Paharis and Gujjars fight over rights

JAMMU - In Jammu and Kashmir a war of words is going on between Paharis, who are demanding Scheduled Tribe (ST) status, and Gujjars, who have the status since April 1991 but don’t want the Paharis to get it.

People of the Pahari community live in mountainous areas of Jammu and Kashmir, Himachal Pradesh and Uttarakhand. The language they speak is also called Pahari. Roughly 10 percent of the 11 million people of Jammu and Kashmir are Paharis. They include Hindus - Brahmins, Rajputs - and Muslims.

Gujjars form about 15 percent of the state’s population. They are tribals and can be either Muslim or Hindu.

Mushtaq Ahmed Bukhari, former minister and chairman of the Pahari Cultural and Welfare Forum, pointed out that the state government had in 1989 recommended granting of ST status to Paharis along with Gujjars. “Our demand is long pending,” he told IANS.

Opposing the demand, Javaid Rahi, secretary of Tribal Research and Cultural Foundation - an organisation working on Gujjar affairs - said: “Paharis are a linguistic group and not a tribal entity by any standards. They (Pahari-speaking people) are neither tribal nor nomadic in character and they are not socially, economically and educationally backward.”

He held that the grant of ST status to Paharis would weaken the tribal character of all tribes with ST status, “and we will oppose it tooth and nail”.

Waseem Mirza, spokesman of the Jammu and Kashmir Youth Pahari Cultural and Welfare Forum, countered: “We will fight to get our right. When Gujjars got ST status we never opposed it. We do not understand why are they jittery over our demand.”

Most Paharis and Gujjars live in the mountainous parts of the Jammu region and the Kashmir valley. Both can speak the language of the other.

There is some variation in the language as you move across the region from Poonch, Rajouri, Doda, Kishtwar, and Bhaderwah in the Jammu region and Karnah, Kupwara, Bopore, Anantnag and Shopian in the Kashmir valley. “These different regions have slightly different accent and vocabulary,” Rahi told IANS.

The Paharis under the leadership of Bukhari are mobilising through demonstrations in Poonch and Rajouri districts. The assembly elections in Jammu and Kashmir in 2008 were fought on sharp caste, tribe and linguistic divides in this region.

It was during this time that sharp divisions between Gujjars and Paharis came to the fore.

Objecting to the demand of the “Pahari- speaking people”, senior leaders of the Gujjar and Bakerwal communities said they would oppose with full force any such move “aimed at diluting the tribal status by adding a non-tribal linguistic entity into the tribal amalgam”.

They said that the community will challenge the state’s recommendations in the Supreme Court.

Ghulam Rasool Asghar, general secretary of the Jammu and Kashmir Gujjar Bakerwal Conference, said that as per Article 342 of the Indian Constitution, Scheduled Tribe status cannot be granted on the basis of language.

(Binoo Joshi can be contacted at binoo.j@ians.in)