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LATEST NEWS UPDATES | Jat violence: What exactly happened in Haryana (and why) -Anumeha Yadav

Jat violence: What exactly happened in Haryana (and why) -Anumeha Yadav

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published Published on Mar 3, 2016   modified Modified on Mar 3, 2016
-Scroll.in

The reservation protest wasn't a spur-of-the-moment agitation. It was a cynical political build-up that spilled over into the streets.

Footprints of violence were everywhere in Chhavni Mohalla. A tractor trolley lay overturned right at the entrance of the residential colony in Jhajjar. A little inside, in the middle of the road, there was a gutted tractor. Small shops in a corner of the colony had been ransacked and burnt. The twisted metal frame of a clinic’s door hung from its hinges, and broken red plastic chairs lay strewn outside.

Kisna Devi Chauhan, the middle-aged resident of the first house on the road, sat not far from this wreckage, surrounded by her relatives. Her courtyard wall was charred. A water drum, a motorcycle and a hatchback car sat inside cindered.

“There were thousands of men at the door,” she began, remembering the morning of February 21 when a mob carrying sticks, rods and axes descended on the house. “My husband and son got hit by a brick. My daughter and I rushed up to the stairs and hid in the room in a corner of the terrace.”

From a window in the room, the mother and daughter watched the unfolding horrors. Some men broke down the door, climbed up the stairs, hacked their neighbour Shamlal Saini with an axe on the same terrace, and then threw his body down. Minutes later, Krishna Saini, a neighbour who was hiding in a small flour mill, was dragged out and attacked with an axe.

“It was worse than what I witnessed in the 1947 Partition riots,” said a stunned Chauhan.

At least 20 people died and over 200 were injured as Jats went on a frenzy of destruction in mid-February to demand reservations in government jobs for their community. Over about 10 days, buildings and vehicles were torched, and railway routes and highways blockaded around Haryana and particularly in Jhajjar and Rohtak. Some estimates put the loss to the state at Rs 20,000 crore.

This was not the first time that Jats, a dominant farming community in Haryana, were agitating to be counted among Other Backward Classes. As job creation slows down and a failing education system creates thousands of unemployable graduates, the demand has surfaced periodically since 2009.

In September 2010 and in March 2012, agitations by Jats in Haryana had led to death of two youth. But never before was the scale of the rage the same. The brunt of the anger this time was felt most by Sainis, traditionally vegetable farmers holding smaller landholdings, and Punjabis from Pakistan who settled in the region. Now, as the violence abates, Haryana’s communities are left grappling with a deep social rupture and a profound suspicion of each other. In just 10 days, the political schism between Jats and non-Jat communities that underlay the politics and the discourse may have deepened irreparably.

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Scroll.in, 1 March, 2016, http://scroll.in/article/804313/jat-violence-what-exactly-happened-in-haryana-and-why


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