We are no strangers to the fact that water is a primary need for human subsistence. We need water for the domestic purposes of cleaning, cooking, washing up and so on; and we need it to carry on with certain vocations on which human life is totally dependent, like agriculture. Accustomed to a sedentary and urban life, we forget there are communities that have a very different relationship with settlement, natural resources, and work – and organise their lives according to rhythms that seem at once distant and foreign to us.
One such community is of the Dhangars. A group of people who have been in the profession of herding animals since a long time, the Dhangars live across the western and north-western states of Rajasthan, Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh, and Uttar Pradesh. Traditionally herding sheep, the Dhangars have an annual migratory pattern.
Their main income comes from rearing sheep. Their source of income is easily the flock of sheep at their command. When a male lamb is born, it is marked for sale, and after being bred for three months, it is sold off. To continue the breeding cycle of their sheep, one male lamb is kept for every twenty lambs sold. Besides selling their male lambs, the Dhangars draw income from various ends of the pastoral economy. They maintain their stock and optimise their health – not unlike the way people manage their investment portfolios. Their income is also supplemented by the wool that comes from the sheep, but that has been on the decline due to far cheaper supply of synthetic fibres. The wool serves them in making their own clothing, shawls, mats, and items for domestic needs. Organic manure is yet another supplementary source of revenue. When the community is on its annual migration towards agricultural lands to avoid the summer heat and aridity, they collect fees from the farmers who would prefer that the sheep graze in their fallow lands and fertilise them. Not only is the money they make sufficient to continue this pattern of life, they also barter their goods and services with members of villages and trade them for rice, vegetable, and other essentials in return.
This entire way of living is dependent on a complex and webbed inter-relationship between the shepherds and their sheep, the sheep and the grassland, and of both the sheep and the grassland ecosystem with the other animals who live there.
First thing in their rituals is the relationship between plants, water, and their flock. The priest, usually an elder of the community, chants to beats of a drum, and exhibits endurance and willingness to be there for the community. These rites include walking through fire, vowing to take care of their families, who would in turn vow to take care of their sheep. Their gods are aptly: fresh-cut grass, a horse, and a dog –– the three necessities which make it possible for them to rely on their livelihood through sheep. Promises often also include commitment to plant certain trees and guarding water sources.
Nomadic life may only seem easy from the outside, for its detachment from the materialistic rat race that most of our lives are attuned to. But the work involved here is not only perennial but also defined by nurturing relationships with nature that we may not understand. These shepherds know the members of their flock individually, attend to their specific needs, and move, live, eat, sleep –– everything –– in accordance with their flock’s adequate comfort. The nomadic life is thus attached to the rhythm of the flock –– for instance, they cannot move between places too fast, it is always required that they go slow and allow their sheep to take time to graze and drink water that they will need to carry on.
Every year, the Dhangars set foot towards the Konkan coast for the monsoon, and then return to their drier environs once the season has passed. While the migration is agreed upon, it is the needs of the flock that guide the route. Any route they take must have sufficient grass for the sheep. Between one camp and another, there has to be a source of water. Thus, the migration is planned beforehand, and the routes and stops are decided upon the green-cover of the grasslands and the availability of water.
We may assume that as nomads the community is always keen to be moving, but this is a simplistic and misguided reading. Nomads have a certain method to their movement. In the case of Dhangars the key is water. Their life revolves around their livestock, and once they find both grazing area and water in abundant supply and close proximity, their next move is to set up their camp in the area, instead of, as we might assume, to keep moving. Since water is the key to their journey, it should be noted that the resource is more and more difficult to depend on these days. As they move westwards, the water sources they draw from become inevitably more polluted, since they are all contaminated by pollutants from the factories that dot their route. The most dependable source of water for them are seasonal streams, small village wells, and irrigation canals. While they do carry clean water, they are so numerically sparse and spread unevenly across the region that any encounter with them is seen as a sign of good fortune. When deciding to move from one watered area to another, there is always a risk that the location may be too distant or too inadequate. While the headmen take the lead in commanding routes and making decisions, the community charges children and young adults with the responsibility to scout water and grass in the area near them. Sometimes they will run into more sources of water, even cleaner, even better, like a borewell or an irrigation pump. They bring some of this water back using their utensils, and this water is boiled and put to use for human consumption, especially for cooking or later use.
A community that has been in this profession since time immemorial, the Dhangars are now facing signs of water tension that their ancestors didn’t. Every move is a gamble and the odds could very well not be in their favour, in which case, with a number of people and 50 odd sheep and 20 horses, they make for a group that is very unlikely to manage itself. The hardship they endure in today’s time is not so much caused by the nature of the work they do, but in the depletion of the very natural resources in sync with which this form of work emerged.