Caste Location and Issues – Towards An Anthropology of Gujjars - Velivada

Author – Ravikant Kisana, Assistant Professor at Flame University, Pune | 17 Oct 2020

NEED FOR STUDYING THE MANY ‘JAN’ OF THE BAHUJAN:

It was the late Kanshi Ram, who first electorally weaponized the ‘Bahujan’ identity via an unprecedented grassroots mobilization building upon Dr. Ambedkar’s ideological apparatus1. Kanshi Ram was driven by the idea of attaining political power as the ‘master key’2 which could open all the ‘locks’ on the path of social transformation. His path to political power was not going to be based on a violent revolution, instead, it would be an electoral uprising. Breaking the ‘client-patron’ dependence upon Congress, of hundreds of electorally small jatis, who were too fractured and dispersed to meaningfully organize politically, Kanshi Ram via DS4, BAMCEF and ultimately BSP, gave a new cultural vocabulary for political consensus. The Bahujan (literal translation: the majority) movement, is thus an audacious attempt to socially-engineer Dalits, OBCs, Tribals and religious minorities into one cohesive bloc. Taken together, the sheer numbers from these groups were meant to theoretically overpower the upper caste advantages of money and resources, and break the political ‘locks’.

While Kanshi Ram and Mayawati’s efforts paid fruit, most notably in Uttar Pradesh, where BSP remains a potent political force (notwithstanding the annual epitaphs written by Delhi-based upper caste media)– the concept of Bahujan unity has not yet fully materialized. One of the hurdles in this regard has been that, unlike the ‘Dalit’ consciousness (and to a lesser extent, the Adivasi one), ‘OBC’ remains a bureaucratic classification and not a cohesive socio-cultural identity. OBCs, who constitute 52% of the population as per the 1931 census, remain fractured over 5000+ jatis, some of whom are in constant competition with each other and a few powerful groups (within OBCs) have also been in violent opposition to the Dalits considered ‘below’ them. OBC in popular discourse today is synonymous with a few dominant, landed caste-groups such as Jats, Yadavs, Kurmis, etc., as well as communities considered anthropologically contiguous to them such as Marathas, Kamma, Patidars, etc. These groups are rich in agrarian capital and have politically mobilized accordingly. However, the political identities are not broad-based ideologically, as no pan-Indian caste contiguous ‘OBC consciousness’ has meaningfully taken root.

Furthermore, sections of these powerful OBCs are also often at the forefront of anti-Dalit violence, making a Bahujan alliance between these OBCs and Dalits, difficult to establish and sustain. Furthermore, in recent times, big sections of OBCs fueled by Hindutva hatred, have also emerged as strong votaries of the BJP despite the overt exclusionary brahminism of the RSS. This would appear paradoxical at first. Brahmanism is no ally of the OBCs, who are broadly considered ‘Shudras’ and outside the Dwij-Savarna upper-caste social order.

Superficially, the BJP’s rhetoric is that caste should not be the basis of politics– an appeal which gladdens the hearts of upper-caste rich elites, who benefit most from such a status-quo. But under the veneer of this claim, Brahmanical supremacy is very much at the heart of RSS’ politics. Since 2014, nowhere is it is more manifest than in states with its biggest gains, where BJP and RSS have installed an upper-caste Chief Ministers in Haryana (Manohar Lal Khattar is the first non-Jat CM of the State3), Uttar Pradesh (where a Thakur is CM after 15 years of Yadav-Dalit rule) and till recently in Maharashtra. Even Modi who claims to be from the OBCs, has never outwardly embraced his OBC identity, except bringing it up for election campaign rhetoric.

Yet despite getting edged out from positions of power in their strongholds, many OBCs remain strongly committed votaries of BJP (especially at the national level). Even where electoral disagreement with BJP prevails, RSS via its grassroots-networks over decades has instilled strong narratives of virulent Deshbhakti, Islamophobic hsyteria and caste-denial discourse, as common ideological rhetoric to keep OBCs bound to it. This is particularly true across North, Central and Western India, and increasingly so now in the East with Bengal leading the way4.

To counter this, cultural and anthropological work needs to be undertaken in OBC communities. Most of these jatis are endemically under-studied and misunderstood in academic and political circles. Their histories remain unrecorded, their cultural nuances undocumented, and they exist only as statistical entities to be ‘wooed’ electorally via superficial tokenisms of representation and political lip-service.

For the Bahujan movement to succeed, and to create an Ambedkarite cohort within OBCs, there is a need to perhaps focus on the overlooked anthropology of the thousands of smaller OBC communities– who have thus far only meaningfully engaged with RSS in a sustained manner. There is a need for OBC scholars to engage with the caste discourses of their own communities in a critical and honest manner.

