Sleeping Schedules and Tribal Schedules
“Look who slept all night. Welcome to India,” said Sanjit when I got up this morning. I have been nursing jetlag for the past few days, up all night emailing and writing, sleeping during the day despite the heat. Finally, I have slept at night, leaving Eastern Standard Time behind for Indian Standard Time. When I got up, Sanjit was at his computer finalizing a sideshow of his recent work in Myanmar. Yesterday, I helped him edit the text. You can see the piece featured on his website.
On Thursday, there were protests and blockades all around Delhi. The Gujjar tribe of Rajasthan is protesting to be included as a 4th schedule tribe. The scheduled tribes and scheduled castes system is a provision of the 1949 Indian Constitution which set up an affirmative action system based on information gathered in the 1930’s around tribes and castes that were systematically disadvantaged in society. According to a BBC article, the Gujjars are looking to be downgraded in the schedule system in order to receive more benefits and hopefully catch up economically and politically with another Rajasthani tribe, the Meenas, who have been benefiting from their status as a Scheduled tribe since 1954. The protests in Delhi were pretty run-of-the-mill as far as I can tell. Welcome to India.
Darjeeling has been active around the issue of schedule status, especially since last fall. Darjeeling agitated for independent statehood in the late 1980’s. As part of West Bengal, the hills people were economically marginalized as a far-flung mountain region of Gorkhas (a tribe of Nepali origin) in a state of Bengali planes people. They received few benefits and little infrastructure development. Darjeeling is prosperous due to the tourism and tea industry, so when the locals petitioned the federal government for statehood, West Bengal responded with repressive tactics. The years of armed conflict climaxed with a 40-day strike where the Gorkha resistance shut off the region from outside contact. Hungry and tired after the strike, the people of Darjeeling accepted the compromise of a local council, called the Darjeeling Gorkha Hill Council (DGHC), under West Bengal. The council has pushed to be included in the 6th schedule of tribes, which they achieved in 2005. Many are unsatisfied with this provision. The interest in statehood was rekindled when Subash Ghising, leader of the DGHC, professed that 6th schedule status was sufficient. The rival party did not agree, nor did many of the people of Darjeeling. Ghising had to step down from his post in March. The rival party, Gorkha Janmukti Morcha, took power. Protests for statehood shortly followed. Now, the party has set a deadline of June 27th to dissolve the DGHC. I believe that the logic behind this is to dismantle any governing bodies oriented toward West Bengal as a way to pressure for the establishment of Darjeeling as a state in India.
I cant’ decide if this means that I have good timing in going to Darjeeling or bad timing.
[...] schedule, a system of welfare for tribal groups that suffer discrimination in India society (See my earlier post on the tribal and caste schedules). He, and he alone, had been invited to talks in Delhi over the [...]