Van Gujjar people
The Van Gujjars are a Van Gujjari-speaking nomadic ethnic group and a sub-tribe of the larger Muslim Gujjar community. They are traditionally herders and primarily reside in the Shivalik Hills region of Uttarakhand, Himachal Pradesh and Western Uttar Pradesh. Following Islam, they are a pastoral semi-nomadic community known for practicing transhumance. Van Gujjars started adopting Islam between the 13th and 14th centuries, with Sufi teachings playing a significant role in their conversion. The Van Gujjars of Uttarakhand and Uttar Pradesh have strong ties with the Muslim Gujjars of Himachal Pradesh, with intermarriages being common, but they have not maintained relations with Hindu Gujjars of North India.
Historically, they were referred to as Jammuwallah or Dodhi Gujars by others, but they simply identified themselves as Gujjars.
The Shivalik Hills Forest Division has been a seasonal habitat for the Van Gujjars since the late 1920s. Traditionally, they'd migrate with their livestock, spending winter in Shivalik Hills and summer in the meadows of Himachal Pradesh and Uttarakhand. Currently about 4,000 Van Gujjar families reside in Shivalik hills forest area.
Van Gujjars are known to be lactovegetarians due to sole dependence on animal-herding and milk delivery as a livelihood opportunity.
History
Colonial history
records of the forest department confirm a Van Gujjars presence in the Doon Valley, after the British regained control of it in the aftermath of the Anglo-Gurkha War. In some measure, this was recognition of the law of their rights as inhabitants of the forests, an official incorporation of their custodianship as part of forest management, a continuation of the Van Gujjars occupation of the Doon valley of Uttarakhand.The state focuses on fixed boundaries and territories, whether legally or just culturally, is at odds with the Van Gujjars existence as nomads. A clear example of that is the continued consequences of the British Forest Act of 1865, which barred indigenous communities from access to their ancestral territories. Decades after India was freed from colonial rule, the story has not changed. The Uttarakhand Forest Department, with its biased view of the Van Gujjars, authenticated a history of abuse and violations of rights representing their native pastoral culture as a threat to conservation.
In an 1870 account, British forester Sainthill Eardley-Wilmot described the Van Gujjars as a herding tribe who were highly dependent upon the forest and annually moved about the Himalaya. Wilmot noted their different ways of talking about them somewhat favorably.
The British colonial regime in India classified Van Gujjars as "criminal tribes" in accordance with the 1871 Criminal Tribes Act. The Act also marked those who did not conform to gender norms as "eunuchs." The law was amended, India abolished this law in 1949 and replaced it with its own law, while the section related to gender non-conformity was repealed in 1911.
British officer Williams' notes from 1874 confirm the Van Gujjars movement into the Doon Valley of Uttarakhand during the 18th century. Other historical documents from British forestry members further verify that the Van Gujjars have roots within the history of the Doon Valley.
The British surveys from the 1880s show the Van Gujjars in five had ownership of 542 buffaloes, 26 cows, and 81 sheep or goats. While this number is far fewer than the earlier numbers from the various accounts, it is surprising because it had been noted in the late 1870s, that various herders individual owned herds of up to 350 with respect to the cattle ownership. The reader can only wonder if the number was understated or less Van Gujjar moved the Shivalik Hills in the later part of the 1880s.
In 1885, Fisher's reports to the British authorities alerted them to a dangerous situation: the people of Bashahr state had violently displaced the Van Gujjars from their territory, and some have alleged that they performed the act of sacrificing a Gujjar boy in a temple ritual. Prior to that in 1884, an act of violence had occurred, in which several Van Gujjars were alleged to have killed a man in the Jaunsar-Bawar.
Their mode of life as nomads, with nothing but a wandering lifestyle devoid of fixed dwellings or agricultural settlements, was powerful enough to separate them from the villagers that the colonial state could easily comprehend as the 'locals'. Their non-settled lifestyle resulted in them deviating from the colonial state definition of a proper subject. Again in January 1885, an order from the North-Western Province demonstrated their ambiguous relationship with the British Raj. One such order was as follows:
E.M. Moir, the Conservator of Forest for the Jaunsar Division Department in the North-Western Provinces, wrote on August 17, 1887, regarding a severe cattle disease outbreak that severely affected a Van Gujjar herder who lost 300 cattle out of the 350 cattle he managed.
In 1902, a new provision was proposed to regulate Van Gujjar migration. When the herders returned to British provinces each fall, the herders were to pay a small security deposit of 8 Annas that would be returned in April, assuming they did not engage in excessive cutting of trees in protected forests. In Dickinson's view, this could be a good source of revenue – 50 rupees for every 100 cattle by charging 8 Annas per herder.
