THE GUJJARS REVOLT- ALREADY 41 KILLED

Not mentioned in the European press is the riot of the Gujjars, taking already the dimensions of a civil war.
What are Gujjars and what is the reason of the agitation?
In medieval times the Gujjars mainly living in the North- West of India where nomads, a section of them switched to agriculture. Now they are a large and political influential group. In the caste system of India they are OBC’s. What they want is to be downgraded to ST’s
To understand that you have to get familiar with the Indian cast system and the way the government tries to compensate the racist and discriminatingly practices, which can only be compared with the apartheid policy in earlier days in South- Africa and Nazism in Germany, with the difference that is this case the discrimination is not coming from the government but from the population.
THE CASTES
SC: These communities are the lowest in the caste hierarchy and called Dalits (the English called them untouchables)
ST: Originally people living in the forest or on the hills, isolated from modern life, but are not necessarily socially backward.
OBC: comprise the middle castes in the Hindi hierarchy.
Upper castes are not listed here.
For each of the undercastes the government has foreseen quotas. That means that for a governmental job e.g. at least 10% should be ST.
What are the Gujjar fighting for: The Gujjars get job reservations under the OBC quota. Now they are seeking reservation under the ST quota. This the Gujjars believe, would improve their job prospects. The demand of the Gujjars is fuelled by the success of the Meenas, another large community, granted ST status in 1956.


The protest activities consist mainly out of sit- in, blockage of the train tracks and destroying of the rails. Road blocking and putting cars and trucks on fire. The police react with lathi charges but sometimes has to use weapons to defend themselves (I hope). The agitators claim that the police fired unprovoked