30 Minutes: Gurjar war not yet over

    

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Jaipur: The six-day long Gurjar agitation for Scheduled Tribe (ST) status cost lives, property and brought Rajasthan to a stop. But if you thought the issue is over, think again.

The Rajashtan government’s agreement with Gurjars was about buying time and stopping the violence, which the Supreme Court has called a national shame

As a judicial committee examines whether Gurjars should be given ST status, it may be too late. Rajashtan Chief Minister Vasundhara Raje, by not cracking down on the violence, has in fact sown the seeds of a caste war.

The Gurjars began their agitation on May 29 at Peepal Khera village by demanding Raje to fulfill her election promise and declare them a Scheduled Tribe.

Fourteen people, including a policeman, were killed on the first morning of the agitation in police firing. The enraged community refused to cremate their dead and the agitation spread.

Seventeen-year-old Anita’s husband Ram Veer Gurjar, 19, died in the firing. The shock has made Anita look aged but she is proud that her husband died for the “cause”.

“I am unhappy that he died, but it is all right for the cause of reservations. It doesn’t matter if we do not get reservations, others of our community will,” Anita says at her home in Peepal Khera village.

Ram Veer owned a small piece of land in a drought-prone and impoverished village. Few parents can afford to send their children to school here and the only government jobs some Gurjars manage to get is with the armed forces. Reservation, particularly ST status, is therefore seen as a way out of poverty.

The Gurjars felt the government had cheated them, and deaths in police firing made matters worse. "I always keep the bullet which hit me in my pocket. I don’t want to forget what the government did to me that day. The police beat me up though I pleaded with them to spare me," says farmer Roop Singh of Peepal Khera.