Contested forests: The Van Gujjars' struggle to settle

AbstractThe paper explores how the nomadic community of Van Gujjars are engaged in reproductions of forest-based settlement forms and construction of the Himalayan landscape through contestation and adaptation of State Forest policies. The paper first elaborates on the traditional settlement system of khols in the Shivalik forests, to better understand the Van Gujjars’ relationship with the landscape. Secondly, the paper examines resettlement of the community from the Rajaji National Park (RNP). Two case studies, of the Kunau Chaud and Gaindikhata resettlement sites, demonstrate the adaptive capacities of site-based systems against the sociocultural inadequacies of top-down planning. The paper attempts to foreground the case as an archetype of forest urbanism. Forest urbanism, which iterates between landscape urbanism and urban forestry, focuses on settlement and nature entanglements and the role of forests in structuring the environment. Instead of stereotyping traditional settling systems as backwards, and in line with David Graeber and David Wengrow’s perspective on humanity,1 the forest urbanism of the Van Guijars’ mode of settling is seen as an intriguing gaze into an inspirational world of possibilities.Keywords: Van GujjarsHimalayaforestry policyforest urbanismglobal warming AcknowledgmentsThis case study was first presented at the ‘Urban Forests, Forest Urbanisms & Global Warming’ conference, held at the KU Leuven in June 2022. The Interfaculty Council for Development Co-operation (IRO) Doctoral Scholarships at the KU Leuven supported this research. Kelly Shannon incessantly supports and contributes to this research project. Last but not least, the authors thank the Van Gujjar community, the Van Gujjar Tribal Yuva Sangathan (Tribal Youth Coalition) and the NGO Rural Litigation and Entitlement Kendra for their openness and kind help.Notes1 David Graeber and David Wengrow, The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity (London: Penguin UK, 2021).2 Ritesh Joshi, ‘Eco-tourism as a Viable Option for Wildlife Conservation: Need for Policy Initiative in Rajaji National Park, North-West India’, Global Journal of Human Social Science Research 10/5 (2010), 19–30.3 Pernille Gooch, ‘The Persistent Forest Pastoralists’, Nomadic Peoples 8/2 (2004), 126.4 Paulo Tavares, ‘In the Forest Ruins’, in: Beatriz Colomina et al. (eds.), Superhumanity: Design of the Self (Minneapolis: The University of Minnesota Press, 2017), 20–35.5 James C. Scott, ‘Nature and Space’ and ‘Cities, People, and Language’, in: James C. Scott, Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2020).6 Richard Haeuber, ‘Indian Forestry Policies in Two Eras: Continuity or Change?’, Environmental History Review 17/1 (1993), 49–76.7 Mahesh Rangrajan and Ghazala Shahabuddin, ‘Displacement and Relocation from Protected Areas: Towards a Biological and Historical Synthesis’, Conservation and Society 4/3 (2006), 359–378.8 Scott, ‘Nature’ and ‘Cities, People’, op. cit. (note 7), 11–83.9 Suzanne Simard, Finding the Mother Tree: Discovering the Wisdom of the Forest (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2021).10 Bruno De Meulder, Kelly Shannon and Min Quang Nguyen, ‘Forest Urbanisms: Urban and Ecological Strategies and Tools for the Sonian Forest in Belgium’, Landscape Architecture Frontiers 7/1, (2019), 18–33; Wim Wambecq, Forest Urbanism in the Dispersed Flemish Territory (Barcelona: Fondation Arquia, 2023).11 Phillipe Descola, ‘Configuration of Continuity’, in: Phillipe Descola, Beyond Nature and Culture (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2014), 33–38.12 Paulo Tavares, ‘Trees, Vines, Palms and Other Architectural Monuments’, Harvard Design Magazine—Into the Woods 45 (2018).13 Haripriya Rangan, Of Myths and Movement: Forestry and Regional Development in Garhwal Himalayas (Los Angeles: UCLA, 1993).14 Haeuber, ‘Indian Forestry’, op. cit. (note 8); Vandana Swami, ‘Environmental History and British Colonialism in India: A Prime Political Agenda’, CR: The New Centennial Review 3/3 (2003), 113–130.15 Karl Polanyi, ‘Societies and Economic Systems’, in: Karl Polanyi, The Great Transformation (Boston: Beacon Press, 2001), 45–58.16 Neeladri Bhattacharya, ‘Pastoralists in a Colonial World’, in: David Arnold and Ramachandra Guha (eds.), Nature, Culture, Imperialism: Essays on Environmental History of South Asia (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1997), 