With that goal in mind, I turn my anthropological gaze towards the Gujjars– from amongst whom I come.

GUJJARS: CATEGORIZING ANOMALIES

Firstly, to uniformly classify Gujjars as OBC is itself misleading. They are classified as Scheduled Tribes (ST) in Himachal Pradesh and in the erstwhile state of Jammu and Kashmir. Rajasthani Gujjars have long been demanding ST status5 but for now, they remain classified as ‘Special Backwards Classes’, a sub-category of marginalized OBCs. While their social status is comparable to Gujjars in Punjab and Haryana, the latter are simply OBCs. They are also listed as OBCs in Uttarakhand, UP and MP. Even so, Gujjars have also been included in the list of ‘Criminal Tribes’ as Denotified by the Ayyangar Committee report (1949-50), and are currently cited multiple times in the recent Draft list6 for ‘Denotified Tribes, Nomadic Tribes and Semi-Nomadic Tribes of India’.

Each of these Gujjar communities across geographies, vary greatly anthropologically but are always located on the fringes of the dominant case order. In Kashmir and Himachal Pradesh, they are mostly pastoral just like the particularly vulnerable Van Gujjars of Uttarakhand. Across Punjab, Gujjars operate as a ‘ghetto minority’ with pockets of strong influence but remain largely marginalised by the Jat and Khatri dominated politics. They are perhaps best organized and politically most assertive in Rajasthan and Haryana, as well as Western UP, where Gujjars are synonymous with powerful OBC identity (though lesser in stature than Jats). This is also true in parts of Bundelkhand (UP/MP) especially, where Gujjars are locked in a centuries-old blood feud with Thakurs7 over the control and overlordship of the ravines. It is this latter conflict which gives rise to the image of ‘Gujjar’ as a dacoit and outlaw in popular culture as represented in films like Mela (2000), Highway (2014) and TV series such as Paatal Lok (2020).

And though the Gujjars from Rajasthan, Haryana and Western UP, have predominantly come to be seen as dominant OBCs, in truth, even these communities neither represent the entirety of Gujjar ethnic clans and nor are they the biggest landlords of the region. Elsewhere, Bakarwal-Gujjars are persecuted across Jammu, the horrifying rape and murder of young Asifa being a case in the point. There is rampant daily prejudice against Muslim Gujjars, an example of which was brought to light recently, in a much-publicized incident from Punjab during the lockdown, wherein they were boycotted from selling milk and could only do so under heavy police protection8

However, there is not much ‘gujjar unity’ against such incidents, owing to religious, geographical and anthropological variations, reflected in the plurality of caste classifications. Given such differences, it is difficult to organize Gujjars politically as a block across these states. They are wooed locally by dominant castes for electoral purposes, by harping on the local and immediate cultural narratives which keep them fractured and dependent on upper-caste networks.

RELIGIOUS & CULTURAL PLURALITIES AMONG GUJJARS

The task of organizing Gujjars politically is further complicated by the huge cultural diversity of religion and lifestyles among the community. Across Pakistan, parts of Afghanistan and Kashmir, Gujjars identify as Muslims. Van Gujjars across Himachal Pradesh and Uttarakhand are also associated with Islamic culture. Those in UP, MP and Rajasthan follow local deities/cults and in these regions, they have been integrated into Hinduism proper via the groundwork done by RSS shakhas. Meanwhile, Gujjars in Punjab and parts of Haryana are only nominally Hindu. Here, the sway of cult orders such as Radha Soami Satsang Beas (RSSB) holds these communities together.

In my own community, located close to the Punjab-Himachal Pradesh border (where till recently Gujjars were entirely pastoralists), RSSB has a deep influence owing to its broadly-Vedic spiritual prescriptions. RSSB originated in the mid-19th century during a period of social and political churn in unified Punjab, where many spiritual movements took root. Over a period of time, RSSB has morphed into a vaguely Arya-Samaj inspired monotheistic spiritual order presenting the Almighty as a formless energy. However, along with this, RSSB also preaches deeply Brahminical prescriptions of vegetarianism, sobriety, sexual abstinence and reincarnation based on karmic ‘punya’ or lack of sins. Such emphasis on karmic reincarnation, immediately delegitimizes religious beliefs of Islam and Christianity (which do not have a concept of rebirth), while keeping Gujjars within the broader fold of ‘Hinduism’ and Sikhism. Such a schism not only creates distance between Muslim Gujjars and those who follow RSSB, but also builds a cultural bridge to upper-caste millieu via contiguous cultural habits/beliefs of vegetarianism, karmic reincarnation, etc. Thus, the role of such cults and spiritual orders in maintaining fractured caste consensus among communities like Gujjars, needs to be studied and challenged.

