Sitting in a tractor trailer, his red turban barely visible over the crowds thronging around him, Lt Col Kirori Bainsala is in full command of his troops. Nearly 4 km away from the epicentre of the reservation rally that has brought Rajasthan to a grinding halt, a nervous Army captain mans a roadblock, watching the “colonel’s army” patrol National Highway 11. At every roadblock and near the burning embers of buses at Sikandara Chowk, everyone says the “battle” has just begun.

“You can call it our tryst with destiny,” says the colonel, who retired from the Guards Regiment 15 years ago. “Since Independence, there is not one Gurjjar who has become an IPS officer and we have no lady doctor from our community. We will change that.”

In his cryptic tone, Bainsala has marshaled the Gurjjars together over the last seven years. And today, at the height of the crisis, he is clearly leading the crowd.

While schoolchildren ensure no vehicle gets past their bush and bramble roadblocks on village roads, young boys patrol the highways to make sure a “non-Gurjjar” doesn’t get past their barricades. Armed with lathis and stones, they heckle every passerby, intimidating most.

Among them is 20-year-old Rajendra Singh Gurjjar, a second-year BA student in Karauli. He has spent the last two nights in the makeshift camps that have sprung up on farmland on both sides of the highway at Peeplikheda. “I know that unless we get this reservation for ourselves, I will never get a job when I graduate.” Close by, Rajpat Singh Gurjjar has taken on the role of the Gurjjar Aarakhsan Sangharsh Samiti’s spokesperson. “I work with a private cellphone operator in Jaipur,” he says smiling. “But I just told my boss that I need the leave and would come back to work only when this fight was over.”

... contd.