23–24.17 Dhirendra Datt Dangwal, ‘The Lost Mobility: Pastoralism and Modernity in Uttarakhand Himalaya’, Nomadic Peoples 23/2 (2009), 83–101.18 Pierre-Alxandre Paquet, Jungle Government: Forestry, State-making and Development for the Van Gujjar Pastoralists of Uttar Pradesh and Uttarakhand, India (Canada: McGill University, 2018).19 H. G. Walton, Dehradun: A Gazetteer Volume I of the District Gazetteers of the United Provinces of Agra and Oudh (Allahabad: Superintendent Government Press, 1911) 14–16.20 Ramachandra Guha, The Unquiet Woods: Ecological Change and Peasant Resistance in the Himalaya (Berkeley and Los Angeles/Oxford: University of California Press/Oxford University Press, 1989).21 The grazing Fee per annum in 1921 for the Van Gujjars was 2 rupees per buffalo, 1 rupee per cow. For the local villagers it was 12 annas per buffalo and 6 annas per cow. 1 rupee equals 16 annas.22 Dangwal, ‘The Lost Mobility’, op. cit. (note 21).23 Pernille Gooch, ‘Victims of Conservation or Rights as Forest Dwellers: Van Gujjar Pastoralists between Contesting Codes of Law’, Conservation and Society 7/4 (2009), 239–248. Note: The community is Muslim while the state of Uttarakhand is predominantly Hindu.24 James C. Scott, ‘The Golden Age of the Barbarians’, in: James C. Scott, Against the Grain: A Deep History of the Earliest States (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2017), 219–256.25 Uttar Pradesh (UP) is the parent state of Uttarakhand. The states administrations were separated on 9 November 2000.26 Jeet Singh, ‘Forest Commons in Uttarakhand and Subsistence Rural Economy’, for Rajiv Gandhi Institute for Contemporary Studies, rgics.org/wp-content/uploads/Forest-Commons-in-Uttarakhand-and-Subsistence-Rural-Economy-A-Study-of-Two-Panchayats.pdf, accessed 21 December 2021; Haeuber, ‘Indian Forestry’, op. cit. (note 8).27 Vivek Menon, P. S. Easa and A. J. T Johnsingh (eds.), Making Way: Securing the Chilla-Motichur Corridor to Protect Elephants of Rajaji National Park (New Delhi: Wildlife Trust of India, 2003), 6. Occasional Report no. 10, conducted by the Wildlife Trust of India partnered with the International Fund for Animal Welfare, the Friends of Doon Society, the Uttaranchal Forest Department, US Fish and Wildlife Services and the Wildlife Institute of India.28 The issue was discussed in the session ‘Ecology and Relationships with Forest during the ’Gujjaran Go Kaarj: A Living Lightly Utsav and Exhibition’, hosted by the Centre for Pastoralism and the Van Gujjar Tribal Yuva Sangathan, 24-26 March 2022, attended by one of the authors.29 Arturo Escobar, Encountering Development: The Making and Unmaking of the Third World (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995).30 Gustav Cederlöf, In the Jungle of Forest Rights: 109 Days with Van Gujjars, Himalayan Activists, and the Forest Rights Act (Bangladesh: Svalorna, 2012).31 Norah Sylvander, ‘“Territorial Cleansing” for Whom? Indigenous Rights, Conservation, and State Territorialization in the Bosawas Biosphere Reserve, Nicaragua’, Geoforum 121 (2021), 23–32; Scott, ‘Nature’ and ‘Cities, People’, op. cit. (note 7).32 The 1990s saw mass movements for political/administrative separation of the state of Uttarakhand from the state of Uttar Pradesh.33 Rubina Nusrat, ‘Marginalization of Himalayan Pastoralists and Exclusion from Their Traditional Habitat: A Case Study of Van Gujjars in India’, International Journal of Human Development and Sustainability 4/1 (2011), 93–103; Gooch, ‘The Persistent’, op. cit. (note 4).34 Phillipe Descola, ‘The Wild and the Domesticated’, in: Descola, Beyond Nature, op. cit. (note 11), 32–53.35 Peter Kropotkin, Mutual Aid: A Factor of Evolution (New York: McClure Phillips & Co., 1902).36 Paul-Henri Chombard de Lauwe, ‘Aspirations, images guides et transformations sociales’, Revue Française de Sociologie V (1964), 180–192.Additional informationNotes on contributorsZeba AmirZeba Amir is a doctoral researcher with the Architecture and Urbanism research group (OSA) at ICoU, KU Leuven. Her doctoral research focuses on interrelationships of humans, forest and agriculture in the Himalayas. She has a master’s degree in Urbanism and Strategic Planning, and she has been engaged in landscape urbanism through professional and academic projects.Bruno De MeulderBruno De Meulder is professor of urbanism at KU Leuven. His research is situated at the crossroads of spatial analysis and urban design in post-colonial and post-industrial contexts.