The Buffalo jinx

The Buffalo jinx Jagdeep S. Chhokar The Pioneer , June 25, 2007 The recent events in Rajasthan starting with the Gujjars and later involving the Meenas have attracted a lot of comment on the Gujjars and on the OBCs in general. Some of these are at best peculiar perceptions mixed with personal prejudices disguised as intellectual discourse without any factual basis, an example of which is Chandrabhan Prasad’s piece ‘Akal badi ki bhains’ (The Pioneer, June 03, 2007) falls. Before going into the merit of Prasad’s thesis, first a brief perspective on the “violence in Rajasthan”. The genesis of the current situation possibly was in 1999 when the state government of Rajasthan and the Union government gave the OBC status to Jats which resulted in a strong agitation by the Brahmins and the Rajputs, of all the groups. It was surprising for a lot of observers to find these two seemingly major and dominant communities—Brahmins being the highest in the four-fold classification and Rajputs being the warriors and kings for whom Rajasthan has been famous—protesting and demanding OBC status for themselves—the reverse of the process of Sanskritisation postulated by the famous sociologist M.N. Srinivas. What seemed to be happening was what could be called de-sanskritisation. The agitation continued for a couple of years but then petered out but it did highlight the irrationality of the decision to give OBC status to the Jats. Being a dominant community, Jats came to occupy 25 to 90 percent of all the government jobs under the OBC quota in the following years. Gujjars, who were one among the 80 or so OBC groups, thus got squeezed out by Jats from the OBC quota. On the other side, they saw Meenas, a group who were far more prosperous than them, making remarkable gains by being in the ST category. The fact the Gujjars had been given ST status in Jammu and Kashmir, and in Himachal Pradesh made Gujjars think of getting that status in Rajasthan also. All political parties, without exception, encouraged this feeling among the Gujjars in the hope of getting votes from them. The BJP was no exception. As a matter of fact, there were media reports of Vasundhara Raje highlighting her son’s marriage into a Gujjar family during her election campaigns in Gujjar dominated areas. But of course all such promises get forgotten after the elections. The obvious logical and rational way to deal with the so-called “Rajasthan problem” would be to remove Jats from the OBC list and to remove Meenas from the ST list but this being an obvious impossibility in the current climate of political opportunism in the country, if we as a nation and society can learn the lesson that caste-based reservations have done and will do more harm (in the form of creating further divisions, conflicts, and animosities in the society) than good, something good may eventually come out of the “violence in Rajasthan.” Whether they are descendants of the Huns or of the valiant Gurji tribe in central Asia between Russia and Turkmenistan or in Georgia, or they separated from the Rajputs over centuries, or ruled major parts of western India as Gurjar Pritaharas around the 5th to the 7th centuries AD, Gujjars today live in at least 10 states of the country (Jammu and Kashmir, Himachal Pradesh, Punjab, Haryana, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, Uttrakhand, Gujarat, and Maharashtra) not counting Delhi. The fact that there are Gujjars in Afghanistan and Pakistan, also support the theory that they originally came from central Asia. They also transcendent religion being Hindus, Muslims, and Sikhs; and language speaking the language of the state or region they live in. Though primarily farmers (some subsistence, some more prosperous) and cattle hearders, Hindus Gujjars generally consider themselves to be Kshatriyas, though Gujjars are also known to be Brahmins, particularly in Maharashtra. The community played a significant role in the 1857 uprising and was the object of deliberate and sustained oppression by the British after 1857 as a part of the systematic retribution, including confiscation of their lands and declaring them one of the “criminal tribes”. The fact that the community continues to be generally educationally and economically backward despite being socially and politically dominant in small pockets, is possibly the aftermath of the British oppression. With this background, let us return to Prasad’s interesting thesis generalized from the Gujjars and the current “violence in Rajasthan” to the entire OBC lot, with a skillful use of a popular saying in some parts of northern India. While I will refrain from commenting on the applicability of his thesis to all the OBCs, I think some response on the thesis as far as the Gujjars are concerned in part because I think I do have some experience and, I