LIVELIHOOD
ISSUES
Tenuous lives
Tenuous lives
At Hulihaidar village in Karnataka's Koppal district, which has been home to Qalandars for several centuries. The community is in limbo with bear-taming made illegal and no new jobs in sight.
AT a short distance from the world famous monuments
at Hampi is the village of Hulihaidar in the fertile region of the
“rice bowl of Karnataka” in Gangavathi taluk in Koppal district.
Local residents say it was an important town in the Vijayanagara
empire (1336-1646 C.E.) and the seat of a local lord. Today it is
home to a semi-nomadic tribal community that tamed bears and used
them for street performances. These tribal families are believed to
have first settled in Hulihaidar during the Vijayanagara period.
They would travel around, plying their street trade,
for 10 months in a year. For the remaining two months – before and
during the Islamic month of Moharram – they would stay put in
Hulihaidar, having grand religious and cultural celebrations with
their brethren. The community is known as the Qalandars, and similar
communities of Qalandars are spread across the country. (Qalandar, in
Islamic terminology, usually refers to a Sufi saint, but it seems to
have been used by this community historically. Sometimes it is also
spelt as Kalandar.)
The street performers were forced to settle down
when their bears were seized under the Wildlife Protection Act (WPA),
1972. The confiscations began in the 1990s, when the issuance of
licences was stopped, and continued until 2006 when the last bears
were taken away. Members of the community say that they are barely
able to survive. Almost all of them are illiterate and do not possess
any agricultural land and have become casual agricultural and factory
labourers. “We understand that we are not supposed to work with
bears and have surrendered them, but we have not been offered any
support from the government in the form of alternative livelihood,”
said Shamad Ali, a Qalandar from Bear Lane in Hulihaidar. According
to Shamad Ali, there are 125 households of Qalandars in the village
with their family sizes ranging from five to 18. The largest
community in the village is that of the Nayaks, a numerically strong
Scheduled Tribe (S.T.) community spread across the region. Relations
between the Qalandars and the Nayaks are nor particularly amicable.
The Qalandars allege that the Nayak-dominated panchayat has meddled
with the issuance of Below Poverty Line (BPL) cards to them.
Qalandars also reside in Mangalpura village in
Gangavathi taluk of Koppal district (30 households according to a
report by the Centre for the Study of Social Exclusion and Inclusion
Policy, or CSSEIP, at the National Law School of India University, or
NLSIU, in Bangalore) and in Hampinakatte village (54 households) in
Hospet taluk in adjoining Bellary district. In all, there are an
estimated 489 Qalandar households across Karnataka.
THE HAVADIGAS
Similar is the plight of the Havadigas, a nomadic
community that works with snakes (the word havu means snake in
Kannada). In other parts of India, tribes working with snakes are
known as Saperas and they are in a similar situation. With the strict
implementation of the laws to protect wildlife, their snakes are
regularly confiscated, and community members say they are harassed by
wildlife officials. The largest community of these snake charmers in
Karnataka lives in Bangalore, in a slum called Havadiga colony.
They told Frontline that they were not being
allowed to work even with rat snakes, which are aplenty in wooded
areas across Bangalore. Abdul Mastan, a young man in his late
twenties, said: “We are basically magicians, using sleight of hand
tricks to entertain audiences, but we need snakes to attract a
crowd.” He later did an impromptu performance using minimal
accessories, including a large basket and a bedsheet, in which a
child was made to disappear and then reappear. The snakes were
missing, of course.
Syed Shabeer, another Havadiga, said they did not
have pucca houses to live in. “We have been living in this plot of
land allotted by the Bangalore Slum Development Authority for the
past 10 years. Before that we were a nomadic community,” he said.
There are 100 households in the colony. Significant clumps of
Havadigas reside in other parts of Bangalore and elsewhere in
Karnataka. Informal estimates put their number at 371 households.
Many Havadigas have become street vendors and sell flutes and crude
dotaras (mandolin).
