Be the change: transforming lives and ecology of Thar for betterment

Starting in 1990 as a voluntary effort in remote regions of Chohtan, SURE today works in the desert districts of Barmer and Jaisalmer, two of largest and backward districts of India.

From the beginning SURE has focused on strengthening rural livelihoods, strived for dignity and well being of vulnerable and marginal communities, especially women and people with different abilities. Interventions in improving agriculture, conservation of Thar Parkar breed of cow, ensuring food, fodder and water security have attempted to sustain a judicious relation with fragile ecology of the Thar. Motivation to pursue our goal, sustain the vision and mission owes a great deal to the acceptance by rural communities who have always reposed their faith in us. They have participated in development initiatives of SURE with a sense of ownership and accountability. We have been fortunate to get support from well meaning and pro poor people in the state bureaucracy and development agencies.

Developing and sustaining of these programs has been made possible by altruistic and relentless work over these years. What began as a voluntary movement of a small number of people is today transformed into an organization with more than hundred staff and hundreds of community volunteers in villages of Barmer and Jaisalmer.

These remote districts of Thar are changing fast. Following the discovery and drilling of oil and setting up of a power generation unit, Barmer is poised for a period of industrial growth. There is an increasing talk about the vast potential of reserves of solar energy. All this modernization is sure to put further squeeze on the fragile ecology and scarce natural resources of the region. This heightened context of resource tapping and use has created its opportunities and challenges before rural communities. The largely survival economy based on fragile natural base and rustic life is volatile with possibilities of change.

At this juncture, we all fondly remember late Magraj Ji who made SURE possible and would continue to motivate us for selfless voluntary action. As in the past, it is my sincere hope that needs and concerns of vulnerable and marginal communities would guide our way forward to strengthen economy of people, and in protecting their basic rights and entitlements.

The ensuing report narrates key features of our programme interventions over the years since the inception of SURE. I am pleased to place before the reader this journey of SURE.

(Lata Kachhawha)

Founder Member and Joint Secretary, SURE

for more on story of SURE click here 

a homage to Padamshree Shri Mag Raj Ji Jain: tenacious desert volunteer

Learning from ‘cultures’ of pastoralism for sustainable development in Thar

The Indian Thar is a hot desert and ranks among the few deserts of the world that have had a long and populous human history of settlement. This sustained human settlement has been made possible by unique attributes of the complex of eco systems and their natural endowments that make the natural setting of Thar. Equally ingenious and resilient have been life practices of different communities, mobile and sedentary, who have displayed remarkable forbearance and endurance in populating the region. Different varieties of pastoralism practiced by semi nomadic communities complemented with subsistence oriented rainfed farming have been core elements in constituting, settling and sustaining human history of this region.

The changes over the past few decades beckon us to understand experiences of modern transformation of pastoral Thar especially since the last quarter of the 20^th century with the coming of IGNP in north-west Thar. Ideologically propped up by Jawaharlal Nehru as the 'kingpin' of State planning for developing the desert, the IGNP was started with generous loans from the World Bank and a favourable policy framework enabled by the Indus Water Treaty of 1960 between Indian and Pakistan under the watchful gaze of the World Bank. The main components are the 445 km long lined canal running parallel to the Indo-Pak  border, nine branches, seven lift schemes and twenty-one direct distributaries apart from 8187 km. of minor canal network. The state claims to have opened more than ten lakh hectares of area for irrigation and provide drinking water to more than 3500 towns and villages. IGNP is a gigantic settlement and irrigation project that is supposed to benefit more than 2 million people. So far so good!

Most of development strategies and precepts that have informed the making of ‘modern development’ in Thar region argue that pastoralism as a resource use system must / should / would be done away with, transformed into sedentary husbandry integrated with dairy industry and in a subsidiary position to the meta- narrative on agro industrial farming. It could be said that this development thinking is rooted in perspectives on maximizing private economic profit derived from irrigated farming as the prescribed dominant land use system. Surplus gained from this agricultural enterprise, it is argued, would then feed the diversification into non-farm enterprises and to the making of agro industrial complexes. The dominant assumptions of this economic thinking against pastoralism influenced formulation of apathetic development policy and tardy implementation of development schemes and programmes relating to livestock rearing.

