describe the life cycle of gujjar bakaswal of jammu
Answers
India’s “first line of defence” along the border in Jammu and Kashmir, the nomadic Gujjar community is feeling under attack. But not from a foreign enemy.
The proposed All India Institute of Medical Sciences in Vijaypur threatens to evict 204 families of Gujjar Basti there. For one family in particular, it has brought back horrors of another forced eviction last year.
Sixty-year-old Reham Ali’s son, Mohammad Yaqub, was killed on February 22, 2016. That day police had arrived in a Gujjar settlement in Sarore, not far from Vijaypur, to arrest a man wanted for crimes in Himachal Pradesh. The residents alleged the police manhandled them, including women and children, when the accused was not found at home.
When the villagers protested the police’s highhandedness, “suddenly a large mob of Hindus emerged and set kulas [mud and wood houses] on fire”, said Teg Ali, a resident of Sarore. “We started defending ourselves by throwing stones at them, but not the police.”
Reham Ali and his son had rushed to Sarore when they heard about the confrontation. Teg Ali, a cousin of Reham’s, said shortly after the houses were set on fire, bulldozers of the Jammu Development Authority also arrived and pulled down the concrete structures.
The villagers tried to resist but the police fired on them, killing 25-year-old Yaqub. Later, Teg Ali said, “the police threw out our belongings, whatever was not already damaged by the mob. The SHO told us to leave this land.”
That wasn’t all. The residents alleged the police detained the Gujjars but let the Hindu mob go. “I didn’t even know my son was shot, I was in the lock-up,” said Reham. In the Bari Brahmana police station, too, Reham said, the Gujjars were beaten.
The Station House Officer, Bharat Sharma, was shifted out soon after. Naeem Akhtar, now a minister, had called for a judicial enquiry into the incident. The state was under Governor’s Rule at that time.
A year later, however, Reham is unaware of any inquiry but he knows that Sharma was awarded the Police Medal for Meritorious Services last August. “No one has done justice for the murder of my son,” Reham said. “There has been no trial for my son’s murder. The SHO was given a medal for the murder of a Gujjar.”