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Opinion

Gujjar Stir Ends: Nation held at gunpoint

By: Santosh :+: Under: Opinion, Politics
On: ⋅ June 5, 2007 ⋅  Email this post ⋅  Print this post ⋅ Post a comment
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…Finally…we shall see the entire people transformed into petitioners. Landed property, agriculture, industry, commerce, shipping, industrial companies, all will bestir themselves to claim favors from the state. The public treasury will be literally pillaged. Everyone will have good reasons to prove that legal fraternity should be interpreted in this sense: “Let me have the benefits, and let others pay the costs.” Everyone’s effort will be directed toward snatching a scrap of fraternal privilege from the legislature. The suffering classes, although having the greatest claim, will not always have the greatest success.
-Frederic Bastiat

Caste and votebank politics disgust me in general and I try to stay out of discussing it. But the stir by the Gujjars has certain troubling elements to it. The Gujjar community has called an end to their “stir” - violent protests that resulted in an official death toll of 26 and paralyzed the nation’s capital.

The issue was such: The Gujjars, a nomadic community, were included among the OBC section of the reservation pie, wheareas they fancied themselves among the ST section. While the change would be considered a downgrade (link via Sepia Mutiny) in caste, the Gujjars hoped that being featured in the ST section would mean “they faced less competition” for their piece of the pie. While all this may seem like valid reasons to agitate, the way they went about it was less than stellar. Basically, instead of sitting down at the table and deciding matters over samosas and chai or taking to the streets and making the world aware by peaceful protests, they held the nation’s capital and an entire section of the country at gunpoint, until the Government caved into their demands. There is another definition for this kind of activity.

This shameful episode will be a footnote in so many chapters in Indian History, when studied by historians:
1. “The Slippery Slope that the Mandal Commission started”
2. “Democracy->Mob Rule->Indian Democracy”
3. “Caste Politics in India (circa 2007): Dying (or killing) to be downgraded”

Lest I’m labelled a bigot, there is nothing wrong with belonging to a lower or higher caste. My POV is that the caste system had long outlived its usefullness by the time Siddhartha did his thang and needs to be abolished. By having reservations in the name of caste, you are actually nourishing the concept instead of destroying it, which is counterproductive. Besides, when some commodity is available freely, especially courtesy of the state, it breeds a sense of entitlement and destroys the competitive spirit.

The Indian Government perhaps has a “noble” cause in mind: equality of all castes. Equality is good. When equality exists in something, that entity cease to exist. The problem lies in the way the measures for equality are implemented. With a huge leap in faith, let us assume that reservations will foster equality. In that case, shouldn’t reservations themselves be equally meted out among all backward castes and classes. Where does the need for the different categories - OBC, SC, ST come in? By dividing the reservation pie unequally, how do you propose to foster equality? In other words, the problem lies in the medium itself, in this case the medium propagating the equality - the government.

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