It would not be inappropriate to reiterate that sustainable modern development does not mean economic transformation alone but is better and more fully understood as well- being incorporating dimensions of human and ecological well- being. In keeping with this perspective pastoral way of life is more suited, better rooted historically and ecologically among communities in north-west Thar as compared to  ‘modern development’ that is a recent undertaking primarily orchestrated by state, increasingly controlled by market,  imposed from above and benefitting only a few.

The culture of pastoralism as it developed and sustained itself over long periods of human history in Thar has been adaptive in sharing an interface with subsistence based agriculture and had evolved elaborate customary practices to use and regenerate collective natural endowments of water and fodder. The social organization of this pastoralism consisted of reciprocal ties among communities for utilization of scarce natural resources, adoption of rustic lifestyles that had ability to survive in the long periods of harshness and bloom in the brief spells of abundance. The sway of pastoral way is evident in the dexterous everyday work ethic of rearing animals to aesthetic pursuits of exquisite creations of music and rustic textiles and other crafts. The embedded pastoral landscapes of wide limitless horizons and sprawling sandy plains interspersed with grasslands form a backdrop to growth of musical traditions of sufiyana qalam that celebrate pluralism of human existence and are marked by a heightened ecological sensibility. These life-sustaining practices that illumined the material and symbolic world weave the complex of cultures of pastoralism. The unique contribution of this culture has been notions of abundance and well- being by perfecting frugal lifestyles in a resource scarce region.

This is not a romanticist reinstating. There is need to specifically engage with issues relating to complex ‘culture’ of pastoralism and ‘modern development’ to ask meaningful questions regarding integration and adaptation of the culture of pastoralism in the emerging geography of built environments, roads crisscrossing canal networks and agricultural fields. Far from assuming that contemporary pastoralism is in an inevitable crisis and should/would give way to agro industrial complexes in the rapid on-going transformation, the role of pastoralism needs to be understood keeping in view the historically evolved human ecology of the region and a realistic assessment of possibilities and limits of ‘modern development’ for a sustainable future of Thar. This is quite in order given the high environmental costs, increased economic disparity, intensification of private resource use that characterize the nature of transformations brought in these regions with ‘modern development’.  The sordid tale of grass root realities of colonisation of desert grasslands and water sources - the common property resources - has led to marginalisation of pastoralists and created a political economy of natural resource use that has set in conditions for greater pauperization of poor allotees, stifled collective initiative, intensified resource use and control by private property and greater penetration of market and tightened the hold of soulless institutions of the state.

These questionings are emboldened by several studies elsewhere in world that have highlighted the critical importance of pastoralism in its contribution to sustain natural economy that makes possible and acts as an environmental cushion for the fast urbanizing world. Extensive land use systems need to be promoted and regenerated with reference to arid and super arid regions like the one under discussion. In a world that is increasingly becoming intolerant,  plagued with xenophobic conflict, unbridled consumerism, heightened and often cut throat individualism, and social stress, the deep message inherent in this popular pastoral culture of sufiyana qalam is coterminous with wisdom, love, peace, and dignity of all life. 

There is sense in learning from this remarkably resilient and frugal way of life. It may hold insights and cues for transition to a sustainable world.

Read Related Stories:

http://rahulghai.blogspot.in/2015/12/ignp-canal-in-rajasthan-experiences-of.html

http://rahulghai.blogspot.in/2015/12/pastoralism-in-thar-ignp-and.html

Kalbelias of Thar, Rajasthan

Jagdish Nath and Party, Lunkaranasar, Bikaner, December 2000

Rajasthan is known for its tourism and that too with a mystique. Among these tourist circuits, heritage hotels, shanty guest houses, makeshift taverns and camps on sand dunes, it is quite common to encounter women dressed in black dress, adorned with imitation silver ornaments being paraded as kalbelia dancers.   Who are kalbelias? What are the heroic trajectories of this community who gets so cheaply represented as  ‘dancers’ whose deft and athletic  movements conjures up the heady feeling of so called ‘rangilo rajasthan….