According to a report titled “Law and Loss of
Livelihood: The Havadigas and Qalandars of Karnataka” by Ajit Kumar
and Nadim Nikhat, both researchers with the CSSEIP, the strict
implementation of wildlife laws has left these two communities high
and dry. Rehabilitation has been inadequate, and members of the
community have now become part of India's vast informal market
economy with irregular incomes. To add to their woes, these two
communities, who are Muslim, are not classified as Scheduled Caste
(S.Cs) or S.Ts though their socio-economic condition and their
historical lack of access to avenues for development should mark them
out as targets for policies of affirmative action and other state
benefits. While the Havadiga community is listed as an OBC (Other
Backward Classes), the Qalandars do not even figure on this list,
which is anomalous because several thriving castes in Karnataka are
listed as OBCs.
Some civil society activists say the wildlife laws
are insensitive to traditional trades and do not address the issue of
livelihood for communities that lose their traditional means of
income. The right to livelihood, they point out, finds mention in the
Directive Principles of State Policy. Besides, the rights of
indigenous people have been recognised under the United Nations
Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People, which was adopted by
the General Assembly in 2007.
A journalist who grew up in the city of Bellary
remembers the Qalandars well. He said: “As a child, I remember them
bringing their bears to jatras [fairs], and they were surrounded by
an excited crowd of children and families. They also distributed
amulets.”
The plight of these two communities is part of a
larger struggle by the nomadic and denotified tribes across Karnataka
and India, and they should be offered commensurate benefits. The main
grouse of activists is that members of the nomadic tribes do not have
a sense of identity as they are grouped under a number of categories
in different States for the sake of affirmative action benefits. Many
severely backward communities who are essentially nomadic have not
been categorised as S.Cs, S.Ts or even OBCs.
HAVADIGAS, who lost their livelihoods after possessing snakes became illegal, at a demonstration outside Aranya Bhavan, Karnataka's Forest Department office, in Bangalore demanding that all cases filed against members of the tribe be dropped. A file photograph.
CONSERVATION VERSUS LIVELIHOOD
Implementation of two important Central acts – The
Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Act, 1960, and the WPA – has
resulted in the Qalandars and the Havadigas being denied the freedom
to work with bears and snakes. Subsection 3 of Section 39 of the WPA
declares wild animals to be government property and does not allow
“possession, custody or control” of wild animals without the
permission of the Chief Wildlife Warden of the State. According to
the CSSEIP report, the Bombay Prevention of Begging Act, 1959, which
makes it illegal for anyone to possess wild animals, is also invoked
to book cases against members of these communities. Police and Forest
Department officials use these legal provisions to seize animals with
the assistance of non-governmental organisations (NGOs). In fact,
some NGOs have been instrumental in leading the campaign against
Qalandars and have also provided an alternative home for seized bears
in Bannerghatta in Karnataka.
According to an article in the Economic &
Political Weekly of October 20, 2007 (Meena Radhakrishna, “Civil
Society's Uncivil Acts: Dancing Bear and Starving Kalandar”), the
campaign against Qalandars in Haryana had left the community in the
doldrums. It also points out how there have been campaigns against
the Saperas, the Bahelias (tribes who work with birds) and the
Madaris (tribes who work with monkeys). These communities are not on
the S.C. or S.T. list but are categorised as OBCs in many parts of
the country.
Kartick Satyanarayan, co-founder of the NGO Wildlife
SOS, said it was wrong to blame conservationists for the plight of
the Qalandars. Speaking to Frontline, he said: “We informed
the Qalandars that working with bears was illegal and helped many of
them to secure bail when they were arrested for possessing bears. As
an NGO involved in conservation issues, we were concerned about bears
but we have done a lot for the welfare of the Qalandar community.”
To every family that surrendered a bear Wildlife SOS provided
Rs.50,000. The Qalandars of Hulihaidar acknowledge this help but
point out that the amount was inadequate and is long gone.
Satyanarayan said neither the State nor the Central government had
done anything to aid the rehabilitation process.
Over the past few years, Karnataka has seen a
fledgling movement to organise nomadic tribes such as Qalandars and
Havadigas and even those that do not use animals. Each tribe has a
few thousand members, and the tribes are spread across various
reservation categories; physically, they are spread thinly across the
State. This movement is part of a broader national movement to
organise nomadic, semi-nomadic and denotified tribes. (Denotified
tribes are those tribes that were classified as criminal under the
Criminal Tribes Act, 1871.)
