With the Gurjjar Mahapanchayat meeting last Sunday threatening to launch another stir, it may be useful to take a closer look at a community that has influenced the course of Indian history at various points of time. The Gurjjars played a major role in the 1857 struggle for independence. Historian Suraj Bhan Bharadwaj, who has done extensive research on the Gurjjars, mentions that those residing in several villages on the Grand Trunk Road in what is now Haryana, had blocked the road to Delhi, thus preventing the British from sending reinforcements when the city fell to the rebels. Together with this, Gurjjar villagers in the Panipat region refused to pay land revenue, thus forcing the British to ask the raja of Jind to send his troops to quell them.

Zafar Choudhary’s ‘What about Kashmir’s Gurjjars?’ (IE, June 20) was an informative and insightful account of Gurjjars across the LoC in Kashmir. But it tells us only a part of the story of this fragmented, dispersed and often maligned community. Beyond Kashmir, Gurjjars today live in at least nine states of India: HP, Punjab, Haryana, UP, Rajasthan, MP, Uttarakhand, Gujarat and Maharashtra. Besides these nine states, Gurjjars also possibly reside in AP and Karnataka. In fact, the community transcends religion, language, and caste, which are arguably the most divisive forces in the country today. They are known to be Hindus, Muslims, and Sikhs; and speak a variety of languages. While they are generally considered to be cattle-herders and subsistence cultivators — and therefore are considered ‘sudras’ in the four-varna classification — some of the Gurjjars in Maharashtra are classified as brahmins. Some historians and anthropologists also put them outside the four-varna classification, referring to them as mlechhas. Estimates of Gurjjar numbers vary widely and could be anywhere between 5 to 10 per cent of the country’s population.

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