Casteism is so deep rooted within us that we use casteist slurs in day to day life without even having an idea about it. Time and again we see people calling others terms like "gujjar", "watul", "haenza" etc in a demeaning way.

The most abused term is "gujjar" used as slur mostly for people of upper reaches no matter whether they belong to the community or not. We see any kashmiri from upper reaches collaborating with the occupier, we just pass comments like "gujjir khaslat" etc.

Today again, a look at the reaction to Lolab few people celebrating rakhsa bandhan with army and we see how the word is used as slur. We tend to forget the struggle and sacrifice of people from upper reaches and criminalise them all for the acts of few.

If these upper reaches gave us leaches like javaid qureshi, they gave us gems like MANAN WANI too. If we can't generalise all of them to be Manan, then we can't generalise them to be javiads too. When we don't use gujjar for Manan, we shouldn't as slur use for others too.

What's more problematic is the way our subconscious mind is fed with narratives like "if you see a bear and a gujjar in a forest, you kill a gujjar first" from the very childhood. We are made to think of them as lower class and this is something we need to work on.

These are the most testing times for us and if anything we need rn the most is unification and by unification I mean those of all communities. Besides, GUJJAR IS A PROUD COMMUNITY WITH A LOT OF HISTORY AND NOT SOME SLUR!