Caste war in Nagaur gets escalated over dubious land deals
While Jats claim the family of Ratnaram Meghwal, the Dalit landowner who died, had sold his land to Chimnaram Jat, the Meghwals claim they only mortgaged the land.
The conflict was born out of a dubious land deal made in the early 1960s.
A dirt track to the left of the main village settlement in Dangawas leads one to a 25 bigha piece of farmland where a bloody caste conflict left five people, including four Dalits, dead earlier this month. There is nobody there to narrate the story of the violence that was unleashed on that fateful Friday, on May 15. Not a soul, except a few tell-tale signs.
Strewn on the ground are the debris of a one-room structure the Dalits had recently constructed. The ground is criss-crossed with tire marks of a tractor that the Jats allegedly used to mow down three Meghwals.
The conflict was born out of a dubious land deal made in the early 1960s.
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While Jats claim the family of Ratnaram Meghwal, the Dalit landowner who died, had sold his land to Chimnaram Jat, the Meghwals claim they only mortgaged the land.
“The Meghwals had sold their land to Chimnaram Jat in 1963. All these years, the Jats were tilling that land and suddenly the Meghwals started staking claim to the land,” says a Jat dhaba owner on the outskirts of the village who did not wish to be named.
The 40-year old dispute is one example of land belonging to the Scheduled Castes being allegedly acquired by Jats, usually through force.
Hundreds of bighas of SCs-owned land in the region are mired in such disputes, which have the potential of taking a violent turn any day, as it happened in Dangawas.
According to Section 42 B of the Rajasthan Tenancy Act, the land owned by Scheduled Castes cannot be transferred to non-SCs.
However, Meghwals allege that Jats in the region have routinely forced Dalit land owners to transfer the land to them using pressure tactics.
These alleged land transfers, made on signed affidavits, are illegal and stand null and void ab initio, says many administrative officers who served in this region. Nagaur district collector Rajan Vishal says that while such cases exist, the government has put in place mechanisms for their resolution.
“The exact number of such cases is not known because in all government records, Girdavari, revenue records etc, the tenant is still the SC person,” he says.
If such a transfer is made using force by the non-SC party, the aggrieved has the option of filing an FIR or approaching the revenue courts, says Vishal. “That is why the government has started the revenue lok adalat campaign… precisely to resolve such cases,” he says.
However, Meghwals claim most police and administration officials in this region, at least at the lower levels, are Jats who allegedly refuse to entertain any complaints by them. “Still our people went to the SDM but he told us to make peace with the Jats,” says Ratnaram Meghwal, a relative of Ganpat Ram, the latest victim of the violence.
Jat residents of Dangawas say the region is replete with such cases whereby Meghwals voluntarily sold their land to them, but now with land prices escalating, they keep allegedly making a bid to reclaim the land.
This correspondent spoke to several Jats who proudly showed such “transfer of ownership” affidavits, claiming they were the rightful owners of that land since the Meghwals had sold it to them in the past in full consciousness.
However, even if that were true, such land held by Jats would still be illegal. Under Section 175 of the RTA, if a Dalit person signs the land sale deed after due consideration, he/she loses ownership of the land, which then goes to the government.
In fact, Section 183 B of the same Act mandates the tehsildar to find out such cases and evict those non-SCs who hold such pieces of land.
Such conflicts, residents claim, are routinely resolved at the village and community level, by paying some money to the original SC land owner, who then sells it to a third, presumably a neutral SC person from another village dominated by the Jats.
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