Against the backdrop of the distrust generated among the communities during the violent Jat reservation agitation, RSS outfit ‘Samajik Samrasta Manch’ (SSM) is organising a major meeting in Haryana on Sunday to bring the “estranged communities” together in the State.
The public meeting at Rohtak will be “a culminating point” of similar inter-community interactions at smaller level, organised all over Haryana by the RSS outfit in the aftermath of violence by Jat agitators demanding OBC status for their community. Rohtak was one of the worst-hit districts during the Jat agitation.
Sources said the SSM is expecting a gathering of over 75,000 on the day with eminent personalities from the State like filmstar Randeep Hooda, Olympic medallist Yogeshwar Dutt, former national chess champion Anuradha Beniwal, singer Himani Kapoor besides Governor KS Solanki and even Baba Ramdev likely to participate. “No political leader will participate,” they said, adding the meet is to bring all communities closer and strengthen their bonding.
The Rohtak congregation is besides the 1,600 to 1,700 smaller meetings of Jats and non-Jats already organised by the RSS in Haryana “within 10 days” of the RSS top body ‘Akhil Bharatiya Pratinidhi Sabha’ (ABPS) meeting at Naguar, Rajasthan, that concluded on March 13, according to sources.
Incidentally, the Jat leaders had earlier set April 3 as the deadline to resume their protest if their demands were not met. But, thereafter, they set March 31, the last day of the Vidhan Sabha’s Budget Session, as the deadline and threatened to resume their agitation if their demands were not met by then. The Haryana Assembly unanimously passed the Jat Reservation Bill on March 29.
At the small meetings, leaders from all the communities at all levels interacted with each other uninterruptedly and decided to lay down ‘Standard Operating Procedures’ (SOPs) to prevent such recurrences in future, the sources said.
The interactions would continue and the number of meetings may go up to 2,000 to 2,200 by the time the process of reconciliation reaches its logical end, they said.
ABPS dealt at length on the subject ‘Reservation’ with the “main focus on social cohesion and harmony”, sources said. The Jat agitation as also the ways to maintain ‘Samrasta” (Harmony) among the communities were also discussed, they pointed out.
RSS is of view that “effective implementation of reservation” should be the priority so that it reaches “its needy groups”. The RSS maintains that the weak and needy among all other groups may require reservation but “they are class and not caste”.
The BJP has accused the Congress of fomenting “caste tensions” in Haryana during the Jat agitation, leading to arson, damage to Government properties, schools, non-Jat houses and disruption of trains. Allegations of incidents of rapes during the Jat agitation are under investigation in the State and FIR has been registered.
Sources pointed out that the vexed reservation issue may trigger a similar agitation in parts of Jat-dominated Western Uttar Pradesh where polls are due in early next year. Some of the BJP MPs are for excluding reservation to the well-off sections of backward castes, particularly in the urban areas, whose first generation has already benefited from the reservation policy.