Demand of JK’s Gujjars for inclusion of Gojri among official languages echoes in Delhi
Ravi S Singh
Tribune News Service
New Delhi, September 6
Canvassing support for the inclusion of Gojri among official languages in Jammu and Kashmir, the Gujjar community from the UT and other parts of the country have urged the BJP Rajya Sabha MP Surendra Nagar to espouse their case at the Centre.
Delegations of the Gujjar community from Jammu and Kashmir have sent a memorandum to Nagar in the matter.
The representative leader of the community from other parts of the country have met him in person here in the past two days.
Nagar, who is the lone Gujjar MP in the Rajya Sabha, confirmed of the development and supported the demand for giving official language status to Gojri in Jammu and Kashmir.
“The demand for inclusion of Gojri in the list of official languages is justified,” Nagar said and added that it would help in the overall growth of the community.
Nagar said the Gujjars, who are tribals, had been kept away from the mainstream in Jammu and Kashmir by vested interests and the political parties who were in power for the past 70 years.
In their representation to Nagar, the community leaders underlined that the Gojri speaking population is the third-largest after Kashmiri and Dogri speaking populace in the UT.
They further said their rich cultural heritage had been neglected deliberately to allow the domination of a particular political and cultural narrative since the country’s Independence.
They said the community had hoped from the Centre and the administration of Jammu and Kashmir in the wake scrapping of the “discriminatory” Article 370 and creation of the Union Territory.
Nagar was urged to get their demands of official language to Gojri and political empowerment to Gujjar and Bakarwal tribes raised at the Centre, including in the Parliament.
With regard to political empowerment, they have pitched for reservation of assembly seats to the Gujjars and the Bakarwals as STs in the ongoing process of de-limitation in Jammu and Kashmir with regard to the coming Assembly election.
