Client / Financial Support:A Moving Images Production

Duration:33 minutes

The Van Gujjars are nomadic pastoralists, who make their living out of rearing buffaloes. They follow an annual migratory cycle between the foothills of Uttaranchal and the high-altitude pastures in the Himalayas. Their nomadic existence is justified by the logic that both, the forests in the foothills and the pastures in the Himalayas, get time to regenerate due to their transhumance. They claim that there is an inherent link between lifestyle and conservation of natural resources because their livelihoods are solely dependent upon forests. ‘Following the Rhythms’ tries to capture the unique facets of the Van Gujjars’ life, their emotional & functional linkages with forests, their prescriptions for protecting the resources that govern their existence and their life patterns that would seem anachronistic to the modern imagination but are suggestive of a symbiotic relationship between man and his surroundings. “Modern” society has however made its demands from the Van Gujjars. Institutions like the Forest Department, which have a mandate of conservation, perceive the Van Gujjars as “negative pressures” on biodiversity. Over the last decade and a half, there have been calls from several quarters for relocating the Van Gujjars outside the forests. The Forest Department boasts of successful relocation efforts at Pathri and Gaindikhatta in Uttaranchal, but the Van Gujjars are critical of this resettlement policy. And not without reason! For long, the Van Gujjars have been demanding citizenship rights & a just resettlement policy that have been denied to them on grounds that they are not part of the “mainstream”. Recently, they have successfully initiated several education & health programmes in collaboration with a Dehradun-based NGO, the Rural Litigation and Entitlement Kendra (RLEK).

‘Following the Rhythms’ is an attempt to document the contours of this debate – between the Forest Department and the Van Gujjars, between scientific and indigenous modes of conservation. It attempts to study the complexities involved in relocation and the role of non-governmental organisations in advocacy and the facilitation of basic services to the Van Gujjars, who, despite having lived here for centuries, are yet to be acknowledged as citizens of India.