Gujjar leaders have started a foot march across Jammu and Kashmir days after the National Commission for Scheduled Tribes (NCST) cleared the way for the inclusion of the Pahari group in the Scheduled Tribes list. The Gujjars apprehend that the Pahari’s inclusion in the ST list will come in the way of their community upliftment.
Guftar Chowdhary, a youth Gujjar leader, has started a paidal march from Kupwara to Kathua to urge the G D Sharma panel to roll back the recommendations that propose to include the Pahari ethnic group into the ST list. The Paddari tribe”, “Koli” and “Gadda Brahman” communities are also included in the recommendations.
Chowdhary will lead the protests in all 20 districts of J&K for weeks, aiming to put pressure on the Centre to roll back the proposal that envisages reservation to the Paharis under the ST category that Gujjars got 30 years ago. The inclusion of the new communities in the ST needs to be passed in the Parliament and the Pahari leaders are hoping it would be done in the upcoming winter session.
Talking to News18, Chowdhary said that any reservation given to the ‘elite’ Paharis community would be a setback to his tribe which is at rock bottom on educational, political, and economic indicators. “Despite being the third largest community in J&K, we have far lagged in the development aspects. It is a pity that our tribe has been used as a vote bank only and no empowerment has happened,” he thundered during one such protest.
“Our community has always stood for the country but in spite of that our rights are being usurped at the altar of some politics,” he said.
The Gujjars believe if Paharis are granted the ST status, their community would have to compete for jobs, scholarships, and other benefits under the category which otherwise was their preserve. Before Article 370 was taken down in 2019, the Gujjars would get 10 percent of reservations which came further down to 7.5 percent.
Though the Gujjars and Paharis don’t have vast cultural or linguistic differences and mostly live side by side in the hills, the strain in their relationship has been there for decades and perhaps exacerbated when the ST quota included the Gujjar and Bakerwal communities.
As per the 2011 census, the Gujjars constitute 15 lakh people in J&K, the third largest community after Kashmiris and Dogras. There are more than 11 lakh Paharis, the bulk of them living in the Pir Panjal region comprising of Poonch, Rajouri, and Reasi districts.
Since the talk of Paharis getting ST status started to do rounds last year, the Gujjars were very vociferous against the move. The community even reached Jantar Mantar in Delhi to lodge a protest. They urged the government not to treat “poor Gujjars unfairly at the expense of privileged Paharis who comprise of upper castes like Mahajans, Guptas, Saiyyeds and Mirzas.”
Other Gujjar leaders said Paharis do not constitute a tribe and hence don’t deserve an ST tag. “The plan to give reservation to Pahari people is an injustice to Gujjars whose economic, educational, and political conditions are weak,” a Gujjar leader told News 18.
Fresh tensions between the two communities over quota will have a bearing on the nine newly carved out reserved assembly seats, drawn by the Delimitation Commission early this year. Out of the nine ST seats, six are spread in the Pir Panjal region and three in Kashmir, one each in Anantnag, Ganderbal, and Bandipore.
In fact, the plan to grant the ST status to Paharis was announced by Home Minister Amit Shah in Rajouri and Baramulla last month. Both rallies attracted thousands of Pahari community members. Leaders of the Pahari, irrespective of their political affiliation, had even asked their community to make Shah’s rally a huge success. Many Pahari leaders were in touch with BJP leaders in J&K and Delhi over the reservation issue and a few even dumped their regional parties to join BJP. Gujjar leaders had accused them of “entering into a conspiracy to usurp the rights of an impoverished community.”
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