It would be quite appropriate, to start with, clarify certain basic propositions regarding what constitutes an ‘alternative representation’ of a nomadic and marginal community of Kalbelias. It is an alternative to the veiled, static and stereotypical and ahistorical representations which are usually the subjects of much of ethnography that is so conveniently paraded by tourism for it profits. In particular we have in mind a representation that is able to articulate a perception that takes into account the temporal dimension and incorporates the historical growth (with all it’s regressions, transitions, and expansions) of a community. Such a representation facilitates understanding in a manner that the ‘present’ of a community is then explicable in a concrete historical context, and not simply a metaphoric and hyperbolic context constituted out of ‘essentials’. A representation like that then is rendered more capable to articulate the perceptions and sensibilities of the members of community, the anxieties, hopes and aspirations of the community better.

Let me clarify what this means in the context of Daliwal Kalbelias. The Daliwal Kalbelias are even today mostly looked at as ‘snake charmers’ only. This representation is so powerful and all pervasive that it contributes to obfuscate and stunt any other way of looking at them. It completely hides the fact that men amongst them are good musicians, women good embroiderers and on a whole are a community caught in a blind fatalistic destiny, existing on the fringes of society caught in an uncertain dilemma about settling / pulling on with a nomadic existence.

Good poongi (A kind of an aerophonic instrument, two tubes (pedis) fixed to a hollow gourd – one for the notes and the other for the drone) players feel disgusted and let down by the fact of their playing of that instrument being only associated with catching and showing snakes. They feel that the artistry involved in playing music has not been given it’s due and is, in fact, been treated as subsidiary to showing snakes. And such reactions are so common and pervasive that they constitute a whole perspective and a position on the Kalbelias being regarded essentially as ‘snake charmers’.

So rather than understanding ‘nomads’ as static anachronistic elements, to be left to their own imminent death, an effort is made to constitute a process that is more closely and passionately able to present and argue their case. It is acknowledged too often that Rajasthan, especially the western parts of it, “…has a large number of nomadic communities”.

But the implications of this rarely seem to inform the prevalent notions and practices surrounding the processes of development. The ethnographic humanscape that consciously or unconsciously exists in the contemporary discourses on development is a sedentary one that constantly succeeds in relegating the deliberations about the nomadic communities to the margins. By a sedentary ethnographic humanscape what is meant here is the basic social grid that is the point of reference of the majority of development schemes and programmes, governmental or otherwise. The nomads are conspicuously absent from this. Similarly sedentary perspectives pervade most of the thinking about the element of mobility that is one of the constitutive rhythms of a major portion of everyday life at least in the western parts of the state of Rajasthan. Sedentary perspectives tend to understand the ‘element of mobility’ from their own ‘fixed’ standpoints. Most of them understand it as an aberration rather than as an organic element of everyday life of many communities. All this amounts to marginal considerations accorded to the ‘future’ of nomadic peoples. An ‘alternative representation’ has ‘stakes’ in the dissipation of such views.      

Nomadism of the Daliwal Kalbelias: An Explanation

We are talking here about a group of Daliwal Kalbelias who live in makeshift nomadic settlements in and around villages and towns of North West Rajasthan. The Daliwal kalbelias are a section of the Kalbelia community and are also known as Sapera or Poongiwala or Jogira. It must be pointed out that among the Daliwal Kalbelias the notion of the ‘community’ is very fundamental and the nomadic elements have to be made sense in that context.