hope, knowledge of this community. The reason for my assuming such experience and knowledge is not only the fact that I happened to have been born in this community more than 60 years ago but more importantly that I have been an observer, some times active and some times passive, but all the time, I guess, as a participant-observer to what happens in and to the community. It may be worth mentioning here that the fact of my belonging to this community has never been either a handicap or an advantage in my professional career, starting with the Indian Railways and ending with a stint of almost 22 years with the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad. I therefore hope and believe that whatever I chosen to write is not unduly affected by the fact that I happen to be a Gujjar myself. Some of the “facts” presented by Prasad are possibly debatable, at best. “A further probe reveals that there can be no Gujjar or Jat without a buffalo or two” says Prasad. While the details of the methodology of the “probe” might well be very revealing and educative, unless Prasad is grossly exaggerating for the effect, this finding of the “probe” can easily be refuted by empirical observation. What Prasad possibly does not realize or notice is that there are a lot of people who do not go around wearing their caste descriptive labels either as a badge of honour or as an apology for belonging to that particular caste. As a personal observation during my somewhat long association with Gujjars, I have actually never seen “a buffalo or two” either in the drawing room or even the courtyard of any of my clansmen. Prasad also refers to Lalu Prasad Yadav as “the brightest OBC role model” and to Mulayam Singh Yadav as “another OBC role model”. Once again, unless he is being facetious or looking at the OBCs through a particular lens, it is not clear which OBCs has he been in touch with and how has he missed the derision associated with both Lalu Prasad and Mulayam Singh amongst substantial number of OBCs. Prasad seems to be somewhat sad that “the fact (that) OBCs live revolve around buffaloes and cows … (is) not much researched or written about.” This raises two issues. First, if it indeed is a “fact” then what is the need to research it? The second arises in combination with the “role models”. Since Lalu Prasad and Mulayam Singh made a big show of keeping buffaloes and cows when they were Chief Ministers, Prasad concludes that all OBCs cannot live without cows and buffaloes. Another implicit assumption being that OBCs are a monolithic whole who can and are fully represented by a few politically astute people who have succeeded in getting into the public eye, which perhaps is as true as a some Brahmins who are prominent in public life represent the entire lot of Brahmins including those who work as coolies, scavengers, and rickshaw pullers in some cities! The example of Brahmins is used purposefully as Prasad himself seems to prefer such comparisons since he says that “a buffalo can turn even a Brahmin into an OBC.” What is meant by a Brahmin being “turned into” an OBC is of course not very clear in itself. Despite some questionable “facts”, some of Prasad’s conclusions are valid. One indisputably: “…the thesis of reservations is becoming disputable…” although when one looks at the complete statement, some doubts do creep in. The complete statement which is Prasad’s last sentence is “Sadly, because of OBCs’ buffalo jinx, the thesis of reservations is becoming disputable at a time when Dalits/Adivasis are seeking a space in the private sector.” Thinking about the difference between “reservations” and “seeking a space”, one wonders if these two seemingly distinct ways of representing what effectively is the same concept, are a manifestation of the different feelings that Prasad may for the OBCs and the Dalits/Adivasis. The other valid conclusion is that “Like Gujjars, the OBC mass has a choice to make…” This is valid even at the national and societal level. The nation and the society have a choice to make, and that is between political expediency of caste-based reservations and national and societal well-being through provision of equal opportunity for all independent of the happenstance of one’s birth in a particular community. The pan-Indian, actually pan-Asian, Gujjar community has been and is likely to remain fragmented possibly due to historical and some contemporary reasons but if the “violence in Rajasthan” can lead to a national acceptance of the futility and the potential damage by the caste-based reservations, and lead to search for a logical and rational system of providing equal opportunity to all citizens of the country, the Gujjars of Rajasthan may indeed have done a service to the country and the society at significant cost to them selves, just as they did in 1857! ——————————————–