Back from the Brink

Vasundhara Raje’s peace deal buys temporary respite from a caste conflict but the issue can still return to haunt her

PICTURE SPEAK

REPRIEVE: Raje with Gurjar leaders led by Bainsla (centre) in Jaipur Faced with the biggest crisis of her chief ministership, Raje emerged as survivor and canny political strategist, trumping her opponents... for now.

Where she was let down was by the local administration and the police. Before the agitation began, she was away in Delhi but her brief to them was not to let the Gurjars disrupt communications on the national highway. However, once the police resorted to firing, the Government was at the receiving end not only from Gurjar leaders but also from within the BJP. Senior leaders like Jaswant Singh were quoted as saying that “raj dharm” was not adhered to. That forced her to rethink strategy. It was clear that millions of Gurjars would react with greater violence to the killing of six members of their community, so her decision was to allow them to let off steam and block highways, even at the cost of damage to public property. She also called in the army and Rapid Action Force, but merely for presence, not an active role.

It worked. Tempers cooled and by the fifth day, with the agitation largely under control, she began the hard part of negotiations. She realised that the Gurjar leaders, after losing 20 lives in the agitation, would need something concrete to take back to their people. Raje, knowing her government was under tremendous pressure, played her trump card: the threat by the powerful Meenas who had not only opposed entry of Gurjars into Scheduled Tribe (ST) reservation but said they would clear road blockades if the Government failed to do so. While reassuring both sides, Raje made it clear to the Gurjars that they would have to face serious repercussions from the Meenas if they continued the agitation. With most males in Gurjar families out on the streets, their women and children at home were extremely vulnerable.

To their credit, the Gurjar leadership under Colonel Kirori Singh Bainsla was uncomfortable with the manner in which groups of hooligans had come out looking for violence. It was a serious blow to the image of the Gurjar leaders. When the official talks began in Jaipur, there was little sign that a peace deal was in the offing, but the arrival of Bainsla changed that. Raje publicly invited him for talks, knowing he was an ex-army officer who would be open to reason as long as she gave him the right signals and treated him with respect. She had help from the high command. BJP spokesperson Prakash Javadekar and general secretaries Ananth Kumar and Gopinath Munde were sent to Jaipur to help her negotiate and deal with the national media. The central leaders mobilised their Army contacts and found retired Colonel Atar Singh, a Gurjar himself, and known to Bainsla. Atar joined in as one of the mediators and was amongst those who persuaded Bainsla for talks. It was clear that the party top leadership had not left her to fight the battle alone. It also kept Congress at bay by warning against imposition of President’s rule after Governor Pratibha Patil had airdashed to Delhi to brief the Centre about happenings and then summoned Raje next day for an update. That she eventually succeeded is as much a tribute to her own political maturity, as it is a slap in the face of those in her party who wanted the talks to fail, merely to weaken her position.

In fact, most of the crises she has faced since she took over as chief minister have been the work of her own party adversaries, at times fuelled by an ego clash between her and Jaswant. He was extremely powerful and in power when she was pushed into the chief ministership. Four years later, the tables have turned. He is out of power and she has emerged stronger. That has only turned Jaswant more bitter. However, party president Rajnath Singh and veteran leaders L.K. Advani and Atal Bihari Vajpayee have stood by her. Vajpayee, incidentally, is being blamed for the current turmoil as his granting OBC status to Jats opened this pandora’s box of demands for changes in reservation status. It was ironical that the Government’s worst enemy was its own party. Five BJP MLAs offered to resign in protest.

For Raje, however, the victory could be short-lived. The BJP’s Gurjar MLAs are still protesting against the agreement with Bainsla. They plan to meet in Pushkar on June 8 to decide the future course of action. Bainsla, being largely non-political, is satisfied with the agreement but other Gurjar leaders are frustrated at not being able to extract any mileage from the agitation. Their display of resentment is to show the community that even if Bainsla has agreed to withdraw the agitation, they plan to keep the issue alive.

In essence, what Raje has promised is that a three-member high powered committee headed by a retired high court judge will analyse the community’s demands within the Government of India guidelines. Since 1977, no new caste has been added to the SC/ST category and despite a recommendation by Congress government in 1981, the Gadaria Lohars and the Banjaras have not been added to the list. This very recommendation had left out the Gurjars and 16 other castes as not being eligible for ST status. The guidelines under which the Gurjars claim will be reviewed will be based on conditions like primitiveness, backwardness, shyness of contact, distinctive culture and geographical isolation.

