Gurjar Days after the National Commission for Scheduled Tribes (NCST) cleared the way for the inclusion of the hill group in the list of Scheduled Tribes, leaders began a foot march in Jammu and Kashmir. The Gujjars fear that the inclusion of Pahari in the ST list will hamper the upliftment of their community.
Young Gujjar leader, Guftar Choudhary has started a pedal march from Kupwara to Kathua, urging the GD Sharma panel to withdraw the recommendations that propose to include the Pahari ethnic group in the ST list. The Paddari tribe”, “Koli” and “Gadda Brahmin” communities are also included in the recommendations.
Choudhary will lead weeks of protests in all 20 districts of Jammu and Kashmir, aimed at pressuring the Center to withdraw a proposal that envisaged reservation of hills under the ST category 30 years ago. The inclusion of new communities in STs needs to be passed in Parliament and the hill leaders hope to do so in the upcoming winter session.
Speaking to News18, Choudhary said that any reservation given to the ‘elite’ Pahari community would be a blow to his tribe which is at the bottom of educational, political and economic indicators. “Despite being the third largest community in J&K, we are far behind in development aspects. It is a pity that our tribe has been used only as a vote bank and no empowerment has happened,” he said roaringly during one such protest.
“Our community has always stood for the country, but yet our rights are being violated at the altar of some politics,” he said.
The Gujjars believe that if the hills are granted ST status, their community will have to compete for jobs, scholarships and other benefits under that category, which was otherwise their patronage. Before the abrogation of Article 370 in 2019, Gujjars would get 10 per cent reservation which was further reduced to 7.5 per cent.
Although there are no wide cultural or linguistic differences between the Gujjars and the Pahari people and mostly live side-by-side in the hills, the tension in their relations has been there for decades and may have been aggravated when the ST quota included the Gujjar and Bakarwal communities.
According to the 2011 census, Gujjars number 1.5 million in Jammu and Kashmir, making it the third largest community after Kashmiris and Dogras. There are over 11 lakh hills, most of whom reside in the Pir Panjal region of Poonch, Rajouri and Reasi districts.
Ever since the talk of getting ST status for hills started last year, Gujjars were very vocal against the move. The community even reached Delhi’s Jantar Mantar to register a protest. He urged the government to “not mistreat the poor Gujjars at the cost of the privileged Pahari people of the upper castes like Mahajan, Gupta, Sayyid and Mirza.”
Other Gujjar leaders said that the hills do not constitute a tribe and therefore do not deserve the ST tag. A Gujjar leader told News18, “The plan to give reservation to the hill people is an injustice to the Gujjars, whose economic, educational and political condition is weak.”
The fresh tension between the two communities over quota will have an impact on the nine newly created reserved assembly seats drawn up by the Delimitation Commission earlier this year. Of the nine ST seats, six are in the Pir Panjal region and three in Kashmir, one each in Anantnag, Ganderbal and Bandipur.
In fact, Home Minister Amit Shah had last month announced plans to give ST status to hill people in Rajouri and Baramulla. Both the rallies attracted thousands of Pahari community members. Pahari’s leaders, irrespective of their political affiliation, had asked their community to make Shah’s rally a huge success. Many hill leaders were in touch with BJP leaders in J&K and Delhi on the issue of reservation and some left their regional parties and joined the BJP. Gujjar leaders had accused him of being “involved in a conspiracy to usurp the rights of a poor community”.
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