Nearly ten percent of India’s population comprises ‘denotified nomadic tribes’, and that umbrella holds thousands of various communities classified under scheduled castes, scheduled tribes and other backward classes. As we explore one such community and their lives in Rajasthan, we arrive at a story that mirrors the lives of several other such clans. Exploring the history, legal background, vocational paths, educational facilities and daily amenities, or lack thereof, and the media coverage of the same, we attempt to paint a well-rounded picture of the Bawariyas of Rajasthan.
Originally a part of the Rajput clan, India’s Bawariya community has a fascinating history, and an even more interesting present. As per India’s 1881 census, the Bawariya community was labelled as ‘a hunting community who derive their name from the word bawar or noose with which they snared wild animals’. Occupying various states in the North of India, the Bawariyas are victims of what a literary review by Anita Sharma on South Asian Nomads describes as, “Nomads across the globe too often comprise disenfranchised and marginalised groups who are perceived as, ‘a threat to the established social order’.” As we delved into the reason behind this marginalization, we arrived at the multiple layers of social order at play.
The ‘illegal hunters’ of Rajasthan
Although the Bawariya community is spread across districts in Punjab, Haryana, Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand and other parts of North and West India, today we shine a flashlight on the Bawariyas as a Scheduled Caste (according to the Constitution’s Schedule Castes Order, 1950) in Rajasthan, where 65,000 of this clan’s total 2,35,000 resides. Nomadic life and hunting rituals were the two primary aspects of their existence, and they moved around districts of Rajasthan keeping up their decades-old hunting traditions. As originally part of the Rajput clan, the British Raj saw the Bawariyas as hunters that would present their kill to the regime’s royals. Their core activity of hunting continued into independent India as well, until this source of livelihood and survival was made illegal with the passing of the Wildlife Protection Act, 1972, making the Bawariyas’ daily activities of hunting punishable by law.
But, wait. The Bawariyas have been ‘criminals’ long before 1972. The British Raj’s Criminal Tribes Act, 1871, which labelled over 200 communities primarily in North Indian provinces as ‘criminal’, painted the Bawariyas with the same brush of illegality all those years ago. These communities, which included nearly 60 million ‘denotified and nomadic tribes’, were faced with constant surveillance, search and arrest with warrants, and general alienation in society owing to stereotyping by the police as well as the media, not to mention economic hardships. According to historians such as David Arnold, this law was meant to keep in check small, low-caste, nomadic tribes on the fringe of society who lived without bowing to the British-prescribed decorum of civilized labour and agriculture.
Although this act was repealed by Independent India, it was replaced by the Habitual Offenders Act, 1951, according to which a habitual offender is one who presents a danger to society, and who is a victim of influences that manifest in practicing of a crime. Though different from the British act, the new post-independence act carried a social and legal stigma attached to over 200 communities, further alienating them. It is interesting to note that the UN’s anti-discriminatory body asked India to repeal the Habitual Offenders Act, and rehabilitated the ‘denotified and nomadic tribes’ under its ambit on March 9, 2007.
Criminalized by birth, ostracised for life
As 1972 criminalized the natural hunting activities of the nomadic Bawariyas in Rajasthan, their lives faced unimaginably drastic changes. For starters, the communities they were previously living in harmony with were now marginalizing them for being ‘illegal hunters’, putting a halt to their nomadic lives and making permanent residence their only option. This social ostracising made it difficult for the Bawariyas to settle within villages, and they were forced to move to the outskirts of townships and settlements. As Bahar Dutt points out in Livelihood Strategies of a Nomadic Hunting Community of Eastern Rajasthan, the Bawariya’s huts in various districts of Rajasthan were burnt down by neighbouring villagers so as to prevent them from settling down in those areas (Dutt’s study primarily describes the situation in Alwar).
A Development Research Centre on Citizenship, Participation and Accountability report on Nomads in Rajasthan interviewed certain citizens of various nomadic communities such as Banjaras, Bawariyas, Nats and so on to understand their legal, economic, and social statuses. Mana, a Bawariya woman from Alwar’s Malutana village confided, “The Patwari (village accountant) came yesterday. He asked me to leave the place. I cannot leave now. The villagers don’t speak in front of me but have registered a complaint against me in the Tehsil. I told the Patwari let the villagers do what they want to do. Kill me. Throw me in the well or hang me up in the tree. In the latter case, villagers can’t complain of my occupying their piece of land. Villagers don’t understand that we also need a place to live. Where will we go?”
Behind the lens: Piyush Goswami & Akshatha Shetty
Piyush Goswami, a documentary filmmaker and photographer, with writer Akshatha Shetty, travelled deep into the rural areas of Rajasthan to Shyamgarh village at the foothills of the Aravali range. As they documented the nomadic Bawariya hunter-gatherer community in the remote Jinwara settlement, they discovered their personal hardships resulting out of alienation, ostracising, and the complexities of a marginalized community living on the outskirts of society.
