Rajasthan elections: Gujjar vote may shape outcome in state’s east
When in power, both BJP and Congress have attempted to expand their reservations since 2007, when 72 people died across the state in quota protests.
Mist hangs like a film over Raja Ram Gujjar’s field of wheat. In Achalpura, this is a busy hour. Gujjar has to get to his field before the sun comes up over the village of 3,000 people, slashing straw and residue from the summer crop with his sickle. He is bent with age, and sometimes using the plough and the tractor in the chilly mornings is tough. But Gujjar is determined – because the timely sowing of his winter crop is linked to the regular payments of ₹80,000 a year he has to make to his son’s coaching class in Dausa town, about 22 km away. His son, Amit, wants to appear next year for the state police recruitment examination, a coveted position imbued with prestige and power in the countryside.
“My son was the brightest student in our village. As we cannot afford a good coaching institute in Sikar, we opted for one in Dausa. He is taking coaching for the last eight months,” he said.
Gujjar is confident about his son’s prospects. His community is only among five classified as most backward class (MBC), a category with 5% reservation in government jobs and educational institutions carved out from the larger other backward classes (OBC) pie by the Congress government in 2019. “After a long struggle, we got the MBC quota which can provide a job to my son.”
But Gujjar grumbles that despite two decades of protests, successive state governments have refused to include his community – which comprises around 8-9% of the state – as a scheduled tribe (ST). In this part of eastern Rajasthan, where Gujjars influence around 12 seats, community pride runs supreme. This time though, in the village choupal (community hub) where candidates from all major parties come to canvass support, Gujjar has heard two contradictory perspectives from community elders – one that can hurt the Congress in its efforts to buck the state’s political tradition of voting out the incumbent, and the other help it.
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“The Congress promised us that Sachin Pilot would be the chief minister and we voted for the party in 2018. But they betrayed us,” he said, echoing a sentiment that lingers across Gujjar-dominated villages in the Dausa, Kotputli and Sawai Madhopur districts. Pilot is considered among the tallest leaders of the community but the former deputy chief minister’s fallout with CM Ashok Gehlot in 2020, and the perceived sidelining of some of his supporters, has given the BJP hope that it can pry away a chunk of the Gujjar vote that had firmly backed the Congress in 2018.
But also weighing on Gujjar’s mind is another promise made by the Congress repeatedly during its assembly elections campaign – that of a caste survey on the lines of the landmark exercise held in Bihar this year. Rajasthan is ahead of other states where the Opposition has made a similar pledge, because Gehlot announced a survey in October and the state government even issued a notification on it. Implicit in this demand is the promise of an expansion in caste-based reservation, one that a landed, dominant community such as Gujjars are primed to exploit.
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“Caste census can benefit us as our population number has been downplayed,” Gujjar said. “Caste census would present society’s true picture”. Like him, many Gujjar men spoke in favour of a caste survey.
The five-state assembly polls that began earlier this month are the first electoral test for the Opposition’s gambit to use physical headcounts of castes to try and pry away chunks of the OBC vote that has become instrumental to the success of the BJP. Making official the numerical superiority enjoyed by backward communities could, the thinking goes, destabilise the BJP’s rainbow Hindu coalition. Or can it?
Like many other communities, the Gujjars sway back and forth between the two national parties in assembly polls. This time, though, the extent of that swing will depend on the complicated interplay of the Sachin Pilot and caste survey factors.
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Babulal Gujjar in Sikanderpura, where 22 people died in police firing during a quota protest, supports the caste survey because he wants more government jobs to come to his community. But he’s suspicious of the Congress because of what happened to Sachin Pilot. “They (the Congress) could have done it this year. The announcement is being made for getting our votes,” said Babulal. At Sundula village in Sawai Madhopur district, a farmer, Bhagwan Sai Gujjar, echoed this sentiment, adding that his “trust factor” with the Congress was low because of the rivalry between Pilot and Gehlot.
For the Opposition, the Gujjars present a prime target. The pastoral community, among the most dominant in Rajasthan, has long struggled to meet the aspirations of its young people through the caste quota route. When in power, both the BJP and the Congress have attempted to expand their reservations since 2007, when 72 people died across the state in quota protests, but have repeatedly run into judicial hurdles.
Now, the Bihar experiment of conducting a numerical exercise and upping reservations is giving them new hope. In many ways, this is an important test for the Opposition too – if the caste survey narrative has to work, it has to pass the test of popularity among large, dominant communities that already have political consciousness and simmering resentment over reservations.
As one travels into the Gujjar hinterland, conversations about the caste survey are unmissable – but are peppered with concern about Pilot’s future. Congress supporters talk about what more reservations can mean for the community while BJP workers argue that it will divide Hindu society. “The Congress did not even implement the Mandal Commission recommendations. How can anyone trust them?” asked Ravindra Gujjar, a BJP worker in Kotputli district.
The parties know this. In his rallies this week, Prime Minister Narendra Modi has repeatedly pushed the narrative that the Congress was unjust to Pilot, while the Congress has dismissed this allegation, playing up the rapprochement between Gehlot and Pilot.
The Congress has sought to dispel the local perception that Pilot was shortchanged. “Rajesh ji (Sachin’s father) was the tallest Congress leader and held important positions...and Sachin is aggressively campaigning for us,” said Congress spokesperson Pawan Khera. But the BJP is determined to push this narrative. “The Congress mistreated Sachin...he was removed as state president because he spoke against Gehlot,” said BJP spokesperson Mukesh Pareek.
And, it is these two issues that will decide the balance of power in eastern Rajasthan.