In a yearly ritual forest-dwelling Gujjars migrate to a partially dried-up dam in Uttarakhand where their cattle graze with plenty of water and fodder around, and the farmers supply milk to nearby towns.
Evenings are abuzz around the dam in Nanakmatta in Uttarakhand’s Terai region at the foothills of the Himalayas.
People carrying bottles and vessels make a beeline for a community of dairy farmers that make the dam their temporary residence every summer.
They are the Gujjars, a community that call the forests their home but migrate to the fields near the dam every summer.
As soon as the townspeople come to know that the Gujjars are in town, it is a sort of a ritual for many to buy milk from them.
Even milk vendors gather around them to restock before heading into town to sell their wares.
Anil Gupta, a shopkeeper at the Nanakmatta market, finds the milk he buys from Gujjars clean and thick, unlike the watery milk sold in the marketplace.
Like Gupta, the Nanakmatta people swear by the taste and purity of the milk that the Gujjars sell.
Regular customers like Sukhdev Singh – who has also worked in the dairy industry – attributes the taste to the Gujjars feeding only natural fodder and grass.
“They don’t give the animals manufactured feed. That’s why the milk is nutritious and tasty,” Singh told Village Square.
Taste apart, the Gujjars stay in Nanakmatta in the Udham Singh Nagar district only for a few months.
Naturally, this short window of availability increases the demand for the milk.
We’ve been doing this business for centuries. We don’t have any other. It’s this business that gives our community an identity,
Mohammad Jamin
Migrating with their milk-producing cows is not only their livelihood but their identity.
“We’ve been doing this business for centuries. We don’t have any other. It’s this business that gives our community an identity,” said Mohammad Jamin, one of the elderly members of this community.
The Gujjars come along with their family and stay here for a period of three to four months – mostly from March to June.
When they come, they make their temporary residence in Nanak Sagar dam built across the Saryu River.
Most of the Gujjars can not see any other existence but this life as a nomadic dairy farmer.
“It’s our permanent business. We’ll never leave this work. It has to be done,” said Gujjar Ghulam Ahmad.
In the hot summers the Gujjars find it difficult to get water and fodder in the forests where they generally live. There is also the threat of forest fires.
So when the Nanakmatta dam recedes a bit, laying bare a nice area for the cows to graze, five to seven Gujjar families come to stay in the drier parts of the dam, about 3 km from Nanakmatta town.
This means they not only get access to water but to more fodder too.
Being closer to the town also makes it easy for them to get essentials like vegetables, rations and medicines.
They also have access to veterinarians, though they always carry the medicine for the animals and inject and mix with the animal feed as necessary.
“Milk production is better in winter. It is less in summer. It would be even less if we don’t come here from the forests, as heat and mosquitoes are a big problem,” said Jamin. “Also, we can’t get medicine for our animals.”
Though it is their temporary residence, the Gujjars bring along necessary materials in a trolley to make their shelters – to give them a feeling of home.
For Jamin that means, besides bringing his family and their ten buffaloes, he also takes his dog, named Tiger.
“Tiger keeps moving with us,” he said.
They always carry necessary documents such as ration cards too.
All the families also bring along solar panels, as there is no other means of electricity, to power their light bulbs at night.
Though the solar panels are generally helpful, they do have a problem on cloudy days. Sometimes they also face thunderstorms and high heat.
But that is not their only worry.
When they live at the dam site there is this fear that government officials may uproot their shelter.
When the monsoon season begins in July and water in the dam starts rising, it’s time for the Gujjars to leave.
The Gujjar community is spread across the forests of Uttarakhand, in addition to Himachal Pradesh.
Tukri village on the fringes of forests in the Udham Singh Nagar district is where Jamin and the others have permanent houses.
Jamin recounts the story he heard from his father of how his community came to live in the forests.
“We first came to Himachal from Jammu, that too as dowry!” Jamin remembers.
The story goes that the king of Jammu got his daughter married to the king of Himachal. When she visited her parents, she said that everything was fine in Himachal, just that there was no milk.
So the king of Jammu ordered the Gujjars to go to Himachal, to make sure that his daughter could have milk.
“About 30 families went and settled in Himachal. Similarly, we are Gujjars who came here as dowry. We are fond of forests,” said Jamin.
Just as a city child is afraid of going to the forest, a Gujjar child is afraid of moving to the city,
Mohammad Jamin
As Jamin and his community prepare to go back to the forests, they know the streams would have water and the fodder grass would have grown.
“Just as a city child is afraid of going to the forest, a Gujjar child is afraid of moving to the city,” was Jamin’s parting shot.
The lead image shows the herd of cows (Photo by Dawie Nolte Photography, Canva)
Remarkably, Prakash Chand is a Class XI student of Nanakmatta Public School. He is an aspiring filmmaker and journalist.