Forced to give up their age-old nomadic ways, the settled life was not an easy one for this community. Other run-of-the-mill clans occupying this Shyamgarh village labelled the Bawariyas as ‘untouchable’, pushing them, literally, to the fringe of civilization. With make-shift huts (although the families that have been dwelling on this land for longer do have more permanent houses) on barren, sandy land, their professional options were limited. As Piyush tells us, “Over the years, they have been forced to look for other avenues to make a living. Some of them work in salt lakes (India’s largest inland salt lake, the Sambhar, lies in Rajasthan), that too without any proper protection or gear. Their health concerns range from hunchbacks due to physical work, to bone deficiencies due to chloride in the water.” There have been little or no efforts on behalf of State authorities to rehabilitate this community and aid their professional development, leaving them unskilled labourers, and the barren, sandy land that they are forced to occupy is unfit for any kind of agriculture.
Education, water problems and more: A nation-wide plight
After much time and effort spent pleading with authorities to supply them with a permanent water source, the Jinwara settlement received one tap that was meant for the entire populace. And in an almost wretchedly poetic scene of irony, every time they approach police officials to plead for relief, they are called ‘dirty’ and asked to ‘clean themselves’. With what water? we are forced to ask. Moving on to the educational system in place for this clan, although they are legally entitled to send their children to the local public school, the complexities of their marginalized social status isn’t taken into consideration in this blanket ‘State provided legal education facility’. Shared by students from other Rajput families from neighbouring villages, their school acts as a fortress of intolerance. Hate-terms such as ‘untouchable’ are hurled at Bawariya children by fellow classmates, and even teachers fail to integrate them.
“They have enslaved us. We are prisoners here. In all, we are about 150 or 200 people. I was born here and I will die here. We don’t have electricity or water. The least they can do is provide us water on time. Don’t I constitute the society?” Bajrang, a member of the Jinwara settlement asked Piyush and Akshatha.
Vote bank politics and ineffective ‘welfare’ policy measures
While the question of legal intervention is a glaring one, political interest in the Bawariya community is a circumstantial one. Piyush recalls a conversation with people of the Jinwara settlement that describes what is known as ‘vote bank politics’. As Piyush describes, “Come election time, people from BJP (as they described as ‘phool’) and other parties would come and make hefty promises of great change to come. The situation is the same as everywhere else, they are promised community infrastructure, schools, water supply installations and so on. But once they all vote, no one checks on them for another five years.”
Econet, an organization dedicated to Adivasis and nomadic tribal groups, although primarily in Maharashtra, published a report in 2011 recognizing the crises faced by these groups that extends to nomadic communities across India. As this report by Anuja and Krishna points out, apart from problems of social discrimination, human rights violations, arbitrary arrests and detentions, and lack of amenities, a large problem they face is the negligible or no ration cards, voter ID cards or any other form of documentation. And as a result, they don’t qualify for development programmes. This report served as the basis for recommendations of the 12th Five Year Plan.
In 2008, the Central Government assembled a committee to examine the plight of ‘denotified and nomadic tribes’ (DNT) across India. This Balkrishna Renke Commission’s report included 76 recommendations, such as urging State governments to scrap draconian laws used by the police to detain ‘habitual offenders’. This report was circulated for inter-ministerial consultations, and was never responded to. In 2011, the National Advisory Commission (NAC) presented a fresh set of welfare measures recommendations to bridge the gap. The 12th Plan in 2012 declared a nation-wide survey of DNTs to be conducted in order to introduce a suitable shelter programme for them, entitling them to free or subsidized housing, as well as providing them with employable skills. In 2013, the Union Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment stated that they were seeking the Cabinet’s approval to mobilize plans for DNT welfare, and there was a proposal to set up a separate National Commission for a period of two years with various provisions of welfare, along with the proposed use of Aadhar to identify and classify the DNTs. Still, these various attempted measures, proposals, welfare ideas and promises have resulted in no relief for the Bawariyas of Rajasthan.
Bawariya Media Coverage: A one-sided affair
The story of the Bawariyas, having been scarcely documented, though most recently by travellers Piyush and Akshatha, is one that reflects thousands of its kind. From the ‘vagrant and criminal’ Sansi tribe in Punjab, to the ‘thief’ Pardhi tribe of Maharashtra and beyond, the ‘denotified nomadic tribes’ of India painted with the brush of criminalization are countless, and all their stories more or less resonate with that of the Bawariyas. Even though they receive little or no media coverage, that which they do receive is most often of one common tone.
A December 16, 2012 Times of India report ran with the headline “’Bawariya’ criminal tribe gang members arrested”, talking about two dacoits belonging to the Bawariya tribe that were caught by the Special Task Force. As recently as November 12, 2015, Crime Patrol Dastak and Satark ran a story about Rajasthan’s Bawariya Chaddhi-Banyan Gang. The trend we’re pointing at is as stark as it is expected. The truth is, the only time we will hear of the Bawariya community is when their ‘criminal activities’ find themselves in national news headlines.
[All photographs are credited to Piyush Goswami and Akshatha Shetty, founders of Rest of my Family. Read their personal account of the Bawariyas of Rajasthan here.]
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