In material terms, across Punjab-Haryana, an unspoken hierarchy exists. Outside of the Gujjar pockets of local influence, the Jats are invincible. Within these local ‘pockets of influence’, Gujjars share daily spaces with Chamars and other Dalit castes whom they largely resent, but often trail in indices of education and employment.

This creates a strange inward-looking social structure, where isolationism and status-quo ossifies the Gujjars at a particular level as they look helplessly towards the big landholdings of the Jats, and with envy towards the small strides taken by Dalit castes (via reservations, and Bahujan mobilizing, etc)… with no agency to claim either for themselves. This helplessness takes the form of Jat and upper caste subservience at times, and jealousy and violence against the Dalits.

It is in these gaps, that the cultural propaganda of Sanghi-Brahmanism takes root. And it is precisely in these gaps, that Ambedkarite consciousness needs to be stirred. Role of education and local anthropological understanding of pan-Gujjar consciousness within the larger Bahujan framework is needed to point out obvious allyship, not antagonism, with Dalits– as they all are mutually trapped in rigid layers of the caste hierarchy.

FROM SHROUDED HISTORICAL ORIGINS TO THE FUTURE

The exact origins of Gujjars are unclear with only fragments of histories offering clues to their tremendous diversity across South Asia. They come from the remains of a vast collective of people, broken several times over the centuries, through periods of migration, reverse migration, settler establishments and pastoralism. As a result, today Gujjars are sprinkled across a vast swathe of land, stretching from Afghanistan in the East, covering Pakistan, Kashmir valley and Western Indian states from the deserts of Rajasthan to the mountains of Himalayas and forest-ravines of Chambal.

Genetic research has also linked the Romani gypsy people across Europe as constituted of a reverse migratory branch of many groups including Doms, Banjaras and possibly Gujjars who left India 1500 years ago910. These are strong cultural narratives to build identity consciousness upon and even bridge links between Gujjars, Doms, Banjaras with their Romani cousins across the globe.

My father often liked to trace the etymology of our family name as being descended from the Kushan dynasty in ancient times. I never thought much of that last claim, assuming it to be nothing more than wishful thinking based on the coincidental phonetic similarity of names. However, some broad historical consensus also suggests that Gujjars were a nomadic group who migrated from Central Asia, most likely the caucasus mountains in Georgia. They have been tenuously linked not only to powerful empires such as the Kushans in the 1st century ACE but also the Gurjara-Pratihara dynasty in the 8th-9th century ACE.

In more recent history though, Gujjars attained notoriety among the British rulers during the 1857 Sepoy Mutiny, when their roving gangs harassed the British and the Sepoys alike on the outskirts of Delhi. Their motives are a mystery to us, perhaps tired of being sandwiched between white colonial masters and old casteist feudal elites, they decided to run their writ at a time of chaos. The British, like the earlier Mughals, dismissed these raids as a product of the ‘criminal tendencies’ for violence, innate in these tribes. Maybe, today, such episodes need to be read as assertion and violence from below against established orders. Maybe in a debrahminized academia, a competent anthropologist/historian can investigate the matter.

Meanwhile, the academic consensus on all these theories remains pending, though it is clear that the Gujjar belong to a wide group of people ranging across South and Central Asia, who in India have been relegated to outlier positions under the prescriptions of the caste system (though substantially less persecuted or excluded in comparison to the Dalits), and/or marginalized as tribal pastoralists.

Growing up in a Gujjar family, visiting our native village, I was frequently left with the essential question– who we are and what is our history? There was no simple answer to this. We were clearly not following Sikhism, Islam or Christianity, which by default, led me to conclude we were ‘Hindus’. But I found nothing resembling what I understood as ‘Hindu culture’ from my school, education, TV and popular cinema. None of our birth and death rituals, marital customs, traditional songs sung on such occasions, cosmic beliefs, etc. were similar to anything I had encountered among self-identifying ‘Hindus’. Such Hindus have appropriated Brahminical idioms and organized their lives according to upper caste socio-cultural mandates. These same socio-cultural networks have very little to offer communities like the Gujjars.

We can study in upper-caste dominated schools, pretend to enjoy popular films/shows which depict us as innately violent and ‘criminal, we can even try to internalize Brahminical culture to appear ‘superior/civilized’… but in the Dwij-Savarna eyes, we will remain ‘Shudra’… we will remain the ‘lesser’.

In the 21st century, in the age of the new millennium, it is time that the ‘Shudra’ sheds that mantle, and adopts the identity of the ‘Bahujan’, and seeks emancipation and liberation on Ambedkarite terms.

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