Across the assembly constituencies in Rajouri and Poonch where polling is being held on 25 September, the BJP made a concerted effort to reach out to the Gujjar-Bakarwals, a pastoral nomadic community which accounts for the largest chunk of Scheduled Tribes (STs) in the Union Territory, during the campaigning.
The outreach, which varied from one constituency to another, was an attempt by the BJP to quell the anger among a section of the Gujjar-Bakarwals, classified as Scheduled Tribes since 1991, over the Centre’s move, announced ahead of the elections, to recognise the Pahari linguistic group as ST too.
Shah’s announcement was part of the BJP’s broader efforts to appeal to the Muslim community. On the ground, its candidates and workers picked up issues that could resonate with the locals in the Pir Panjal Valley.
For instance, at Rajouri, BJP candidate and former MLC Vibodh Kumar Gupta went to the people, highlighting his efforts to lift the ban on the inter-district recruitment in government jobs that was implemented in 2010, when the government in the erstwhile state was led by the National Conference (NC).
“The ban was brought in by the Srinagar-based political elite to deprive the Gujjar-Bakarwals. I fought tooth and nail to get them their rights by forming a forum called the Rajouri Poonch United Front. That ban was lifted after the abrogation of Article 370. As an MLC, I never discriminated among people on the basis of religion. That has never been my approach,” Gupta told ThePrint at the BJP’s Rajouri office off the Jammu-Poonch Highway on Monday.
In pamphlets, which the BJP distributed across the region, the party highlighted how the expansion of the ST quota benefited students coming from Gujjar and Paharis communities to get admission in MBBS courses through NEET.
Unlike the Gujjar-Bakarwals, who are primarily Muslims, the Paharis are made up mostly of upper caste Hindus, including Brahmins and Rajputs. Paharis with surnames such as Sharma and Gupta also come under the ST category.
By classifying them as STs, the BJP fulfilled a long-pending demand of the Paharis, a large section of which is rallying behind the party in the Rajouri-Poonch belt, which has the highest concentration of Gujjar-Bakarwals and Paharis in the UT.
“However, in doing so, the BJP alienated a large section of the Gujjar-Bakarwals who were fiercely against the demand of the Paharis to be recognised as STs. It is difficult for any party to win seats in this belt if the Gujjar-Bakarwals turn against them completely,” said a senior BJP leader in the Rajouri district, which is a four-hour drive from Jammu city via NH144A large parts of which is dug up due to construction activities.
Ever since it formed a government at the Centre, the BJP tried to cultivate a base among the Gujjar-Bakarwals, who are distinct from the dominant Kashmiri Muslim ethnicity, by inducing their popular leaders. In 2022, the move to reserve, for the first time, nine seats for STs in the J&K Assembly was seen as one such attempt.
In the paper ‘Demography, Social and Cultural Characteristics of the Gujjars and Bakarwals, A Case Study of Jammu and Kashmir’, academic Mohammed Tufail wrote that the Gujjar-Bakarwals, having origins in Central Asia, entered J&K in the 5th and 6th centuries during periods of severe famine in present day Rajasthan and Gujarat.
“They have distinct culture which differs from other communities in Jammu and Kashmir. Their festivals, marriage practices of them, dress code and several other ceremonies performed during the weddings create a distinct image for them in the state,” the paper notes.
Out of the nine seats reserved for the STs, Rajouri, Thannamandi, Surankote, Mendhar, Budhal and Gulabgarh fall in the Jammu division. Polls were held in Gulabgarh in the first phase on 18 September.
However, the decision to expand the ST list by including Paharis, Paddari, Gadda Brahmin and Koli communities antagonised the Gujjar-Bakarwals. The BJP sought to pacify the community by carving out a sub-group of under the ST category for the newly inducted groups.
Resultantly, there is no overlap between the 10 per cent reservation each that the Gujjar- Bakarwals and the Paharis get in jobs and education. “The opposition tried to spread rumours that we were snatching the rights of the Gujjars. But that is not the case. They benefited from reservations all these years. We did not object. I am sure they will have no issues if our community benefits likewise without eating into their share,” said Yogesh Kumar Sharma, a Pahari who works as an advocate in Rajouri city.
But these arguments achieved little in placating the Gujjar-Bakarwals, who were hoping to exclusively benefit from political reservation as well.
The Gujjar-Bakarwal coordination committee had even approached the Election Commission demanding that only members of the community be allowed to field candidates in the nine seats reserved for STs. But the EC kept the seats open for all communities classified as STs, including the Paharis.
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Goodwill undone for BJP?
Now, the BJP fears that its efforts to generate goodwill for the party among the Gujjar-Bakarwals may have come undone. In the 2024 Lok Sabha polls, the NC won Anantnag Rajouri, which encompasses the six ST reserved seats in Jammu, by a big margin, while the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) finished second. The Apni Party, backed by the BJP, was a distant third.
Dr Nissar Chaudhary, a retired surgeon who is among the prominent Gujjar faces supporting the BJP, alleged that at Rajouri, two Gujjar candidates, including former judge Zubair Ahmed Raza, withdrew their candidatures at the behest of the Congress to ensure a consolidation of Gujjar-Bakarwal votes against the BJP.
“We know it is difficult to win seats here if there is a Gujjar-Bakarwal consolidation against us; that’s why the party is trying to blunt the Congress and NC’s attempts to label the BJP as communal. Because history is witness that the Gujjar-Bakarwals have been treated as second class citizens by the Kashmiri political elite,” said Surendra Sharma, BJP functionary at the Thannamandi constituency.
The allegation that the Gujjar-Bakarwals faced discrimination at the hands of the Kashmiri political elite and the dominant Muslim groups is not without substance though.
In his paper, ‘Understanding the Gujjar-Pahari fault line in Jammu and Kashmir’, political commentator Zafar Choudhary argues that Gujjars, who suffered enormously in the hands of militants for siding with the security forces, “are economically perhaps the most disadvantaged section of society in Jammu and Kashmir”.
He also points out how Gujjars make the largest proportion of domestic help in the households of Rajputs whereas no Rajput, even the poorest of them, served even with the richest of the Gujjars.
The granting of ST status to Gujjars, he added, worsened the social divide as the affirmative action helped them climb up the social ladder by rising to the rank of tehsildars or occupy senior positions in the police force, including in areas predominantly inhabited by the Rajputs and Brahmins.
“Since inclusion of Gujjars in ST could not have been reversed, they (Paharis) launched a movement for their own inclusion in the Scheduled Tribe. For this purpose all non‐Gujjar ethnic identities, including Rajputs, Syeds and Brahmins grouped under a single umbrella identity of Pahari-speaking people and thus forming an identity based on language,” Choudhary writes.
(Edited by Tony Rai)
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