THE COLONEL’S COLOURS An insight into the man who holds the key to Rajasthan’s caste tension   PICTURE SPEAK MAN OF THE MOMENT: Colonel Bainsla “During the talks, I did not think about victory at all. For me, it was national interest, that superseded any impulsive reaction to events.” Till last week, he was relatively unknown. Now, thanks to the Gurjar riots, Colonel Kirori Singh Bainsla has become a household name. He has single-handedly doused the fires that raged in Rajasthan and neighbouring states by his acceptance of the peace formula, and acquired the image of a balanced leader, a hero for the common Gurjar and enemy number one for the powerful Meena community. “I did not think about victory but national interest preceded any impulsive reaction,” he said after the agreement with Chief Minister Vasundhara Raje. Yet, to many in Rajasthan, Bainsla, 67, has a dual personality: one, the sophisticated retired army officer, fluent in English, oriented to academic research and a voracious reader. Then there is the other, surrounded by illiterate villagers and maintaining a rapport with them through rustic wit. He is a vegetarian and teetotaller, and a fan of old Hindi films. His heroes are Golda Meir, the late Israeli prime minister, and Sardar Patel. He has no political past and leadership of the community came because the Gurjars wanted an educated man to fight for their cause. Bainsla started life as an English schoolteacher, one of the few to have graduated from his village Moodia. He joined the army as a sepoy and rose through the ranks to retire as a lieutenant colonel. In his personal life, he is a simple man. Three of his four children were born in the village and now two are army officers. His only daughter is in the Indian Revenue Service, one son is an executive with Hutch. Retired in 1991, he retained his village house but settled at Hindon, a small town a few kilometres away. Since then, Bainsla has devoted time and energy to doing something for his community which, apart from producing soldiers, is otherwise mostly illiterate and backward. Five years ago, he began his crusade to build up a case for Scheduled Tribe (ST) status for the community. He was worried about the growing influence of the Meenas. He became convinced that ST status was the only way to prevent a near elimination of Gurjars from the region. He started by organising a cultural festival of Gurjars in Karauli three years ago. He then contacted panchayats, getting their approval to start a campaign to get ST status. Realising that a Gandhian approach was getting nowhere, he raised the ante, organising a demonstration at Hindon where the Gurjars ransacked a small railway station. The state sat up and set up a committee of ministers to look into the Gurjar demand. Bainsla expanded his base, moving out of the district to drum up support. Most Gurjar panchayats backed him. The flashpoint came when he learnt that district collectors were sending reports that diluted the Gurjars’ claim to ST status. Suspecting that the powerful Meena lobby were manipulating the reports, he rallied most of Gurjar males in the state in open revolt. He declared a ceasefire in the belief that the agitation would have strengthened the community’s claims. In the bargain, he has emerged as a leader to be reckoned with.

The state recommendation is followed by recommendations by the Registrar-General, Census and by the National Scheduled Tribe Commission before it is presented to the Union Cabinet which then has to present it before Parliament as a bill. It is notified once both the Houses pass it. The issue now is whether the committee will be able to do everything within the three-month deadline. It is not easy since there is a lack of data or research available about the Gurjar community’s current living standards and status.

What can be a source of worry for Raje is that the Gurjar and Meena divide has got sharper, with the threat of caste violence still hovering over the state. Whether that can be averted by the state government is open to question. The crisis exposed the fact that the administration is not equipped to respond effectively to such situations. Raje knows she is expected to deal with incompetence at both political and administrative levels which is why she is playing down her victory. Instead, she is sending personal condolence messages to everyone killed in the agitation. She knows that in the days to come, she will have to face more dissident threats and rivals who will continue to provoke Gurjar leaders to keep the issue alive.

She also knows that more castes will be joining in the demands: already, the Raikas and Rabaris and the Namads have begun protests demanding ST status. There is also the tricky question of a murder case having been filed against Bainsla. However, by not giving Bainsla any official letter and even diluting issues that some BJP leaders had asked her to agree on to bring an end to the violence, she has displayed tremendous courage and political savvy. For that alone, she deserves a royal salute.

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