British colonial document records indicate that the Van Gujjars moved to the Shivalik Hills in the Saharanpur district of Uttar Pradesh during the mid or late 19th century due to restrictions on forests and growing population pressures in Punjab. Moving further eastward, they moved into the rough lands from Uttar Pradesh up to Uttarakhand, including Rajaji National Park forest area in Uttarakhand. According to the document, the British Government acted quickly to appoint a man to identify and mark in the area those forests that would have commercially valuable timber reserves.
Land ownership and permit system
Annual grazing permits have been issued to family or clan leaders of the Van Gujjar community since the British Raj that identify precise compartments of use by each group. Most of the significant decisions about these compartments and migration patterns is performed by the family head to better manage resources.The Van Gujjars are a landless group who inhabit and graze on state-managed common land, typically within Uttarakhand, Uttar Pradesh and Himachal Pradesh. They historically used these spaces for centuries before the British colonial administration instituted a permit system to regulate Van Gujjar nomadism as part of a broader colonial goal of harvesting forest resources. These permits outlined specific grazing areas and livestock quotas per family unit.
The permit system is still active today, requiring Van Gujjars to annually present their documentation and pay taxes for grazing in the Himalayan meadows and for using forest products in the Sivalik Hills, in order to have access to buffalo grazing rights.
Post-colonial history
The Van Gujjars experience systemic marginalization as a response to exclusionary British-based forest policy. Their position as Muslims and indigenous people renders them particularly vulnerable. Unlike other indigenous Indian Tribes, Van Gujjars never acquired Scheduled Tribe status, most likely because of their religious identity in a communal and ethnically divided society. A lack of some basic rights such as domicile, advocacy, and education status all play a role in their marginalization.The plight of Van Gujjars is further evidenced by a report issued by India's National Human Rights Commission regarding Van Gujjars living in Rajaji National Park who face harassment and other abuses from staff in the Uttarakhand Forest Department.
Those living in Himachal Pradesh face even more dire situations, with many Van Gujjars reported as homeless and landless. A government report in 1983 reported that only 11.83% of Van Gujjars owned land. That means 88.17% of Van Gujjars have nowhere to build a permanent house.
The association between the Shivalik range and the Indian army began in the 1980s, yet the state still attempts to expel all the Van Gujjars from the Uttar Pradesh and Uttarakhand Forests. The Van Gujjars distrust the forest department, who they believe is the ultimate authority responsible for eviction under the guise of conservation or development. Their distrust is compounded by the assertion of the Indian Forest Department that 25,000 hectares are unoccupied, when there are actually 1,800 Van Gujjar families occupying that same land.
While the Indian Forest Rights Act, 2006 recognizes their rights for forest land as "traditional forest dwellers," they experience conflict with the local state forest authorities denying human and livestock presence inside "reserved parks." As Muslims, they have frequently been the target of actions from the Uttarakhand Forest Department, wrongful eviction notices, forced evictions, and other illegal conduct from the forest department.
In 2011 and 2017, the state Government of Uttarakhand issued additional displacement orders affecting certain Van Gujjar families in those areas. The 2018 decision by the High Court that Van Gujjars were illegally occupying forest land caused a renewed uproar as they had yet to provide any framework for rehabilitation. The Supreme Court of India intervened later that year, stopping the High Court from enforcing the eviction order. In 2020, Van Gujjar families were engaged in a confrontation with forest officials, and the officials physically assaulted men and women from the community during the confrontation and arrested some members. The Uttarakhand High Court ordered the government to form a committee to address the issues faced by Van Gujjars.
On May 25, 2021, the Uttarakhand High Court ruled that the Van Gujjars have a right to access meadows inside the Govind Pashu Vihar National Park, relying on the 2006 Forest Rights Act, and even ordered the local administration to allow them access. The Court noted the Van Gujjars had been living in indignity for a month at that time, at which point the Court directed the appropriate authorities to grant access to summer habitat, and guarantee that Van Gujjars and their livestock were provided at a minimum basic supplies by June 15, 2021.
At the same time, the Van Gujjar Tribal Yuva Sangathan sought recognition under the 2006 Forest Right Act and presented claims at the SDM office, in 2022, for the community's ST status. In 2023, the Van Gujjar organization Van Panchayat Sangharsh Morcha disputes eviction notices, in 2023 the forest department of Uttarkhand acknowledged their errors in the eviction notices they provided to the Van Gujjars.
In 2023, a flood devastated the Naouki settlement of the Van Gujjars in Uttarkhand's Haridwar district, with 9 out of 100 homes destroyed, due to a combination of unusually early and intense rainfall. The Van Gujjars contend that the damage was exacerbated by two linear retaining walls constructed by the NHAI as part of the Char dham highway project. The NHAI generally takes location into account when considering flood damage, but, due to the Naouki settlement being a non-official settlement of the Van Gujjars the area was not considered. The Van Gujjars settlement was not represented in official records as they are not regarded as permanent residents according to the Forest Department, and thus were not entitled to any protection and rights.