Tral, Indian-administered Kashmir – Like many people in nomadic tribal communities, Bashir Ahmed Gujjar, a 70-year-old shepherd, had never been to school.
Being poor and frequently on the move, formal education was not an option.
His The situation for the Gujjar community has changed. Gujjars were also among the beneficiaries.
Families decided to send their children to school or university. “My children, nieces and nephews are all fortunate to have been able to get an education thanks to the ST qualification given to them by the government,” Basheer said at his home in the district's Pulwama district. He told Al Jazeera. He said his niece is currently working as a teacher in a government school in Tral thanks to the employment quotas available to Gujjars.
Now, he worries that the next generation of the community could lose out on the gains of the past 30 years.
Earlier this month, on February 6, Prime Minister Narendra Modi's government passed a legal amendment to include another community, the Paharis, in the list of STs. At the time, Union Tribal Affairs Minister Arjun Munda said the law would not erode the education and employment quotas currently provided to existing tribes, but would add additional quotas for new communities. Ta.
But the government has yet to explain how it intends to do so, and historical tensions between the Gujjars and Bakarwals, the two main tribal communities originally targeted for affirmative action, are There are concerns that the profits will have to be split 50-50 with the Pahari people who have benefited from the project. considered better.
“We have no hope for the future. The government is giving some of our guarantees to others,” Bashir said.
The government's move triggered a wave of protests by Gujjar and Bakerwal community organizations, demanding the repeal of the amendment. The move also triggered caste divisions in a region already at risk due to controversial moves by the Modi government in recent years.
The decision to add Paharis to the ST list could have an impact on national elections expected to be held between March and May.
“Use reservations to shake up Paharis”
Paharis are made up of Hindus and Sikhs who immigrated from what is now Pakistan when the subcontinent was partitioned in 1947, as well as a significant number of Muslims.
Accounting for about 8 percent of the region's 16 million population, nearly two-thirds of Paharis live in the Jammu region of southern Indian-administered Kashmir, with a small number living in the northern forests.
The current tensions are rooted in events in 2019, when Prime Minister Modi's Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government abruptly abolished the region's special status and placed it under New Delhi's direct rule.
Since then, the Gujjars and Bakarwals have alleged that the Bharatiya Janata Party is trying to bring the Paharis into the ST category.
India's affirmative action system, aimed at uplifting historically marginalized groups (primarily disadvantaged castes and indigenous tribes), also includes provisions to reserve seats in legislative assemblies for them.
In Indian-administered Kashmir (also known as Jammu and Kashmir in official documents), seats in the state parliament were reserved for the Gujjar and Bakarwal communities in 2004.
Members of these two communities, which constitute about 10 per cent of the region's population, now claim that the Bharatiya Janata Party is trying to patronize the Paharis community for political gain ahead of the general elections.
Javed Chauhan, another Gujjar from Jammu, more than 200 kilometers from Tral, said the government was trying to quell the protests through increased police presence and internet blackouts.
“The Bharatiya Janata Party is using reservations to sway the region's Pahari-speaking population to strengthen its Hindu vote bank in Jammu,” he told Al Jazeera. Unlike the Paharis, the Gujjars and Bakarwals of this region are largely Muslim.
Pro-India parties also note that the Bharatiya Janata Party, in its 2014 and 2019 election manifestos, promised to resettle thousands of Kashmiri Hindus, known as Pandits, who were displaced by the rise of anti-India groups. Similarly, it has been alleged that the Bharatiya Janata Party is using the community to promote its politics. Indian anti-government movement in the late 1980s.
“First, they used Kashmiri Pandits to win the 2019 elections. Now the Pahari faction has been politicized. The BJP has pitted communities that have lived in harmony for centuries against each other. Waheed Ur Rehman Parra of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) told Al Jazeera. “They steal from one plate and feed it to the other.”
Naik Alam, an elected official from Gutro village in Tral state, said the Bharatiya Janata Party was “simply misusing” the law to show that Hindus could also get reservations in Muslim-majority areas. .
What is the BJP's election strategy?
The Bharatiya Janata Party relies primarily on Hindu votes in Indian-administered Kashmir's 90-member parliament, and has traditionally performed well in the Hindu-majority Jammu region. However, it has struggled to advance politically in the Muslim-majority Kashmir region.
There are nine seats allocated to STs in the assembly that spans Jammu and Kashmir. Critics of the BJP argue that a victory on these bills could give it a majority in the overall parliament. State legislative elections are also scheduled to be held later this year.
In 2020, the federal government granted 4 per cent reservation to the Paharis, who form a majority in at least 10 constituencies as a linguistic minority. If granted ST status, this group could contest seats reserved for STs in Parliament and challenge the traditional dominance of Gujjars and Bakarwals in these sets. The Gujjars and Bakarwals are predominantly Muslim and rarely vote for the Bharatiya Janata Party.
Gujjar activist Guftar Ahmed Chaudhry said the Bharatiya Janata Party's move would backfire.
“We are protesting for our rights. Our youth leaders are being targeted and even pressured by the authorities to stop their movement… This is completely unconstitutional. The Bharatiya Janata Party will suffer in the next elections,” Chaudhary told Al Jazeera.
However, the region's former deputy chief minister, BJP's Kavinder Gupta, said the Pahari reservation had been planned for a long time. He alleged that political parties in Kashmir consider the community as second-class citizens and ignore its development.
“We were just trying to bring Paharis into the mainstream because Paharis have always been sidelined by Kashmiris,” Gupta told Al Jazeera.
Lawyer Ahsan Mirza, a member of Pahari ST Forum, an organization working for the welfare of Pahari tribes, said the Pahari community had earlier been assured of tribal quota by the BJP.
Iqbal Hussain Shah, another Pahari activist from Jammu district of Rajouri district, echoed Mr. Gupta's comments, claiming that Paharis have been discriminated against for decades. He also suggested that in future even the Muslim Pahrir faction would support the Hindu-majority Bharatiya Janata Party.
“Gujjars and Bakerwals won the ST status in 1991 and the Bharatiya Janata Party finally won this status to us after 30 years. All Paharis members will definitely support the Bharatiya Janata Party in the upcoming elections. Deaf,” he said.
But Gujjar Bakarwal Youth Welfare Congress chairman Zahid Parwaz Chaudhry believes there are more sinister plans on the part of the Bharatiya Janata Party.
“Now that Paharis have been declared STs, the community will be wasting the opportunity for Gujjars and Bakarwals to seek social and economic empowerment,” he told Al Jazeera.
“It's simple. The Bharatiya Janata Party knows it cannot secure many votes in Kashmir, so it is using the Pahrir faction to reduce the vote share of other parties.”