A recent case of a poor pregnant Gujjar woman from North Kashmir being thrown out by a Kashmiri doctor at Srinagar’s premier Lal Ded maternity hospital has once again brought forth, our historic discrimination, de-humanization, vilification and racism that we as Kashmiri people continue to perpetuate towards J&K’s nearly two million Gujjar &Bakarwal tribal population. The poor Gujjar woman, who was about to deliver a baby had come from far off village in North Kashmir and was refused admission for delivery by a Kashmiri doctor, who misbehaved with the poor Gujjar family and hurled anti-Gujjar racist abuses at them. The poor Gujjar woman was forced to deliver on road near the hospital under terrible conditions. Unfortunately,the new born baby did not survive the cold and died.
It is no secret that Jammu & Kashmir’s Gujjar community has historically been discriminatedand looked down upon by us Kashmiri people for centuries. The de-humanizing and vilifying tags like “uncivilized people”, “criminals” “dirty people” etc. have been labeled against this simple, hardworking and peace-lovingfellow Muslim community, which has been mostly forced to live on the margins of our so called “civilized” Kashmiri habitations, in forests and on mountains surrounding Kashmir valley and hills of Jammu province in Pir Panchal region.
Members of Gujjar and Bakarwal community have a very genuine grouse and grievance against us Kashmiris for the inhuman way that we have been treating them for centuries. If one talks to Gujjar people, they always point that their community has been at the receiving end of us Kashmiris not only socially but even politically, wherein according to them Kashmiri political leadership has always let Gujjars down, betrayed them or treated them as second-class vote bank.
Most Gujjars would point at how the late Sheikh Muhammad Abdullah Sahab “betrayed”, Chaudhary Ghulam Abbas, a tall Gujjar leader from Jammu, who was a co-founder of J&K Muslim Conference (Later named National Conference) along with Sheikh Muhammad Abdullah, when Sheikh Sahabslowly gravitated towards Pundit Jawahar Lal Nehru and Congress party leaving Chaudhary Ghulam Abbas disillusioned and compelling him to leave the National Conference. The Gujjar community also point towards SheikhSahab’s rather unenthusiastic and unsupportive role in controlling and putting an end to the mass scale murder of Muslims of Jammu in 1947, most victims of which were members of Gujjar &Bakarwal community. Many in Gujjar community accuse Sheikh Sahab of deliberate complacency in allowing massacre of Gujjars in Jammu, solely for his personal political motive to emerge as the sole tallest leader of Muslims of J&K and to establish supremacy of Kashmiri leadership over all Muslims of J&K.
Members of Gujjar community also hold the view that even after 1947, Kashmiri leadership, whether in NC, Congress or PDP has always treated Gujjar community as mere second-class vote banks and never allowed Gujjar leaders in their own parties to rise beyond a point by sidelining them to mostly tribal ministry affairs. They point to impossibility of rise of Gujjar leaders in traditional mainstream political parties which are run by Kashmiri family raj. Most Gujjars feel that except for creating few Gujjar political dynasts in each political party of Kashmir, most Kashmiri political leadership never really care about them except as a dedicated second-class vote bank and if anything, most Gujjars point that Kashmiri political leadership has only created differences between culturally related Pahari & Gujjar communities for vote bank politics.
Things however have been changing for Gujjarcommunity of J&K, when they got notified as a Scheduled Tribe community in 1991, which opened doors for the community to have access to higher education and government sector jobs through reservations. Gradually over three decades, the level of education also improved among Gujjar community, especially in Pir Panchal region and slowly a middle class emerged from an erstwhile underprivileged tribal community. Today, the financial and social status of Gujjar community in Poonch and Rajouri is far better than before, and example of the same can be seen from the success of large number of Gujjar candidates in both KAS and IAS exams. Just as Kashmiri community in last three decades has declined and degenerated on almost all social indicators, with poverty, destitution, illiteracy etc. reigning supreme among Kashmiris, Gujjar community on the other hand has registered exponential qualitative growth on all social and economic parameters.
However, unlike Pir Panchal region, the condition of Gujjar community of Kashmir valley continues to remain grim. The combined effect of the isolated nature of the habitats of Gujjars of Kashmir and the impact of almost daily violence on the LOC in North Kashmir as well as conflict in Kashmir valley, life for Gujjar community of Kashmir has become extremely challenging. And on top of all this, Gujjars of Kashmir have to face the racial abuse and discrimination from us Kashmiris on almost daily basis. Whatever happened at Lal Ded maternity hospital is unfortunately not an isolated incidence but a common and frequent tale of constant harassment and discrimination that our Gujjar brothers and sisters, whether from border areas of Kupwara or mountains of South Kashmir, have to face at the hands of nearly all Kashmiris. This is a matter of uttermost shame for us Kashmiris that our Gujjar community continues to endure racial humiliation even today. We as Kashmiri people don’t even realize the kind of psychological damage that our centuries of insults and discrimination have cause to the collective self-respect of Gujjar community, who are fellow Muslims.
In today’s day and age, when there is a huge emphasis on equality and egalitarianism, such de-humanization of Gujjar community and discrimination against them is simply not acceptable. This portrays us Kashmiris in a very poor light in the comity of global community. The valley of Kashmir belongs to our Gujjar brothers and sisters as much as it belongs to us Kashmiris and it is about the time, that we Kashmiris learn to accept our Gujjar community as equal and not sub servient or subordinate.
Javaid Beigh can be reached at javadbeigh123@gmail.com
