Caste, a crooked eye
For a student of history, the ongoing Gujjar agitation in Rajasthan
carries a profound level of sadness. Last year, more than a dozen
Gujjars had lost their lives in an attempt to demand Scheduled Tribe
(ST) status for their community in Rajasthan. This time, 36 people have
died in police firing. A lot of justified noise was made when 14 people
died of police firing in Nandigram. But Gujjar deaths do not seem to
evoke the same kind of media sympathy.
Historically, the Gujjars are effectively ‘1857 forces’, in the same
league as Lodhs, Banjaras, Ramoshis, Dhangars, Mewatis, Kols and Gonds
who fought in the 1857 Uprising against the British as a community. On
May 10, 1857, when the 3rd Cavalry threw off allegiance to the British
in Meerut to kick-start what is now recognised as the 19th century’s
greatest anti-colonial revolt, the Meerut cantonment had a sizeable
60th Her Majesty Regiment composed of crack British soldiers. The 3rd
Cavalry sowars and 11th and 20th Bengal Native Infantry sepoys did not
have artillery; but the 60th Foot Regiment was well supplied with
cannons. The 60th HMR men could have easily pursued and cut the march
of Meerut revolutionaries towards Delhi. But it was the turbulent
Gujjars of the Meerut countryside who surrounded the British cantonment
in such large numbers that British soldiers found it difficult to
advance.
The Imperial Gazetteer of India states that throughout the “Indian
Rebellion of 1857, the Gujars and Musalman Rajputs proved the most
irreconcilable enemies of the British. A band of rebellious Gujjars
ransacked Bulandshahr after a revolt by the 9th Native Infantry on May
21, 1857. The British forces were able to retake the town with the
help of Dehra Gurkhas, but the Gujars rose again after the Gurkhas
marched off to assist General Wilson’s column in another area. Under
the leadership of Walidad Khan of Malagarh, the British garrison was
driven out the district. Walidad Khan held Bulandshahr from July to
September, until he was expelled after an engagement with Colonel
Greathed’s flying column. On October 4, the Bulandshahr District was
regularly occupied by the British Colonel Farquhar and measures of
repression were adopted against the armed Gujars.”
During the revolt of 1857, the Muslim Gujjars in the villages of
Ludhiana district showed dissent towards the British authorities. The
British interests in Gangoh city of Saharanpur District were
‘threatened’ by the rebel Gujjars under the leadership of Raja Fathua.
The Gujjars of Chundrowli rose against the British, under the
leadership of Damar Ram. The Gujjars of Shunkuri village, numbering
around 3,000, joined the rebel sepoys. According to further British
records, the Gujjars plundered gunpowder and ammunition from the
British and their allies. In Delhi, the Metcalfe House was sacked by
the Gujjar villagers from whom the land was taken to erect the
building.
Gujjar turbulence owed a lot to their nomadic status and the British
attempt to settle them as peaceful land revenue paying peasantry.
During the Mughal era, Gujjars were known for their entrepreneurial
role — they not only exchanged milk and other commodities but also
guarded the trade routes of North India. The colonial-British State,
keen to turn every rural element into a peasant, did not understand the
community’s entrepreneurial role. So after 1857, the British classified
the Gujjars (and around 150 other Indian communities) as ‘criminal
tribes’ through the Criminal Tribes Act, 1871. In this move,
communities that had fought for Bahadur Shah Zafar in 1857 were openly
targeted. Several other forces like the Pardhis of Vidarbha and the
Dhangars and the Ramoshi-Berads of Maharashtra and Karnataka also
suffered. Most of them were warrior-nomads or warrior-hunters of the
Mughal and Maratha era. During the colonial era, basic human rights
were denied to these communities. They were literally given an
‘anti-social’ tag. Their position became worse than that of many Dalit
communities in the country.
The Government of India repealed the noxious British act in 1952.
But the after-affects of the social exclusion of these communities
impacted heavily when it came to granting them reservations. Listed
separately as De-Notified Tribes (DNT), they were not at first put in
the Other Backward Classes (OBC), the Scheduled Caste (SC) or the ST
category. By the 1970s, Gujjars of several areas, including Rajasthan,
were granted OBC status. But this created a discrimination as the
Gujjars of North India and the Dhangars of West India were unable to
compete with upwardly mobile OBCs like the Yadavs, the Kurmis, the Jats
(in Rajasthan), the Kunbis (Maharashtra), and the Lingayats and
Vokalligas (Karnataka). A special category of Most Backward Caste (MBC)
with a ‘quota within quota’ situation ought to have been created for
them.
In Bihar, Karpuri Thakur, the MBC Chief Minister of the state in the
late 1970s, created ‘Annexure 1’ and ‘Annexure 2’ especially for the
MBCs. If applied to areas like Rajasthan, this formula could have gone
a long way in ameliorating Gujjar grievances. But apart from Bihar no
other state took the pain of adopting this methodology.
The Gujjars are not alone in agitating. The Kurubas of Karnataka and
the Dhangars and the Ramoshi-Berads of West India, too, have been
demanding ST status for long. So the Gujjar agitation touches a wider
political nerve. Slowly, the ST/SC categories have become more the
monopolies of certain sub-castes within the Dalits and the Adivasis.
While the ‘Chamars’ of Uttar Pradesh and the ‘Mahars’ of Maharashtra
have received the maximum benefit of the SC category, the Meenas of
Rajasthan have exercised a near monopoly in the ‘ST-reserved’ tag in
Rajasthan. So much so that there is a powerful Meena lobby in Delhi and
Rajasthan structures — powerful enough to make even Chief Ministers and
Cabinet Ministers sweat.
The game gets murkier when one comes to UP. Here the Kols,
designated as ST in Bihar and Jharkhand, are listed in the SC category,
where it is almost impossible for them to compete with upwardly mobile
Dalit groups. The Gonds of UP are tagged as ST — but ST is not even a
recognised category in UP! So there are no jobs or electoral
reservations for UP Gonds while Madhya Pradesh Gonds can take advantage
of these privileges as MP recognises the ST category.
The political leadership in the country does not seem interested in
the problem of MBCs, who constitute more than half of the OBC
population and about 30 per cent of India’s population. Either the
Bihar formula should be followed everywhere, or special provisions
should have been made for them. Unless this is done, the desperately
poor and backward MBCs, who unlike Dalits have failed to create their
urban middle class, will continue to agitate over their exclusion from
the ST or other beneficial categories. Their agitation now holds the
prospect of altering political equations. It’s time to take a look at
the ongoing demand before it spills further out of control.
