06 March,2017 09:40 AM IST | | Aparna Shukla
Members of Mumbai's East Indian community take to the streets for their 'ancestral lands', find themselves at the receiving end of animal activists' ire for using horses in the protest
East Indians carry out a protest march in Bandra on Sunday
This is definitely not the outcome they must have envisioned when they took to the streets - them being shown in the wrong.
More than 500 people from Mumbai's East Indian community took out a protest march last morning to demand that their 'ancestral lands' in the city be given back to them. But shortly after, trouble came calling with animal activists slamming them for following an age-old practice of running horse carts, popularly known as 'Reklas' as part of the protest.
Of animals and demands
The members marched from Mount Mary Church to St. Stanislaus Grounds in Bandra not just on foot and bikes, but on the horse carts as well. "We have been getting a lot of backlash from animal rights activists, but there has never been a time when our horses have been hurt. It's not like the Victorias. The Reklas are a part of our tradition since centuries. The purpose of having them in the protest was to show how central they are to our tradition," said Gleason Barreto, chief ambassador of the East Indian community in Mumbai. "There were eight Reklas in the protest, and there are over 40 registered ones in the city."
Chief spokesperson for the community Alphi D'Souza said, "We have been the original inhabitants of the city, but because our ancestors were uneducated, our land was taken away for a pittance. We are peace-loving people and don't want to resort to violence, but we shall not sit in silence anymore." "It is surprising to see other migrant communities being granted their demands, when the East Indians have not been granted even their basic rights," he added.
They raised concerns over the community's fading identity due to rapid concretisation in the city, and demanded that measures be taken to preserve their culture and heritage houses. "We are aboriginals of Mumbai. Instead of demolishing our houses and forcing the early inhabitants to leave, there should be some kind of compensation provided," said D'Souza.
United they stood
The march that ended around noon had members from over 44 NGOs that supported the East Indian community. "We have been suffering for a long time. It's time the government took some stern measures for the welfare of the city's original inhabitants," said Barreto.