The Daliwal Kalbelias are divided into a number of exogamous clans or gotras. Community endogamy is strictly followed but now sometimes they also practice marriage within the same clan. But they always avoid four generations in the ascending order. Apart from these well structured rules of inter-community interactions there are many features that speak of an inherent egalitarianism, philosophical and mystical binding that keep the ‘community’ together. This finds it’s own expression in their nomadic existence. If we go by the prevalent ethnographic understanding then along with Gadia Lohars, etc the Kalbelias are among those communities that are still strongly nomadic having refused to or unable to settle down. Nomadism is something that is deeply permeated in their everyday life and structures their interactions with the settled communities.  But what are the temporal dynamics of this mobility!     

We know that as a rule, persecutions were widespread in the Ancient World. Part of it was the result of the process of acculturation, the frictions it generated, and the major part of it was the consequences of long drawn out animosities, both metaphysical in nature and social. All this made migrations and mobility, flights and maneuvers, movement of groups and sects a regular feature. This aspect of mobility is intrinsically linked to historical change.

The glimmerings of such a dynamic phase can be seen from the beginnings of the 11^th  century that was going to culminate in the second urban revolution. At the level of substrata, where human beings mattered, we see the comings and goings of heretic sects from Central Asia and Iran along with their mystics and seers. Delhi became a haven and refuge for persecuted philosophers, sciences, heretics during the ‘mystical prince’, Iltutmish’s reign. Selective and discriminatory privileges co-existed with a policy of internal repression, and nowhere was this felt more intensely than in Delhi. Following this period there were forced migrations and flights away from Delhi in search of other havens and pastures. It was from this context too that the Daliwal Kalbelias moved away from Delhi, though not en masse, to more nomadic, ascetic and renouncing life styles, carrying with them the prefix Daliwal, meaning inhabitants of Delhi.       

During this expansionary phase of mobility, the kalbelias constitute themselves as a group under the spell, teachings and influence of the famous 13^th century ascetic yogi, Baba Gorakhnath. Giving primacy to the body under the precepts of Patanjali’s Yogasutras, Baba Gorakhnath came to be regarded as a legendary messiah in the Persian chronicle Dabistan-al-mazhab as well as an extraordinary avatar in the Chisti traditions of Punjab whose foremost figure was Shaikh Farid-al-Din, the mystic extraordinaire. Under Baba Gorakhnath many yogic / nath schools and tendencies flourished and  Kalbelias were one of them.

  

Industry, modernity, cultural traditions and skills of desert communities in Barmer

Barmer district is all set to for  giant leap forward in modernization riding on big business in natural oil and power generation projects contributing to  a boom in real estate speculative enterprise. Starting somewhere in the last decade these are firmly in place in the last few years. The city of Barmer has been a valiant frontier post par excellence and happens to be among the oldest towns of the Thar desert in western Rajasthan, the long history and its memory going back to late ancient times.  

The contemporary context of heightened competing claims and control over natural resources has thrown its own challenges before rural communities. The largely survival economy of the fragile natural base and rustic life is volatile with possibilities of change.

Existing silently amidst all this clamour for modernity in Barmer city is an civil society organization known as SURE (Society to Uplift Rural Economy) that was started by a group of people in 1990 under the visionary leadership of Mag Raj Ji Jain to work in remote interiors of Barmer district.    

Be the Change: Society to Uplift Rural Economy (SURE) 

journey in sand and time 

(to be continued....)

Understanding ‘cultures’ of pastoralism and modern development in Thar: deciphering contemporary History of ‘present’

The French historian Marc Bloch who was a pioneer in mastering anthropological insights into studying history of rural transformations argues:

“…history is the study of dead and living. The faculty of understanding the living is, in truth, the master quality of the historian, who does not love the past but loves life”.

The present ongoing discussion strives to seek answers to understand changes in the complex social formation, especially the aspects of engagements of communities with each other, with the state and its institutions and the natural ecology of which they are an integral part. What interests us here is the history of the human and livestock communities of the Thar and the physical territory in which they were inscribed, the deciphering of the relations, multiple, intertwined and elusive, between man and biosphere in Thar.

