Uneasy in a Turban

Qamar Rabbani Chechi is a Lok Sabha candidate from Dausa, Rajasthan, though he is a Kashmiri. How come? Constitutional flexibility and a caste wrangle

Qamar Rabbani Chechi is a Lok Sabha candidate from Dausa, Rajasthan, though he is a Kashmiri. How come? Constitutional flexibility and a caste wrangle

Sorry, but that phone got stolen.” Hardev Singh is apologetic about the trouble we have had to face in contacting Qamar Rabbani Chechi. Two days earlier, I had spoken to Chechi over his mobile phone. “It would feel great to meet a fellow Kashmiri in a faraway place like Rajasthan,” he had said then. On trying to call him on the same number just 48 hours or so later, the phone is switched off.

In Dausa, asking for Chechi’s election office could be tricky, I know. And I’m not wrong. Sitting on his haunches with a hookah in his hand, the man who I ask directions almost explodes. “Chechi-Pechi hum nahin jaante (I don’t know any Chechi),” he grunts with poorly disguised disdain for the name cited. My guess is correct. The man is from the rival Meena community, to whom Chechi is persona non grata.

Finally, after contacting a friend who works in a local newspaper, I get hold of Chechi’s campaign trail man, Hardev Singh, who tells me that his leader’s phone had actually got stolen during a public meeting. “If you really ask me, I am happy that I lost that phone,” Chechi says later, wiping sweat from his brow. “I am not much of a politician, you see,” he smiles.

It’s quite a complicated set of circumstances that has brought Chechi here, all the way from J&K. Dausa is a Lok Sabha constituency in Rajasthan, India’s only desert state. And, as it often happens in these parts, it’s not always easy to see through all the dust and heat of a battle. The electoral war for this seat is not really between two political parties. It is between two rival castes. Dausa used to be a stronghold of the late Congress leader, Rajesh Pilot, a Gujjar. After his death, his son won the seat in the 2004 election.

But post-delimitation, the seat was reserved for scheduled tribe (ST) candidates.

This was a sore point for Rajasthan’s Gujjars, who have been agitating for equivalence with Meenas, who have ST status and are thus beneficiaries of governmental affirmative action. “The Gujjars couldn’t bear to see themselves being ruled by Meenas,” says Hardev Singh. So the local Gujjar leadership got hold of Qamar Rabbani Chechi, who is a Muslim Gujjar from far-flung Rajouri district of Jammu & Kashmir. There, Gujjars are classified as STs.

“Dev Narayan Bhagwan ki jai (Victory to Dev Narayan God).” The cry rises as a group of Gujjar men assemble at Khedla village, where Chechi is to address them. Chechi discreetly raises his hands alongside others as they invoke the Gujjar deity. That’s not something which bothers him as a Muslim, it’s par for the electoral course. What troubles him is the heat.

That afternoon, there are heat storms, and the temperature is above 40° Celsius. Back home, in Rajouri, it’s about half of that.

Chechi says he almost collapsed in exhaustion just before we met him. But this is a big election. It calls for real hard work. More so when your chief rival is a former state minister from the erstwhile Vasundhra Raje government in the state of Rajasthan, who then switched sides to the Congress and is now fighting independently after being denied a ticket by that party. Kirori Mal Meena can count on caste support.

“Kirori Mal is campaigning in a helicopter, but it is eventually Chechi sahab who is going to win,” says Subash Sharma, who has accompanied us from Chechi’s election office to Khedla. The support of Brahmins and other castes is crucial for Chechi. Among the 1.3 million voters of Dausa, about 300,000 are Meenas, while there are 200,000 Gujjars. Brahmin votes are another 200,000, while Muslim votes are 75,000. According to Sharma, Chechi can count on a Brahmin boost, if only to thwart a Meena victory. By now, he has begun to address me in fraternal terms as ‘Sharmaji’, after having insisted on my gotra and, upon my reluctant disclosure, having found it “same to same” as his.

Chechi arrives in Khedla in a Tata Sumo, crammed between his supporters and a policeman, and wearing a traditional Rajasthani turban which he is visibly uncomfortable with. “You will have to vote for me to end ‘terrorism’,” Chechi tells the crowd, flaying Meena ‘highhandedness’. The men nod their heads in agreement. The smell of tobacco hangs thick in the heat—almost every man is smoking either a hookah or bidi.

After a while, I notice no one is listening to him. The men are all staring at my colleague Ruhani, whose own eyes are set on her camera lens. Nevertheless, Chechi goes on. “There are too many marriages on voting day. But please make sure you vote,” he tells them. “My fighting polls from Rajasthan is an ode to secularism,” Chechi tells me, now sitting in our car, and after he has quaffed off an entire bottle of mineral water. “Some people say that India only loves the land of Kashmir and not its people. But my candidature has proven them wrong,” he says.

But what about the heat? Chechi takes another swig from another bottle. “AC tez karo, bhai (Turn up the AC, brother),” he tells our driver, and then turns towards me. “You know, in Rajouri, the moment the temperature touches 35-36° C, it rains. But here, there is no escape from heat,” he says, adjusting his turban.

Before addressing another meeting, Chechi stops at his house. He drinks more water, and takes off his turban for a while, closing his eyes under a whirling fan. He also changes his clothes before he leaves. “Do you mind if I sit in your car?” he asks, “You are coming with me, no?” We are.

At the next meeting, Chechi greets a group of boys sitting on a parapet. “Cylinder dilwa dena jab jeetoge (Get us a cylinder when you win),” they shout, in half jest. His election symbol is a cooking gas cylinder. It’s now time to make an appearance at a Saini marriage, another caste. The phone keeps ringing. “Ram Ram,” Chechi greets every caller. In between, there is a call from Rajouri. “Walekum-as-Salaam,” Chechi says, breaking into a grin. For once, he looks relieved.

ChechiDausaDelimitationGujjarMeena