SIKANDARA, India — SIKANDARA, India - Sitting in the middle of a highway under baking hot sun is not Mansingh Burja's idea of a good time. But it's the best way, he says, for him and hundreds of fellow protesters to vent their anger over being classified by the government as a "backward" class near the bottom of India's social ladder.
They want to be lower.
Members of an ethnic group known as Gujjars, the demonstrators have blocked traffic for the past two weeks here on the road leading to the famed Taj Mahal, ever since dozens from their ranks were killed in a hail of bullets during clashes with state police. They vow to remain where they are until the government demotes them to the lowest rung of the official social hierarchy.
Such a comedown would essentially reduce the Gujjars to a status similar to that of India's former "untouchables," pariahs under the ancient caste system. But it would also entitle them to more favorable quotas in education and public-sector jobs that the government has set aside for the most oppressed groups in an effort to redress historic wrongs.
"Our community is just as backward" as the former untouchables, declared Burja, 32. "We need the same kinds of benefits."
He and his fellow demonstrators have brought life to a standstill in a large swath of Rajasthan, a state in western India popular with tourists for its imposing desert forts and picturesque cultural life.
The protesters bivouacked in the middle of the highway here have cut off the nearby city of Jaipur, about 30 miles away, from Agra and the Taj Mahal, a key artery not just for tourist traffic but also for movement of goods.
Gujjar women have sat down on train tracks and disrupted rail service.
The demonstrators also have destroyed public property, pulling down traffic lights and ripping out highway guardrails to fling onto the asphalt as roadblocks alongside uprooted trees, boulders and the charred frames of burned-out motorcycles. Economic losses stemming from two weeks of protest are estimated to exceed $1 billion.
Nobody anticipated such a violent response from state police, who fired on protesters in at least three incidents beginning May 23. When the clashes subsided a few days later, 43 people lay dead, nearly all of them Gujjars. Autopsies reportedly suggest that some of the victims had been shot in the back.
