The Indian Thar: notes on history

The Indian Thar is a region with a fabulously rich prehistory and history. A range of cultures have coexisted and interacted with one another since Lower and Upper Paleolithic times more than 15,000 years ago. Simultaneous developmental and stylistic differences among sites, incorporating Neolithic, Chalcolithic and Harrapan cultures like Kalibangan, Rangmahal from 6000 to 1000 BC make up a mosaic typical of the Thar and extension of the vast Persio- Arabian deserts to the further west.

Beginning from the 6^thA.D onwards began a process of nomadic upsurges of Rajpoot clan aristocracies who imposed their territorial supremacy over new tracts of colonized land. This led to the proliferation of regional centres of power by different Rajput lineages. In fact much of what is western Rajasthan today was first colonized by the tenth and eleventh centuries A.D. In still early medieval times around the twelfth century onwards all the dryer areas of Eurasia began to converge as a result of nomadic expansion, the Arid Zone in South Asia emerged as a vibrant frontier region that widened the horizon of and opened new channels for highly mobile pastoralists, warriors, merchants, pilgrims, and others.

The spread of trading networks in the medieval times favored its growth as a connecting region between the sea coast in the west, the overland routes of the northwest and northern India. Right through the Mughal rule the area was an important transit zone for trade between regions east of Indus and northern Indian plains. By the 19^thcentury well developed trade routes, garrison fort towns, trading hubs, a network of periodic fairs, villages and temporary settlements around which royal lineages and trading networks spread, wide open grasslands were some of the chief features of the human geography of Thar. These historic processes of human settlement of Thar were sustained by popular traditions of ingenious practices for the judicious and community regulated use and regeneration of water and land resources.

The last quarter of the twentieth century has seen unprecedented demographic growth, colonisation and agrarian expansion through gigantic irrigation projects like the Indira Gandhi Canal in Thar, a successful cooperative dairy movement, a transport revolution that has altered the meaning of time and travel, presence of institutions of the modern Indian state with its imposing manifestations of development as more and more physical infrastructure, the onslaught for acquiring land in Thar. The increasing hold of the bewitching glares and lure of the market gives all encompassing sanction to consumerist ways of life that rest on the premise of wasteful use rather than frugal and judicious use, a feature that constituted the core of resource use in Thar for centuries.

All these could be seen as emergent signs of an important historical watershed in Thar. Especially regions in the interiors of Thar, where such claims of the modern Indian state and market were not known less than half a century back. The on going transformation spearheaded by private capital and rapacious plunder of the fragile biosphere of Thar is fast altering the delicate inter relationships of desert communities with nature over centuries.