The Declining Days of the Shepherds of Rarh

An unprecedented tranquillity is in the air. The Sun has descended hours afore. Chilly darkness ascends the throne for the next course. The flock comes tighter to retain the heat within. The shepherds slip into their kammals. A distant fox yowls. A lamb bleats in fear. The mitigating fireplace turns into a reminiscence. A ram rustles behind a female. On the distant highway, a transportation truck thinly evanishes away. With a lathi, Mahesh patrols the herd singlehandedly. Boötes, the cosmic herdsman, spectates the whole from the above. The age-old sky twinkles for another night.

This phenomenal night was destined for me on an unvarnished December afternoon. In the open lands of our village, I came across a group of people moving with a large flock of sheep. Instinctively I took a photograph or two and returned. Later, those photographs made me curious. After a yearlong effort, I could finally meet Mahesh Pal in 2017. Mahesh Pals are the shepherds from the Gaya, Bhagalpur, Banka, Jamui, Munger and Jehanabad districts of Bihar, who mainly step in the plains of Birbhum and Bardhaman districts of Bengal, in search of pasture, every winter. They arrive at the end of December when the reaping of the rice crop is complete. In April- May, when the land is being prepared for another course of rice, they gradually move towards the highlands of the Chota Nagpur Plateau. Being transhumance in nature, these shepherds migrate seasonally and follow similar routes for centuries.

These vagabonds’ way of living is intriguing. Living with them is like experiencing a collateral clock where the concept of time is unbound from our imposed limitations and deadlines. One night around 3 o'clock, I received a sudden phone call from Gorilal. I feared there is an emergency. But he just smiled and asked what I have taken at dinner. It turned out to be a normal friendly chit-chat. When I travelled with Niranjan, our train was late by four hours but he never seemed anxious. Their life flows in their natural course. It follows a common symmetrical pattern for generations. The pattern is explicitly evident in their dialects, clothing manners, eating habits and even in their ethical viewpoints. They colloquy in Magahi or Moghi Hindi within their circles and use Bengali to make mass conversations in this region. Lungi with casual shirts and synthetic shoes is their most preferred daily wear. A headcloth is an optional addition but a multipurpose bamboo stick and the Bajrangbali locket are the mandatory ones. Physically they bear the Indo-Aryan features but a Proto Australoid amalgamation is also common among them. Though in the home, their primary intakes are based on wheat, corn and pulse, they consume rice when they are out for grazing. These shepherds are Hindu and abide by Lord Shiva and Rama with great emphasis. Rama Rama Jie is a common address they do when meeting each other. After enduring the hardcore nature for decades, they instinctively develop a deep sense of morality and devotion within.

Meshpal Gadarias are “the occupational shepherd caste of northern India,” as Ethnologists, Russel and Hiralal state in The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India. Though they migrate to the pasture, their families lead a domestic life in Bihar. Their wives perform household chores, bring up children and labour in their family farming. On average, women give birth to four-five children in a lifetime. Among them, the literacy rate is drastically lower. In their patriarchal society, they depend on their male counterparts for social interactions. For a better understanding of this herdsman community, I felt the urge to reach their families. But they were not happy with my proposal at all. A shepherd group even banned my access to their herd. After months of persuading, Niranjan believed in my intentions. Pursuing an eleven-kilometre walk through the picturesque wheat fields and vast steppes of Munger, we reached Charhaiya, his village. Niranjan possesses a little amount of cultivable land and a single-room hut. His family of nine members is hardly making the ends meet there. But they were not poor by heart. They even had not forgotten to pack hot and fresh parathas with pickles so that I do not need to take alien food on my solo return journey.

