Indian Tribesmen Bring Delhi to Standstill
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A blockade by thousands of protesters from India’s Gujjar tribe brought Delhi to a standstill today, paralysing trains by squatting on tracks and setting up a ring of burning tyres around the perimeter of the city.
The Gujjars, traditionally nomadic farmers, are demanding to be socially downgraded in order to gain government jobs and university places. Thousands had gathered at major intersections around the edges of New Delhi, setting up road blocks.
Paramilitary forces and police were drafted in to stop violence but most stood by, wary after a week of bloodshed in northern India which had left 39 people dead—38 of whom had been shot by security forces. Only when the mob threatened to surge past police lines did the security forces fire tear gas to quell the stone-throwing crowds.
Community leaders have been demanding that the government give the community special status for several years. The Gujjars, already considered a disadvantaged group, want to be reclassified further down the Hindu hierarchy.
The Indian government runs the world’s largest affirmative action programme, reserving half of government jobs and university places to those socially disadvantaged by centuries of caste oppression. Gujjars, who the British Raj classified as part of the “criminial castes” are already considered “backward”. But they themselves say they are not backward enough.
Avinash Bandana, a Gujjar farmers’ leader, told a local television channel that “the community needed the appropriate status. We cannot be placed too high”.
Their leaders say that they cannot compete with their peers, principally the Jat and Yadav communities of north-west India, which thanks to land reform have emerged as a powerful landlords. Gujjars, who number some 15 million, want to be put on par with “tribal groups”, among the poorest and least well-educated people in India.
Experts are divided, and there are some who say that Britain had a bigger role than Hinduism in condemning the Gujjars to decades of illiteracy and penury. “They became outcastes because the British criminalised them,” said Amaresh Misra, a historian and writer. “These groups cannot escape history and what we see is they just cannot compete with other groups who because they were nomadic and had no rights to land. The solution would be to give them a separate status and examine their needs.”
However many in the country say that succumbing to the Gujjars’ demands would simply lead to a race to the bottom, one in which different groups would vie for government handouts on the basis of nebulous caste groupings.
“The Gujjar agitation once again highlights the perils of caste-based reservations which is bound to lead to more groups clamouring for quota benefits,” the Times of India said in an editorial.
“It is time that the Indian state takes a more nuanced approach to affirmative action. A points-based system where factors like income and gender are considered, in addition to caste, might deliver social justice better.”
(Posted on May 30, 2008)
Comments
“paralysing trains by squatting on tracks..”
One of the main arguments I try to reason with my good hearted girlfriend is this. “Do you really want thirty-five or forty homeless and desperate people squatting in your drive way?! Because honey, that`s what the endgame of endless 3rd World immigration is. And exactly how long do you think it will take them to figure out that they can just move you out and them in?!? Just who is going to stop them. You? One lady against fifty? Why hold out a hand every day for food when they can just come in and take your refrigerator?
Posted by Tim Mc Hugh at 7:01 PM on May 30
If I were still in the USA, I would be doing the same thing. My wife is either an Asian or Pacific Islander, depending on the census form we are using. My children don’t get affirmative action (reverse racism) and it is not fair that other brown people (ex-Mexicans, etc.) get it and my children don’t. So, I would protest, or just lie on school applications. Being plain white in the USA is a disadvantage to getting ahead in life.
Posted by Lost in Paradise at 10:11 PM on May 30
Think about seriously; Gulliver’s Travels and Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland are but 2 of so many English literary works that point out the absurd foibles of the British government in “foreign affairs” in the past, but so little has changed because we all know why the Brits would have this article in one of their newspapers in the first place.
Posted by Bonnie LL at 11:38 PM on May 30
Once again we see the rise of the cult of victimhood. In white nations you gain more privilege through outright disrimination on the wider population by claiming to be a member of a “historically oppressed” minority. Straight white males are the most discriminated against, with homosexuals, women, blacks, Asians and other minorities all claiming their place on the ladder with varying degrees of privilege. Possibly the most egrarious example is Mister Obama, who is as much white as black.
Posted by ODDL at 4:48 PM on May 31
“My children don’t get affirmative action (reverse racism) and it is not fair that other brown people (ex-Mexicans, etc.) get it”.
‘reverse racism’ is a slur word against whites. In the tiny 1/10th of a percent of racial coverage that goes to whites who may be facing ‘reverse discrimination’… the word is used to suggests that non-whites are being discriminated in an article that’s explaining how whites are not being. There’s a web-site based in California that discusses this.
Posted by at 1:33 PM on June 2