Today, as he emerged out of talks with Rajasthan Chief Minister Vasundhra Raje with an assurance from the state government to look into the Gujjar demands, there was quiet celebration in distant Goa. Caught up in election duties there, Additional Commissioner (Income Tax) Sunita Bainsla’s only news of her father has come from television. She has watched anxiously the turmoil in faraway Rajasthan, with Bainsla right in the middle. The retired Armyman has barely talked to Sunita or his three sons —- two in the Army, one working with a mobile firm —- since the protests started.

If her father is now the face of the Gurjjar agitation, Sunita, for many, represents its future. “Across four districts, his daughter is the only woman in a first-grade government job,” says Lajpat Singh Gurjjar, a Hutch executive who has taken leave from his organisation to join the agitation and spent the last five days in media management at Peepalikheda. “There are not even 100 women graduates in the region. This is what made Col Bainsla determined to fight.”

An “exhausted” Bainsla himself chose not to say much at the end of the day, leaving all the talking to Dr Roop Singh, who took time off from his thriving practice in a Rewari nursing home to support the campaign. Bainsla’s army also includes hundreds of ex-servicemen, who fill the ranks of the Gurjjar Aarakshan Sangharsh Samiti.

For the 68-year-old Bainsla the whole thing started way back in 1991, when he retired from the Army and returned to Karauli. An English schoolteacher, Bainsla joined the Army as a sepoy. He rose through the ranks to join the officer cadre and retired as a Lt Col. In an unblemished Army career, he served in both the 1965 and 1971 wars.

“He often talks about the sorrow that fills his heart each time he sees women in his region dying on their way to hospital,” says Lajpat Singh.

Bainsla’s family says he “always wanted to give back to the community”. They also call him a caring father who ensured that wherever he was posted, his children went to the best schools. “He wanted to give his children a good education to show people how important it was,” says a close relative.

Following their father’s footsteps, sons Daulat Singh and Jai Singh joined the Army. Both are colonels now. Younger son Vijay works for a telecom company while daughter Sunita is an Income Tax official based in Delhi.

Since his wife, who was the sarpanch of Mundiya village in Karauli, died, Bainsala has been living with his Man Friday, Guman, in Hindon City. Refusing “the comfort” of his children’s homes, Bainsla often reiterates that he is most at home here.

It is Guman that the children have turned to the past week for reassurances as their father remained out of reach.