A Qalandar home at Hulihaidar. Members of the tribe do not have agricultural land, and most of them work as casual labourers.
According to several scholarly studies, peripatetic
communities of traders, artisans and entertainers have always existed
on the Indian subcontinent. Endogamous in nature and stubborn
legatees of ancient vocations, these nomadic tribes still live on the
margins of modern societies. According to an article in the Economic
& Political Weekly of January 12, 2002 (Milind Bokil, “Denotified
and Nomadic Tribes: A Perspective”), the foremost problem of this
group of people is that of correct classification and categorisation
as they do not make it to any of the scheduled constitutional
categories. It also mentions how, because of their itinerant nature,
they do not have a link with the social space of settled society, a
fact that needs to be taken into account for any rehabilitation plan
to work.
Balagurumurthy, president of the Nomadic Tribes
Mahasabha, Karnataka, agrees that the foremost problem is that of
‘identity'. “With incorrect classification across the country and
scattered members, there is no sense of belonging for the people of
these communities,” he said. Balagurumurthy is trying to organise a
collective of 33 nomadic tribes in Karnataka and make them aware of
their rights. He is the first graduate from the Budga Jangamma
nomadic tribe in Karnataka.
He also points out another serious problem that
exacerbates identity issues. Some nomadic tribes are known by several
synonyms, and while one of them might be on the S.T. list, their
synonyms may have found their way to the OBC list. “When benefits
are sought under the S.T. quota, they are told that they are OBCs,”
he said. He cited examples of nomadic tribes that find mention in
both the S.T. and OBC lists in Karnataka – the Shillekyata
(performers with puppets), Budga Jangamma (street musicians),
Hakkipikki (bird trappers), Sudugadu Sidda (street magicians),
Sindollu (self-flagellators), Chinnadasar (conch blowers), Gantichor
(pickpockets) and Handijyogi (pig rearers).
“There was an enumeration done in 1965, on the
basis of which these nomadic tribes have been classified, but that
classification is useless and outdated now,” he said. He added that
the problem of the nomadic tribes, who number close to 150 million
across the country, could be solved only if a proper census of the
communities was undertaken and the Constitution was amended to
incorporate a separate schedule for nomadic tribes.
The demand echoes the recommendation of the National
Commission for Denotified, Nomadic and Semi-Nomadic Tribes (NCDNSNT),
which submitted its report to the Prime Minister in 2008. The
commission also recommended reserving 10 per cent of government jobs
for the DNSNT (on the basis of their population, which was estimated
to be 110 million). However, the Ministry of Social Justice, under
whose aegis the National Commission was set up, expressed “strong
reservation” against a new quota.
B.C. PANEL REPORT
The rights of nomadic tribes were endorsed by C.S.
Dwarkanath, former Chairman of the Karnataka Backward Classes
Commission, who submitted a report in 2010 to the State government
towards the end of his tenure. The report was written after a
detailed study of 15 nomadic tribes, including the Qalandars and the
Havadigas, which was undertaken for the first time. While pointing
out how traditional livelihoods of many of these communities were
under threat, it made several recommendations, including the setting
up of a State Commission for Nomadic Tribes. It also made out a
strong case for a detailed socio-economic survey, grant of
agricultural land and the provision of special packages to address
the specific problems of these tribes.
A careful consideration of the report, which is
lying idle with the State government, may be useful. As a first step,
the Central government needs to undertake a through enumeration and
classification as it would help community members gain a sense of
homogeneity and identity. A clear estimate would also help in drawing
up policy measures.
Back in Hulihaidar, Qalandar S. Ismail was
despondent over the absence of income opportunities. “Please write
that we need some land that we can call our own so that we can grow a
few crops,” he pleaded. The Havadigas had a different request. “All
we need is a licence from the wildlife department for possessing one
rat snake so that we are not harassed any more. Our lives have become
hell,” said Babe Saib, an elderly snake charmer.
Reference
http://www.frontline.in/navigation/?type=static&page=flonnet&rdurl=fl2904/stories/20120309290409500.htm
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