Excelsior Correspondent
Srinagar, Oct 28: The Gujjar Bakerwal Joint Action Committee (GBJAC) today announced the “Tribal Bachao March” across J&K, during which they will raise awareness among the tribal community about the erosion of Schedule Tribe Status while urging the government to refrain from using the reservation issue for political purposes.
The members of the GBJAC who were addressing a press conference here said that BJP has politicized the reservation issue in Jammu and Kashmir for the sake of votes.
Chief Spokesperson of GBJAC Talib Hussain said that Paharis are not defined as an ethnic community by any sociological or anthropological research study and that in the Pir Panjal region and parts of Kashmir valley, Paharis are a group of different religious communities and castes within religions that came together for a common demand of Schedule Tribe status.
“Paharis are Upper caste Hindu Brahmins and Rajputs, Sikhs and Upper caste Muslim Rajputs, Syeds, Mughals and Ethnic Kashmiris. Muslim Rajputs have ruled the region till the 19th century and Gujjars used to serve them as tillers.”
He questioned the government’s intentions to call a heterogeneous group of communities an Ethnic Group. Paharis are culturally, religiously, and linguistically a diverse group that can never be ethnically the same.
“How a Syed can be ethnically the same as a brahmin, Syed claimed to come here from Arab can never be same like tribals or other communities residing in Pir Panjal and Baramulla, Kupwara,” he said.
GBJAC said that a Kashmiri living in Rajouri, Poonch, and Baramulla, Kupwara has the same ethnicity as one living in Srinagar, Anantnag, and Kishtwar. “How a Sikh, Upper Caste Hindu and a Muslim Syed or Rajput can have the same bloodline or can be ethnically same.”
The committee said that the recent report of Justice G D Sharma’s commission made a mockery of social justice by including those groups and communities in the proposed Schedule Tribe list who have been rulers in past, economically, socially, and politically well off.
GBJAC urged the government not to politicize the reservation issue for the sake of votes. “We are fighting to save the Constitution which has empowered marginalized sections like Dalits and Tribals and we will reach out to the tribal people of the country as well to support our movement, it’s not just a local but national issue,” he said.
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