It would be of interest to decipher the fast changing contemporary realities that seem to shape up a present that is eager to throw away, shake off the heavy lethargic weight of past as a obscurantist legacy. It needs to be said that in the midst of this noisy clamor for ushering in a new present it is important that we do not loose sight of this remarkable ability of past to persist at the level of mentalities as well as a ‘prodigal inertial mass’.    

 

The Indian Thar is a hot desert and ranks among the few deserts of the world that have had a long human history of settlement. This history has been made possible by the unique attributes of the complex of eco systems and their natural endowments that make the natural setting of Thar. Equally ingenious and resilient have been life practices of different communities, mobile and sedentary, who have displayed remarkable forbearance and endurance in populating the region.

It would not be very off the mark to suggest that pastoralism, along with the ways of life associated with it, has been one of the core elements of human history of this region. From early on it became an indispensable part of the combinatory of survival practices that included subsistence based sedentary farming and hunting- gathering. Pastoralism represented one of the significant patterns of mobility that was a phenomenon characterizing much of pre modern life in Thar. Mobility of pastoral groups contributed to urbanisation as well as the emergence of settled clan aristocracies, mainly of the Rajputs. The variant of pastoralism that was typical of this region was a diverse range of semi nomadic pastoralism that evolved in interaction with agriculture.

The agro pastoral region of the western and north western parts of the state of Rajasthan has been home to different pastoral communities nested within the overarching hegemonic dominance of the Rajputs. The Rajputs, Jats, Raikas, Charans, Bishnois, Meghwals and a group of Muslim communities are some of the major pastoral communities. The livestock rearing practices of these different communities are specific adaptations to distinct ecological niches negotiating a middle space between sedentary agriculture and free ranging pastoralism, relying on commons pastures and grasslands. These regions have their localized and hereditary customs, social ties, inter dependencies and practices relating to natural resource use and traditions of music and craft. The realms of the anthropological and the natural were articulated in specific ways for these distinct ecological regimes.

The pastoral way of life was majestic, given the frugal and rustic ecology where it had originated and thrived over centuries. It had come to represent a substantive holistic experience and was innovative in the sense of having capability for a range of adaptations devised to survive in the long periods of harshness, and bloom in the brief spells of abundance in the region. The sway of pastoral way is evident in the dexterous everyday work ethic of rearing animals to aesthetic pursuits of exquisite creations of music and rustic textiles and other crafts. These life-sustaining practices weave the complex of cultures of pastoralism. They are intimately linked and draw upon each other profusely in terms of their relation with nature.

Pastoralism has been increasingly relegated to margins of settled existence and indeed of the development discourse. The ecology that sustained it over centuries has dissipated fast having fallen prey to radical transformation by modernizing impulses of modern development.  

Notwithstanding the almost fatalistic present prophecies justifying the contemporary ‘sedentary turn’, long term historical sensibility urges the need to situate the historical roots of pastoralism as a resource use strategy and a way of life more firmly into our existence. This is considered necessary, because such a perspective is often found wanting in the numerous prophecies (like nomadic pastoralism will / must / should disappear) on the future of pastoralism and pastoral communities in Thar. Far from assuming that contemporary pastoralism is in an inevitable crisis and should/would give way to agro industrial complexes in the rapid on-going transformation, there is sense in learning from this remarkably resilient and frugal way of life.

It may hold insights and cues for transition to a sustainable world.

Noor Mohammed Haji Ahmed Gamthiwala: Mesmerizing tales of vibrant colours of textiles by craftspeople of Gujarat:

Every time an old man dies it is as if a library has burnt down –

An African saying

Noor Mohammed Haji Ahmed Gamthiwala or simply Ahmed bhai as he was popularly known was a gifted connoisseur of craft traditions, a creative and successful businessman with a compassionate camaraderie with printers, dyers and weavers whose creations he sold to the world. Having known him as an encyclopedic repository of knowledge and insights on textile traditions of Gujarat and their makers, the news of his having succumbed to a cardiac arrest was bone chilling and sent shivers down my body. For some moments did not quite know how to face up to this morning trepidation aggravated with numbing thoughts of having lost the company of a radiant presence that had profoundly influenced the manner in which one understood, shopped, talked, wrote about handicraft traditions and products. And, more significantly, how one worked with craftspeople for their dignity and improved quality of life.         

