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| Boken threatens agitation | | | Early Times Report
Jammu, Jan 7- Opposing the demand of grant of ST status to Pahari speaking people of the State, the Gujjars of Jammu and Kashmir today warned both State and Centre governments against any such move aimed at to dilute the Tribal status of nomadic communities by entering a “linguistic group” into “Tribal amalgam”.
The state president, Jammu and Kashmir Gujjar Bakerwal Joint Forum, of a frontal tribal organization, Haji Shamsher Ali Boken in a meeting expressed his anguish over the vested interest people including some Poonch -Rajouri based politicians for trying to weaken the “Tribal character” of various communities including Gujjars and ride upon the established procedures for grant of tribal status on the bases of Pahari language.
The Forum, faxed a memorandum to the Prime Minister, Dr Manmohan Singh and Union Home Minister, P Chitambram submitting that some people are trying to get the “Scheduled Tribal status “ on the name of a language called western Pahari so that they may secure certain benefits which have been given to the “Tribal and Nomadic” people only. The 7-point memorandum has listed the reasons why Pahari speaking people did not deserve Scheduled Tribe status.
Regarding Pahari speaking people's claim to ST status, the Forum argued that the term; " Pahari or for that matter, Pahari speaking people" has never been defined either by the J&K Government or the Union Government. Such class of people has neither been defined in any works of history, anthropology or census nor even mentioned in revenue records. They have neither been defined as a weaker section and nor they approached before the Gajendragadkar Commission, the Sikri Commission, the Wazir Commission (1969), the Anand Commission (1976) and the Mandal Commission which covered the entire country. All these commissions, from time to time, identified the Other Bakward Classes, Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes and Backward Areas and none of them recognized any group as Pahari or Pahari speaking people as weaker section of the society.
The demand of the Pahari speaking people is merely based on the premises of language while the dialect or the language is not any criteria to declare any class as Scheduled Tribe. Each of the languages have sister dialect and by that way Pahari is invariably spoken across the state by the people of all communities and origins. Even the Pahari language has no dialect. Paharis are neither tribal nor nomadic in character and they are not socially, economically and educationally backward, the memorandum adds.
Those who attended the meeting included Rafiq Chouhan, Sarwar Choudhary Goolvi, Abdul Karim Terwa, Slam Din, Kher Din and Ilam Din Banbasya.
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