021 draft of Delhi's masterplan as a proposed landfill site. Environmentalists and the Ouds are up in arms over the proposal. "How can the government claim to be serious about forest preservation if it authorised a landfill right in the middle of a wildlife sanctuary?" asks Ravi Aggarwal of Toxics Links, an NGO specialising in waste management. Aggarwal points out that the landfill will not just pollute the soil, but will also contaminate Delhi's largest underground aquifers. While the MCD claims that the landfills will be lined, Aggarwal explains that all lining has a finite lifespan and contamination is therefore inevitable.
In the meantime, the Ouds continue to live in Bhatti Mines. Labourers gather in the market square every morning to catch a tempo into town. The Jasma Devi temple stands on the edge of a half-dug pond. When the area was declared protected, all construction work in the village was forcibly halted; the pond being no exception. Legend has it that when Rooda died in his final battle against Raja Siddhraj Solanki, an evil king who wanted to marry Jasma, the earth opened up and swallowed her, thus protecting her dignity. If the demolition of the settlement goes ahead as planned, her temple might meet the same fate.
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