The Gurjjars of Rajasthan have been tracking his every move, hanging on to his words, trusting he will change their lives. But family members and friends of Lt Col (retired) Kirorilal Bainsla say that for the 1965 prisoner of war, it has been a far more personal and difficult fight.

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.

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