Muhammad Tajuddin, Professor, Department of Political Science, University of Jammu, Jammu-180006, J&K, India
The writings on Jammu and Kashmir politics are generally on issues of accession and integration, governance, regionalism, disaffection, political violence, Pakistan’s irredentist adventures in the polity and their responses in Indian foreign and security policies. As a result, the issues of marginal communities including Scheduled Tribes (STs) have not received appropriate attention. The meagre available works on STs are mainly of anthropological and sociological nature. This paper attempts to explore the political process which changed the official position of denial of the existence of tribes in the polity to their recognition as STs. It also presents a comparative analysis of the STs rights regime in the state with the national STs rights regime and examines the rationale of the differences. The impact of reorganisation of the state on STs rights in the successor union territories has not been covered in the study.
Indian constitution, Jammu and Kashmir constitution, Kashmiri, Dogra, Buddhist/Ladakhi, Gujjar and Bakarwal