At least ten thousand years from today, a millennia-old Niranjan and his friends had begun cultivating wheat and rearing sheep at the same time. We, the Homo Sapiens, gave up hunting and foraging to start intervening in the natural growth of the plants like wheat, and peas and animals like goats, and sheep according to our calorie needs. The Agricultural Revolution took place in the Fertile Crescent of Southwest Asia. In the Indian peninsula, the Baluchis were the first to incorporate farming in the pre-Harappan times. M.S. Randhawa in his A History of Agriculture in India notes, “A pre-pottery microlithic culture has been discovered from Kili Gul Mohammed which has been dated early fourth millennium B.C. These people lived in houses built of mud bricks. They kept sheep and possibly cultivated crops.” He further adds, “The evidence from paintings on pottery and the recovery of bones of animals leads us to the conclusion that the Baluchi farmers had domesticated goats, sheep, zebu cattle and the ass.” From the mantras of Rig Veda to the shlokas of Mahabharata, the herdsman community has become an integral part of the cultural landscape of this land for millenniums. But now, this legendary community is losing its entity day by day. They are opting for other convenient professions. And to trace the reasons behind this, we have asked the young shepherds.

“We the people of the Pal community say, it was the title of Lord Krishna. You will find Yadav, Pal, Ghosh and Bhagat among us. All of them are the same,” Sudhir states while carefully kneading Khaini, the chewing tobacco, on his palm. “I was in Gujarat. Worked in the textile industry. It was far more pleasure there. Actually, I fall prey to my brother. He called me and said, ‘There is an emergency. I am not feeling well. Please come.’ I trusted him and returned to aid. The very next day he left the herd and never returned. Now he is in driving. He drives the eighteen-wheelers now,” Sudhir completes. Gorilal, another herdsman in his early thirties who wanted to be a mason, shared his motivation too. He said, “Do you know why I am ruining life in this herd? I had to drop from school in the eighth standard. We could not have adequate food then. Parents with my four brothers and three sisters, it was impossible to cumulate food for all of us. I had to leave for work. If I could pursue a bachelor’s degree, though it is difficult to get a job nowadays, I could privately tutor twenty-twenty-five pupils at least. Think, I would income four thousand rupees per month, even from my home. What to say, it is completely bad luck. But I have to pasture this flock for two three years more. As long as the parents are alive, I will have to. They get sentimental about it. Baba had spent his whole life in the herds. He has even threatened to poison himself to death if I abandon this profession. But when they are finished, these sheep are finished.”

We furthered our quest to Patuli, an isle village of the River Ganges. A two-hundred-family community of Bhagats reside there. Though they cast off pasturing, still they weave kammal, the native woollen blankets as their primary occupation. There, Durga Bhagat, a century-old veteran, gave us some insight into the past. She reminisced, “Every people from this community used to graze and weave. Only my maternal family was the exception. They served in the treasury of the Zamindar. My Sadhan’s father was a herdsman. They used to pasture in the distant Kal (Utkal) province, Rarh province and continued there for quarters. I never missed him. I never got upset.” She halts. “Nobody would maintain a herd, anymore. The youngsters have decided only to do office jobs. The shepherds had to endure great suffering. If it is a storm, hailstorm or cloudburst, nobody is going to help you there in the naked fields. Sometimes it feels, the military jobs are far better than the shepherds’ ones. At least, they get timely food and rest,” Sadhan Bhagat concludes.

The inadequacy of pasturage is primarily liable for this crisis. To fight the rapid population growth, the colonial administration put all the arable land of this region under cultivation. The disappearance of pastures had forced the pastoral communities to give up pastoral pursuits and to become cultivators by the turn of the century, as Gwyn Campbell and Elizabeth Elbourne mention in their book Sex, Power and Slavery. They still grow sheep in gothic ways and modern scientific farming has invited them to an unparalleled dual. The wool weaving industry has also faced depression. In Patuli, the government had to shut off its cooperative mill due to the loss of around seventy lakh rupees, as the local people apprised. But the tide can still turn in their favour if the administration grants The Pastoral Rights to the shepherds as Himachal Pradesh did, and the youngsters, in deep love with their roots, educate themselves with the modern farming strategies right away.

I dream another merciless night would prevail, another fox would yowl, another ram would rustle, another Mahesh would patrol and the same age-old sky would twinkle for another night by proving my century-old angst absurd.

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This essay was written in April 2019, for Sahapedia.org, as part of the Frames Photography Grant.