To recuperate from the terrible news of his sudden demise, mind plunged in desperation to reach out to the recesses of memory about several meetings with him over all these years. The imposing gates of Teen Darwaja continue to serve as an entry to the crowded market complex and street shops of the old city of Ahemdabad. What is striking about the hustle and bustle of these busy market roads, where men and women children from different communities jostle with each other, is their ability to woo you with fragrances of past periods particularly of the colonial times when the market place grew and the older medieval times when the grand monuments, that give the space its soulful reverberation were made.

From exquisite tessellations of Persian motifs on stone jalis which illumine the walls of this medieval monument of Ahmed Shah’s tomb emerges Ahmed bhai with his characteristic smile and warmth greeting you into the tiny shop called Gamthiwala. Who could imagine that this tiny shop tucked away in one corner of the gate of the Badshah ka Hajira Complex would be a ‘happening traditional textile point’, the mecca of lovers and buyers of traditional textiles. Gamthiwala shop can be barely seen as it is the last among the row of tiny glittering shops lined on both sides of the street that lead to the Badshah ka Hajira built in 1440 A.D. Grand monument of the fifteenth century famous Gujarat style of Indo Islamic architecture is the resting place of the founder of Ahmedabad, Sultan Ahmedshah and his sons. The lit of shehnai and nagara from the naubat khana on the parapet above the gates of the complex transports one many centuries back in time. Indeed this music was ordained by no less than Badshah Ahmed Shah himself to punctuate the passage of time. The family of Amir Sheikh and Sheru Sheikh has been playing this music for over six centuries at the tomb of Badshah ka Hazira.

 Ahmed bhai had amazing story telling abilities and could engross you for hours with his thick descriptions of crafts and their makers, a wide repertoire ranging from queer anecdotes, tales of creativity and improvisation to empathetic reflections on lives of craftspeople and their traditions. “Ilm roshni hai (knowledge is light) as he often used to say and would go on to unroll yardage of different textiles, colours and patterns and with his beaming face  and  intimate poignant style begin expounding  on mashru weaving, block printing traditions, resist printing and mordant dyeing techniques of Kutch.

His aesthetics flowered in companionship of block printers of Jamalpur and Pithapur, bandhani, ajrak printers from Ajrakpur, Dhamaka, Bhuj in Kutch and mashru weavers from Patan and was further honed by a keen study of the changing tastes and preferences of the market that grew around handicrafts not only in Gujarat but even in other parts of India.    

“Mujhme seekhne ki talab thi, baat shauk ki hai” (I had the keenness to learn, it is all a matter of interest) as he once said at the end of a long conversation, tells you about this man who has left his firm imprint on the textures and patterns of vibrant textiles of Gujarat.


Ahmed bhai’s life long engagement with hand crafted textiles was a rich journey of creative entrepreneurship contributing  to the famous handicraft market of Gujarat, of passionate zeal to contribute to knowledge generation about crafts and design. And a robust reminder of the rich contribution of musilms in in contributing to sustaining diverse textile traditions of Gujarat. 


Photo Credits and References: 

 http://tybarchhistory.weebly.com/gujarat-style.html

 https://www.flickr.com/photos/shweta_w/4514664672/

http://indiatoday.intoday.in/story/undying-love-for-music-in-their-veins/1/179297.html
Ahmedbhai Gamthiwala: Sustaining Marvels of Textile Traditions through creative entrepreneurship, Swasti Singh Ghai, Dsigned, NID, Ahmedabad, 2009