Description
On 13 November, a video went viral on social media showing officials demolishing the
thatched huts while its residents stand witness haplessly. The video triggered a sharp reaction
from the public who feared this was just a glimpse of the future. This event was part of the
drive that came a few days after the High Court declared a scheme, introduced in 2001, by
the state government which allowed nomadic tribes to live in pasture lands during the grazing
season, illegal and unconstitutional and therefore started demolishing houses and evicting
people from their lands.
These huts belonged to the Gujjars – a nomadic Muslim majority sub-tribe moving from
place to place seasonally in mountainous pastures of the Himalayas along with their herds of
goats, sheep and horses. According to the 2011 government census, out of the 12 Scheduled
Tribes, the Gujjars are the most populous in India, having a population of 763,806. They
form 69.1% of the total ST population. These families have travelled for centuries between
summer pastures in the Himalayas and winter grazing grounds in the lowland plains.
Much of the trouble seen in the video had occurred around the Jammu region, the majority-
Hindu city where the Gujjars have their winter pastures. Hindu nationalists accuse the
nomads of encroaching on their land when they build permanent home, and say nomad
leaders want to make the region majority-Muslim. Like many of India’s religious minorities,
particularly its Muslims, the Gujjars have felt increasingly isolated as attacks by Hindu
extremist groups have risen after the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party, or BJP, was
swept into power in India in 2014. The religious divide widened even further in Jammu-
Kashmir state when the BJP formed a coalition government with a regional party. The
Himalayan region of Kashmir is claimed in its entirety by both India and Pakistan but divided
between them.
This paper explores how these acts can be the part of the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata
Party (BJP) government’s project to dispossess people of their land and property in order to
change the demographic status of the Muslim-majority region. The paper looks at how the
timing of these events, when restrictions have put in place to curb the spread of COVID-19
have compounded the nomads' problems. It comes to the conclusion that the nomadic
community migration in the Indian Himalayan region is heading towards a new crisis.
