New Delhi: Expressing deep anguish at the rape and murder of the eight-year-old girl from the marginalised Bakarwal community in Jammu and Kashmir’s Kathua district earlier this year, 78 members of an informal national alliance called Mahila Kisan Adhikaar Manch (MAKAAM) have noted that they see the issue “in the context of denial of livelihoods rights of pastoral communities such as the Bakarwals”. The forum for women farmers’ rights has also decried the use of women’s bodies as a “site for patriarchal, communal and land grab politics, in which state and other parties are complicit”.In a statement, the national facilitation team members of the forum, Shubhada Deshmukh and Soma K. P., expressed their solidarity with those marginalised communities, women and girl farmers who endure lives of peril and oppression. “We protest the increasing violence against them and condemn the impunity of the state. The state is unable to ensure the safety of these girls and their communities’ lives and livelihoods, and this is unconscionable and unacceptable,” they said.The statement signed by the forum’s members from across 25 states in the country, while expressing outrage at the rape of the minor, said the group also opposes “the forced evictions of the Bakarwal Gujjars from their customary territories by the Jammu and Kashmir administration and condemn the atrocities committed against the community.” It charged that “the deliberate efforts at communalisation and land grab forms the social and political backdrop of this heinous atrocity.”Stating that the instance of violence against the minor girl in Kathua was not an isolated incident, “but one among numerous others that bears evidence to the increasing incidences of rape and brutality against women and girls as sites for the assertion of increasingly masculinised caste and religion-based patriarchy,” the MAKAAM members added that they “condemn the marginalistion, polarisation and dispossession of marginalised minority pastoralist communities in Jammu and Kashmir and their denial of rights in their traditional territories where they have maintained their seasonal livelihoods.”Sexual violence as an instrument of oppressionThe group said the Kathua incident “brings to light the manner in which sexual violence against women and children is used as a tool to further subjugate marginalised communities. In this case, the brutalisation of the minor girl is evidence of not only the grave physical insecurities within which Bakarwal women in Jammu and Kashmir meet sustenance and livelihood needs in the context of communalisation and violent dispossession from their traditional forest areas, but also exposes the perpetrators’ attempts to humiliate the community by targeting its most vulnerable members.”In this case, they said, the phenomenon of “endorsement of violent and exclusionary politics and laws” was evident in the rallies subsequent to the incident by some elements among the settled villagers and lawyers against the filing of the chargesheet, preventing the community from burying the minor girl in their traditional burial grounds, as well as orders mandating eviction of Bakarwals from their customary forests and refusal to extend the Forest Rights Act, 2006 to Jammu and Kashmir.Government failed in legal, constitutional dutyThe group also charged that the Jammu and Kashmir government failed in its legal and constitutional duty to secure the life and liberty of the minor girl who was marked by multiple marginalisations of age, gender, religion and tribal identity. It said her vulnerable situation was compounded by sustained efforts to evict her community from their land.The group said instead of securing the life and property of the girl, “the government instead was instrumental in magnifying her vulnerabilities by attempting to forcefully evict her family and community, jeopardising their livelihood and way of life, and then failing to provide any form of redress for the sexual violence.”The forum members also said the Centre, instead of implementing the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act (POCSO), 2012 and the recommendations of the Justice Verma Committee 2013, chose to issue an ordinance, bypassing parliamentary procedures, to introduce the death penalty in case of rapes of minors, further encouraging cycles of violence upon marginalised communities. They said studies have demonstrated the inefficacy of the death penalty in curbing such incidents of rape. Further, the group said a majority of those awarded the death penalty themselves belong to the Scheduled Tribes and Scheduled Castes and this would further reinforce the vicious cycle of oppression and discrimination.Why Bakarwal Gujjars were targetedNoting that the minor girl fell victim to “aggression against the community and as part of systematic attempts to intimidate, terrorise and drive out the community in response to their growing assertion for forest rights and secure livelihoods,” the forum recalled how and why Bakarwal Gujjars have remained “largely marginalised”.It said “the Bakarwal Gujjars are traditionally pastoralist communities, who spend summers in the high altitude pastures of the Kashmir and Ladakh regions. In the winter, they move with their livestock to the Shivaliks and the plains of Jammu province. The community was classified as a Scheduled Tribe in 1991, and continues to remain largely marginalised owing to their nomadic lifestyles and general apathy of policy makers towards their rights and livelihoods. The appropriation of the customary lands of this tribal community by the state and some sections of the neighbouring communities on communal grounds is rendered evident by their refusal to allow the minor girl’s body to be buried on lands owned by her own family!”Due to the non-recognition of the rights of the community to their customary forest lands, the forum said that “the Bakarwals continue to be viewed as ‘encroachers’ on the same forests where they have been practising their traditional vocation for centuries, a fact expressly recognised by the Jammu and Kashmir government through its executive orders in 1975.”However, it said, the control of the colonial-era forest bureaucracy continues to be legally and institutionally entrenched in the region, as the Forest Rights Act does not extend to Jammu and Kashmir, denying traditional rights to the 27 lakh Bakharwal Gujjar population. On the other hand, in other states in India, it said, the FRA recognises the authority of the Gram Sabha over Community Forest Resources. “The non-extension of Forest Rights Act (FRA), 2006 to J&K permits the forest bureaucracy and state administration to prevent the community from using forest land for grazing and restrict access to traditional migratory routes.”In defence of their traditional way of life and to secure livelihoods, the forum said, the Bakarwal Gujjar community had recently begun to assert its rights to forests and resources, and called for an extension of the FRA to Jammu and Kashmir.Acknowledging that the implementation of the FRA has been a long-standing demand of the Gujjar and Bakarwal associations in the state, the forum said, it was “in solidarity with these groups in demanding that the Act be extended to the state as deemed appropriate and necessary within the context of Jammu and Kashmir, in order to secure the lives, livelihoods and bodily safety of women pastoralists and their brethren and to allow them and other communities to live amicably in the practice of their traditional occupations in the region.”Communal fault lines impact communityOn how and why the situation took a communal turn in the state following the rape case, the forum said with the pastoral lifestyle of the Bakarwal Gujjar community getting impacted due to the circumstances, many within the community have settled down in their villages around Jammu division and in some cases have also bought land. “This has led to a contest for resources between the Bakarwal community and other resident villagers.”However, it said, the Bakarwal community has alleged that selective evictions and anti-encroachment drives against them have increased in the Jammu division. “They have also alleged incendiary speeches by the members of the ruling parties to incite violence against the community.” It said several settlements belonging to Gujjar and Bakarwal nomadic tribal community were also destroyed and the families evicted from their traditional migratory routes. Also, “incidents of desecration of religious structures of the community allegedly by the forest department, police department as well as the Jammu Development Authority for being situated on forest and ‘custodian property’ in the Jammu division have only aggravated the situation, and even led to the death of a Gujjar youth.”The group also lamented that “these same authorities have also been unable to prevent the lynching of members of the Bakarwal Gujjar community from communal mobs that attacked them on allegations of engaging in cow slaughter.”In view of the ongoing situation, the forum has demanded that that the perpetrators of the rape and murder be brought to justice; the Centre withdraw the ordinance for providing death penalty for rape of girls below the age of 12; the implementation of the Scheduled Tribes and Other Traditional Forest Dwellers (Forest Rights Act), 2006 be extended to Jammu and Kashmir; the rights of pastoralists be protected through the directive of February 2018 till a new policy in formulated; Jammu and Kashmir government enact a law to protect the rights and livelihoods of the pastoralist; and the rights of Bakarwal Gujjar community to traditional livelihoods be restored.
