By Chandramohan New Delhi (Syndicate Features): Rajasthan’s reputation as one of the more peaceful states of the country has been shattered by a double whammy that came in quick succession in the month of May in the form of a serial terrorist attack in Jaipur and the Gujjar agitation both of which taking a heavy toll of lives. The Gujjar community’s agitation for the inclusion of their community in the scheduled tribe list has affected the daily life in large parts of Rajasthan and caused unrest in many areas in northern India, including Delhi.
The Raje government seems to have little faith in dialogue and places more trust in the use of force. During the last four years there have been about 16 cases of police firing on agitators in the state with a century of death toll. Before the Gujjars, agitating farmers had had a taste of the state government’s fury when they were brutally beaten up at Ganganagar. The dubious record of police firing and lathi charge on agitators may now come to haunt the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party, as the state gets ready to elect another assembly by the end of the year.
After the terrorist attacks in Jaipur the state put all the blame on the Centre. Now the Gujjar agitation finds the chief minister Vasundhara Raje and the BJP transferring the onus of handling the trouble for which they are responsible to the Centre. She may disown it today but the chief minister had clearly told the Gujjar community during the 2003 state assembly election campaign that they would be included in the scheduled tribe list where they hoped to get better opportunities for education and government jobs. Blame games will not help her or her party solve problems as serious as terrorism and caste agitation.
Rajasthan faced a Gujjar agitation last year when it also saw violence resulting in many deaths. The recurrence of the Gujjar agitation in more violent form points to state government’s failure in finding a solution to a problem of its own creation even after 12 months. In the summer of 2007 Vasundhara Raje had managed to persuade the leader of the Gujjar agitation, Lt Col (retd) Kirori Singh Bainsala, to call off the agitation by announcing that a committee was being set up to examine the demand for inclusion of the Gujjar community in the list of other backward classes.
The septuagenarian Bainsala had to face tough opposition from some young leaders of his community who did not want to call off the agitation unless the state government gave a categorical assurance that the Gujjars would be included in the ST list. These dissidents had warned the colonel that the Raje government was not serious in meeting their demand.
The government appointed committee did not recommend the inclusion of Gujjars in the ST list but favoured a package of economic measures for the community, which apparently did not meet the aspirations of the agitating leaders. The Gujjars are also not ready to accept the latest offering from Vasundhara Raje about 4 to 6 per cent reservations for them in jobs in the state. This offer in any case makes no sense as its implementation will be possible only if the 50 per cent cap on quotas fixed by the Supreme Court is breached. Raje and her party know it only too well that transferring a community from one list to another is not easy and nor is it possible to violate the apex court’s directive.
But even the first step in transferring the Gujjars to the ST list has not been taken by the Rajasthan government. Despite all the pressure from the Gujjar community leaders, the BJP-run state government has failed to recommend to the Centre that the Gujjars be now part of the ST list. The state government’s offer of a Rs 282-crore special economic package designed to benefit the Gujjars in five districts inhabited by them has not impressed them either. The chances of permanently ending the imbroglio over the Gujjars’ agitation look distant because the administration does not know how to pacify the agitated leaders.
The Gujjars’ demand is neither unexpected nor altogether surprising. The BJP egged them on to raise the demand for their inclusion in the ST list during the 2003 state assembly election with an eye on the polls and also to embarrass the Congress, which had faced the same demand earlier. For Vasundhara Raje personally there might be an additional reason for making a promise to the Gujjars. She was perceived as an ‘outsider’ by her own party stalwarts who did not want her to become the chief minister. She had to do everything to reach out to as many castes and communities as was possible for a BJP candidate.
She might well have taken her cue from the BJP icon, Atal Bihari Vajpayee, who in 1999 had managed to get the Jats, till then considered traditional Congress supporters, on the side of the saffron party by including them in the OBC list.
Vasundhara Raje and the BJP could not have been unaware in 2003 that the powerful and numerically more Meena community would resent the inclusion of the Gujjars in the ST list. That is what happened last year when the Meenas were up in arms, literally, against the move to bring the Gujjars into the ST list. The doors for Gujjars’ inclusion in the ST list had been shut by the political clout of the Meenas, whose inclusion in the ST list in 1954 was a matter of controversy. The Meenas had for long been the ruling tribe in the erstwhile princely state of Jaipur.
Raje’s promise to the Gujjars would not have come without the prior approval of senior leaders of the BJP in the state, especially Bhairon Singh Shekhawat who fancies himself as a modern-day Chanakya, at least in the BJP camp. After winning the allegiance of the Jats the entry of the Gujjars into the BJP fold amounted to staging a big political coup by the Hindutva party. The BJP aim was to get the support of the three powerful OBC sections in Rajasthan—Meenas, Jats and Gujjars.
But it is a different that all three of them cannot be clubbed into one category of reservation. With their ST status, the Meenas were able to claim the largest share in government jobs among all the scheduled tribes of Rajasthan. The Meenas have a vested interest in keeping their special position—and keeping threats from other castes and communities away. The Meenas went on the warpath when they thought the Raje government was trying to include the Gujjars in the ST list from the more elaborate and competitive OBC list.
The Meenas would certainly turn away from the BJP if ever that transfer is accomplished while the Jats would certainly be encouraged to demand that they too be bracketed with the Gujjars as far as the reservation list is concerned. The BJP tinkered with the caste card in the hope of making electoral gains. Sadly, the BJP game is threatening to snowball into a prolonged caste conflict in large parts of the country. (Syndicate Features)
