‘Who Has the Stick Has the Buffalo’: Processes of Inclusion and Exclusion on a Pasture in the Indian Himalayas

Axelby, Richard

doi:10.4000/samaj.4096

Cited by 7 publications

(8 citation statements)

References 20 publications

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“…Reasonings for such an exchange range from the non-viability of small herds to the unavailability of grazing permits. Axelby (2016) discusses a similar instance in his paper where he observes small herders pooling their livestock with a bigger herder. Through these means, smaller herders negotiate access to grazing resources under the legal protection of the bigger herder's formal grazing permit.…”

Section: Puhals: Hired Herding Practices In Gaddi Pastoralismmentioning

confidence: 98%

Puhals: Outlining the Dynamics of Labour and Hired Herding among the Gaddi Pastoralists of India

2022

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Pastoral practices throughout the world are in a state of flux, and Gaddi pastoralism in India’s Western Himalayas is no exception. Often in literature and common parlance, these practices are predicted to end with the current generation of practising pastoralists. For Gaddi, an agro-pastoral community located in the hill state of Himachal Pradesh in India, these gloomy predictions have remained persistent over decades. Irrespective of these claims, pastoralism continues to remain a viable livelihood option for many within the community even today. However, the institutional dynamics in which these practices are embedded have undergone several changes.In this paper, we discuss the changes in Gaddi pastoralism and its resilience by stressing a critical aspect of labour, often referred to as puhals in their vernacular dialect. Out of the various contextual meanings, we adopt the applied translation of this term as hired herders to understand their role in the larger socio-ecological system amidst the on-going livelihood shifts and declining interest among the Gaddi youth to pursue pastoralism. The data presented in this paper was collected through ethnographic fieldwork conducted during 2018–2019 at Bharmour region of Chamba district in Himachal Pradesh, India. Qualitative tools including in-depth interviews, focus group discussions and participant observations were administered. We discuss various aspects of puhal practices among the Gaddis including their recruitment process, need for hiring, involved negotiations over remunerations, skill sets and access to the resources, to highlight the institutional dynamism. Our findings suggest that hiring herders remains a crucial adaptation for the continuation and sustenance of pastoral practices that are facing contingent external pressures. It also facilitates transmission of local knowledge, livelihood and income diversification, accumulation of wealth, social mobility and cultural continuity. We conclude that hired herding, in the face of increasing labour shortages among the Gaddis, offers an innovative proposition to halt the decline in pastoralism and shape its future.

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Section: Puhals: Hired Herding Practices In Gaddi Pastoralismmentioning

confidence: 98%

Puhals: Outlining the Dynamics of Labour and Hired Herding among the Gaddi Pastoralists of India

2022

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“…Prior to the annexation of Punjab by the British Raj in 1846, Gaddi people were granted inheritable rights to access land by local rulers (Kapila 2003). There was no distinction between public, communal, and private land (Axelby 2016). Though marriage was patrilocal and wealth was concentrated in the hands of the head of the flock, the household structure was loose, neither nuclearized nor joint.…”

Section: Historical Contextmentioning

confidence: 99%

Kamzori: Aging, Care, and Alienation in the Post‐pastoral Himalaya

Simpson

2022

Med Anthropol Q

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As the Gaddi community of Himalayan India transition from agro-pastoralism to waged labor, configurations of kinship and care have shifted. Such shifts have introduced relational tensions, especially between elderly women, who have labored in the house and fields, expecting care in old age, and younger generations, who experience their own pressures of class aspiration. This article examines how the myriad tensions of the post-pastoral economy are experienced in the bodies of elderly women. It presents insights on kamzori, bodily weakness that is experienced by women who feel that their contribution of labor and care is unreciprocated by their kin or wider milieu. It recuperates alienation as a concept that captures distressed social relations. Alienation might be used by anthropologists studying aging, care, and debility to envisage the body in scalar relation to people, things and places, and illness or distress as disruption of such relations. [weakness, aging, care, gender, alienation]

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“…In this sense, they are not only 'othered' from the majority of the Hindudominated states between which they move (Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand and Himachal Pradesh), but also from the other Gujjars 4 of north-western India, who are predominantly Hindu. Axelby (2016) has written about the Gujjars and Gaddis in terms of their rights and access to the property in Himachal Pradesh. There are, however, certain distinctions to be drawn-Axelby's observation, for example, that the Gujjars are classified as a Scheduled Tribe does not hold in their 'home' states of Uttar Pradesh and Uttarakhand (Axelby 2016).…”

Section: The Owners Of Cattle Who Wish To Graze In the Jaunsarmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Axelby (2016) has written about the Gujjars and Gaddis in terms of their rights and access to the property in Himachal Pradesh. There are, however, certain distinctions to be drawn-Axelby's observation, for example, that the Gujjars are classified as a Scheduled Tribe does not hold in their 'home' states of Uttar Pradesh and Uttarakhand (Axelby 2016). In this and other works on the Gujjars, moreover, the role of the religion has not been analysed more deeply in the making of their pastoralism.…”

Section: The Owners Of Cattle Who Wish To Graze In the Jaunsarmentioning

confidence: 99%

The making of pastoralisms: An account of the Gaddis and Van Gujjars in the Indian Himalaya

Srivastava

2022

Pastoralism

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The pastoral communities of the western and central Himalayas have, for centuries, presented the modern Indian state with a problem of governance (as it has often been projected). Their existence, largely outside the domains of fixed property and capitalist production relations, has long since been problematized. Their seasonal migrations and vertical movements in space and time have enabled neither a smooth nor complete assimilation of these peoples into one of the state’s existential imperatives—the sedentarized market economy. The interventions imagined and imposed in response, have largely shaped these unbalanced relationships which, I assert, closely follow the features of James Scott’s high-modern state projects (Scott 1998, Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed). Through this, an articulation of the tension between the Indian state and two transhumant pastoral communities—the Gaddis and the Van Gujjars—will be attempted to be juxtaposed and contrasted. I will attempt to show how the state in its various forms has used an array of legitimizing arguments and tools—morality, conservation, revenue, development and climate change—to ‘settle’ the Gaddis and Van Gujjars out of their traditional roles, into a lifestyle more conducive to measurement, surveillance and control: a ‘de-pastoralization’ of the pastoralists (Caravani, J Peasant Stud 46:1323-1346, 2019), towards the larger statal goals of assimilation, measurement and appropriation (Foucault 1995, Discipline & Punish: The Birth of the Prison). Through this, the changing and seemingly haphazard dynamics of legitimization will be attempted to be situated in their contexts and used to characterize the contrasting situations of both these communities—while highlighting the need to complicate the role of their social and religious identities in the making of their pastoralisms.

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‘Who Has the Stick Has the Buffalo’: Processes of Inclusion and Exclusion on a Pasture in the Indian Himalayas

Cited by 7 publications

References 20 publications

Puhals: Outlining the Dynamics of Labour and Hired Herding among the Gaddi Pastoralists of India

Puhals: Outlining the Dynamics of Labour and Hired Herding among the Gaddi Pastoralists of India

Kamzori: Aging, Care, and Alienation in the Post‐pastoral Himalaya

The making of pastoralisms: An account of the Gaddis and Van Gujjars in the Indian Himalaya

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