Kathua put the spotlight on Bakarwals, the Army’s eyes and ears along LoC

The horrific rape and murder incident in Kathua district has unknowingly put the spotlight on the Bakarwals, one of the most misunderstood, aloof and passive transhumance communities. Essentially herding their goatherds (hence ‘Bakarwal’; one who takes care of the ‘bakra’ i.e. sheep or goat) and horses along the foothills to the higher reaches of the Pir Panjal range and the Himalayas, their nomadic existence cuts across the Jammu plains, to both sides of the Line of Control and up to the Nuristan province of Afghanistan. The Bakarwals are a sub-sect of the larger pastoral-agricultural Gujjar ethnicity that can have their religious faith to be Islamic, Hindu or even Sikh, though in the J&K state, they are almost always Islamic. Within J&K, the Gujjars and Bakarwals are the third largest ethnic group, about whom which the Census of India 2001 states “Gujjar is the most populous Scheduled Tribe in J&K, having a population of 763,806 and constitute more than 20 per cent of the total population of the state”.

The Gujjar-Bakarwals are of a distinct ethnic stock from that of a Kashmiri, Ladhakhi or the Dogra, and there are various theories about their origins from A.N. Raina’s, “they (Gujjars) were the inhabitants of Georgia (Gurjia), a territory situated between the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea, in the Soviet Union” to Cunningham who ascribes onto them a Indo-Scythian ancestry, to even Chowdhary Fayez Ahmed’s claim that: “When Gujjars ruled India their armies used to fight with Gurz, that is, Gada (weapon of Lord Hanuman), which was their symbol — that later on become Gurzar — and then, changed into Gurjar or Gujjar. It was amid this context Gujjar tribe has originated”. Fact remains that these pastoralists have their own traditions, culture, art and societal codes that distinguishes them from the other ethnicities that reside in near proximity, though do not intermingle or intermarry (essentially endogamous), amongst the other. Though very traditional and conservative in their Islamic faith, the Bakarwals have not acquired the alien strains of religious puritanicalism that has now infiltrated the Kashmir Valley. Bakarwal menfolk with their tall and striking presence, flowing hennaed beards, colourful turbans, shepherding their flock with families-in-tow and in consonance with the changing seasons are a common sight of migration across the state of J&K.

Owing to a combination of socio-economic constraints favouring a more settled lifestyle (to avail education and health facilities), pasture scarcity with ecological changes and the restrictions imposed on the traditional migration routes (by both security personnel and the militants) – the nomadic Bakarwals are eschewing their transhumant ways for sedentarization, that forces their existence and settlements to the near proximity of the other natives. The wars of 1965, 1971 and even the more recent Kargil war had redrawn and curtailed the traditional migration routes and options for annual migrations. With the ongoing unrest in the Kashmir valley and the fact that hundreds of Bakarwals have been killed in the upper reaches due to the ongoing conflict, the foothills and plains of the Jammu region (including the adjacent Kathua district), are a natural choice for settlement. This increasing sedentarization, religion-based division of society and fractured politics of J&K, has given rise to the misunderstandings and the accompanying confrontationist environment that sadly manifested in the Kathua tragedy.

Since Independence, the Bakarwals have stoutly resisted Pakistan’s overtures based on co-religiosity. Their service to the Indian armed forces during 1965, 1971 and even as recently as the Kargil war, where the Bakarwals were among the first to forewarn our forces of the Pakistani intrusion, is unparalleled and little-known beyond armed forces circles who have traditionally counted on these simple hill folk to be their extended and reliable “eyes and ears”, along the LoC. For a community with a population as large as theirs, in the state of J&K, the fact that there has been no known terrorist group of their denomination is a testimony of their insurgency-agnosticism. Even the lazy and uninformed comparison with the Rohingya influx in the Jammu region is a unwarranted comparison, as this nomadic lot have studiously maintained their identity vis-à-vis all others in the state, and certainly have no linkages with Myanmarese Rohingya, other than a very forced and bigoted angle of co-religiosity. Like the Dogras and the Ladhakis of the state, the Bakarwals-Gujjars had pressed for a separate Tribal Council within the constitutional framework of J&K so that their tribal uniqueness could be protected and preserved. In a memorandum to the interlocutors in 2010, their ‘demands’ like those of any Indian citizen included provision of shelters and land to nomadic Bakarwals-Gujjars, inclusion of the Gojri language in the Eighth Schedule of the Constitution, strengthening their Schedule Tribe status etc. – essentially socio-economic grievances, with solutions within the aspirations and confines of the Indian constitution.  Besides organising themselves into the Militancy Mukhalif Morcha (anti-militancy front), a prominent Gujjar leader Shamsheer Hakla Poonchi had gone as far as appealing to constitute a Special Gujjar Regiment, exclusively composed of J&K Gujjars, within the Indian Army to take on militancy in J&K.

In any counter-insurgency operations, like that prevailing in the J&K state today, access to ‘actionable intelligence’ (as traditionally provided by these nomadic lot of any suspicious movement along the LoC) is simply priceless and irreplaceable. In disturbed areas with overt and covert support for secessionist sentiments, the task of acquiring ‘intelligence’ is even more complicated – today, in our ignorance and narrow political quest to ignorantly designate the proverbial ‘others’ as ‘anti-national’, we may have willy-nilly compromised on a societal-ecosystem that was working to our advantage. The political spin-doctoring of Kathua incident has led a wholly civil dispute to assume ‘anti-nationalistic’ proportions that are preposterous and work to the detriment of the Indian armed forces in the larger counter-insurgency context. On the contrary, we need to recognise the yeoman service of the Bakarwal-Gujjar community in the fractured polity of J&K, as opposed to oversimplifying the narrative to its worst and narrowest political denomination and aspersion.

The writer is a retired lieutenant-general and a former lieutenant-governor of the Andaman & Nicobar Islands and Puducherry