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Beyond the temporary truce

For the moment, the Vasundhara Raje government has reason to feel extremely relieved at having persuaded the Gujjar leadership to call off the agitation for Scheduled Tribe status. The violent protests — which spread outside Rajasthan and began to take the alarming shape of a caste war following rival demonstrations by the Meena community — had threatened to go even further out of hand. The decision to set up a committee headed by a retired High Court judge to consider the Gujjar claim for inclusion in the ST list has brought about the much-needed reprieve. But the BJP government is left with the sticky task of striking a very fine balance between Gujjar aspirations and Meena apprehensions. This is going to be far from easy given the wholesale opposition from the Meenas — who are numerically stronger and enjoy considerable political clout — to sharing the benefits that accrue from ST status with any other community. Reclassifying the status of the increasingly restive Gujjars is not in the hands of the State government, with bodies such as the Union Ministry of Tribal Affairs and the Scheduled Tribes Commission having a say before the matter is put up to Parliament. Clearly, Ms. Raje's rash election promise of conferring ST status on the Gujjars has returned to haunt her. Her experience should serve as a lesson on the dangers in recklessly playing the caste card in order to woo voters.

The massive scale of violence, the failure of the administration to contain rampaging mobs, and the killing of protesters by police firing has severely damaged the image of the Rajasthan government. The shocking fact that the Gujjars and Meenas in the Raje ministry were prepared to line up with their respective communities rather than back the government reflects how deeply caste divisions have taken root in the State. If the Meenas feel threatened by the Gujjars eating into their ST pie, the latter are aggrieved by the Vajpayee government's decision to reclassify Jats as Other Backward Classes — a state of affairs that points to the danger of encouraging competitive caste politics. Lost in the ferocity of the agitation are some fundamental questions: do the Gujjars really deserve ST status? If they do, what about the far more socially deprived communities such as the Sansis, Raikas and Kalbelias? Do politicians ignore them simply because they are numerically much too small to matter electorally? Categorising or reclassifying communities, if required at all, must be a totally transparent and objective exercise on the basis of well-defined criteria. Political parties that seek to distribute the benefits of reservation quotas with an eye on creating vote banks must be allowed no role in this.

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