INDIA:A STAND-OFF between one of India's lower castes and the security forces has claimed 37 lives in western Rajasthan state. The protests continued yesterday and rail and road traffic was disrupted across the province, which is popular with western tourists.
The army was deployed to quell four days of bloody demonstrations by the Gujjar community, which is seeking to reclassify its hereditary caste. This is to render their community eligible for affirmative action and assure them government jobs and preferential university admissions.
The Gujjars, a largely nomadic tribe, took to the streets last week after a government panel set up to look into their demands recommended a €45 million aid package for their community but ruled out caste reclassification.
Gujjars are considered part of the second-lowest caste group, known as Other Backward Classes.
This group was recently guaranteed by official fiat a 27 per cent reservation in state-run educational institutions and government employment.
Last year, 26 people died in Gujjar protests, but the authorities refused their demands on the grounds that they were financially solvent and hence ineligible for state patronage.
Meanwhile, yesterday's protests spread to the adjoining Uttar Pradesh state, where Gujjar mobs stopped trains, blocked roads and disrupted court proceedings.
The rioting paralysed all traffic between the state capital, Jaipur and Agra, the city of the famed Taj Mahal monument, and along the highway linking the northern region to India's financial and entertainment capital, Mumbai.
The head of the Gujjar affirmative action front, former colonel K.S. Bainsla, and hundreds of supporters - some carrying bodies of demonstrators killed by police - blocked the railway line near the Bayana township some 160km (100 miles) east of Jaipur as columns of army soldiers attempted to disperse them.
State police chief Amanjit Singh Gill said that 21 people had been killed in clashes on Saturday when police in nearby Sikandra clashed with protesters who set fire to a police station and two buses. A total of 15 demonstrators died during the disturbances on Friday.
According to Mr Gill, one police officer was beaten to death.
Attempts by the state government to negotiate with the protesters have so far been unsuccessful, with neither side willing to back down.
"Do not try to test my patience. We would not tolerate people taking the law into their own hands," state chief minister Vasundhara Raje warned the Gujjar leadership.