SRINAGAR: With Home Minister Amit Shah announcing early this month that Pahari community in J&K would get ST reservation soon, the Gujjar and Bakerwal community leaders, who are opposing it, have formed a united front Gujjar Bakerwal Joint Action Committee (GBJAC) to fight for the rights of tribal and oppose any move of granting ST reservation to Paharis or any other creamy layers of the society. GBJAC chief spokesman Talib Hussain said various Gujjar and Bakerwal groups and student bodies have joined hands and formed the GBJAC to fight for their rights. The new united front would be led by Haji Mohammad Yousaf.
Gujjar and Bakerwals with a population of over 2 million, he said, were notified as Schedule Tribe in the erstwhile J&K state in 1991 after a struggle of four decades. Opposing any move to grant ST status to the Pahari community, he said, “The ST status cannot be granted on the basis of language. It is granted on the basis of social stigma and backwardness.”
The Paharis, he said, aren’t defined as an ethnic community by any sociological or anthropological research study. “Paharis are a group of different religious communities and castes within religions that came together for a common demand of ST status.”
He said the GBJAC will strongly oppose any move to grant ST status to the creamy layers of the society. “According to the Indian constitution, ST is equal to SC and today you are equating Brahims with the SCs. Those who were landlords, tax collectors and rulers who proudly identified themselves as Rajas, use titles like Sardar and Raja are claiming to be socially isolated and stigmatized.
Brahmins, who held the highest offices, controlled the economy and dwell in towns also complain of social discrimination. How on earth can they and other creamy layers of society be at par with Gujjar-Bakerwal people, who reside mostly on mountainous terrains and jungles sans basic amenities of life,” Talib said.
Asserting that a group of religions with a complex caste structure cannot be designated as a tribe, he said it would be a historic blunder if upper castes are granted the ST status.
Last Pandit woman living in Shopian village leaves
As the administration tried to play down the latest ‘exodus’ of Kashmiri Pandits from Shopian village, the last Pandit woman living in the Choudhari Gund village in south Kashmir district also left for Jammu on Friday and with her leaving, all the 10 Pandit families, who had not migrated in 1990, in the hamlet have left the Valley, a Kashmiri Pandit group said. Kashmir Pandit Sangarsh Samiti president Sanjay Tickoo said that 55-year-old woman left Kashmir for Jammu today.