King Mihir Bhoj’s lineage row: Mahasabha objects to terms “Gurjar & Kshatriya” being used for govt panel

The committee will be headed by Karnal divisional commissioner, with the Inspector General of Police of the range acting as its vice-chairman, and Kaithal deputy commissioner working as the member secretary. According to the government order, the Kaithal Superintendent of Police, two professors of history from Chandigarh’s Panjab University — M Rajivlochan and Priyatosh Sharma — and two advocates, one appointed by the ‘Gurjars’ and the other by the ‘Kshatriyas’ being included as its members.

On Monday, the Gurjar Mahasabha held a press conference wherein it raised objections over the usage of the term Kshatriya, instead of Rajput, to address members of the community by the state government. The president of the Mahasabha, Anurag Gurjar, said, “This should have been Rajput versus Gurjar. Kshatriya is not a caste but a varna. We have sent our objections to the Governor and the Chief Minister over the structure of the committee.”

The Mahasabha has also demanded the inclusion of Acharya Virender Vikram as a representative of the Gurjar community in the panel stating that they would approach the Punjab and Haryana High Court if their demand was not accepted.

On his part, Acharya Virender Vikram, said, “Mihir Bhoj was a very powerful king of the Gurjar Pratihar who ruled in the country for 53 years. He is recognised as a Gurjar Samrat. In the records, the Rashtrakutas of Deccan and the Palas of Bengal of his times too addressed him as a Gurjar.”

In July this year, 35 local BJP leaders from Kaithal had offered to resign in protest after the 9th-century king Mihir Bhoj was referred to as ‘Gurjar Pratihar Samrat Mihir Bhoj’ while his statue was being unveiled by district party leaders.

BJP leaders from the Rajput community were unhappy that the king had not been called a “Hindu Samrat”, which they said was a more apt title. The matter is currently pending before the Punjab and Haryana High Court.

The controversy around the lineage of Mihir Bhoj has surfaced earlier too, in Bihar and Uttar Pradesh, with both Gurjars and Rajputs claiming he belonged to their community.

On October 18, nearly 15,000 members of the Rajput community took out a rally in Haryana’s Kaithal to vent their anger at being “ignored” by the BJP-led regime over the ongoing row. The protesters then vowed to oppose the BJP in the 2024 polls.

Haryana BJP chief spokesperson, Sanjay Sharma, had then, however, insisted that there was politics at play behind such protests stating “When the matter is in court, what can a government do?”