Rita Kothari - Memories and Movements: Borders and Communities in Banni, Kutch, Gujarat

Memories and Movements

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Memories and Movements

Borders and Communities in Banni
Kutch, Gujarat

Rita Kothari

With a Foreword by
Urvashi Butalia

Orient Blackswan Private Limited

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Rita Kothari 2013
First Published by Orient Blackswan 2013

eISBN 978 81 250 5310 1

e-edition:First Published 2014

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Contents

List of Maps, Tables and Figures

Foreword

Elegantly expressed and persuasively argued, this study of a once-forgotten region and a more or less forgotten people immediately draws the reader in to its many complex layers of nuance and meaning. For the people of Banni, a region inhabited by both Muslims and Hindus, and indeed by others who live in the liminal zone between these two identities, and who sometimes occupy both, fixity and movement have very particular meanings. Once a lush, green grassland and now transformed into mere scrub and desert, Banni is home to communities and peoples for whom myths of origin and settlement, stories of migration and movement, a tradition of pastoralism and fixed occupations, the seemingly gradual spread of urbanisation, all play themselves out at different times and appear and reappear in daily lore and life. Sindh, the region 'left behind' holds special sway, and yet it is not always Sindh, the geographical space or political entity, as much as it is the Sindh of its people, the ancestors, those who still remain, the language that survives, the memories that come back to haunt. Of what then, the author asks, are 'regions' made geography, folklore, imagination, occupationand indeed how, for those who live in them, are they made sense of, and where, once change begins to make its presence felt, do they then exist, both virtually and materially?

Rita Kothari's evocative study unravels the rich history of Banni and its peoples: pastoralists, settlers, traders, Muslims, Hindus, Dalits, nuancing these broader categories into the specificities of Mutwas, Meghwals, Jats, Sammas, Pathans, Sumras, Wadhas and many others. She looks at how the gradual disappearance of a pastoral way of life, as well as the creation of new administrative borders (national, between Gujarat and Rajasthan, and international, between India and Pakistan), have both created new anxietieshow can the elders now travel 'back' to Sindh, how are myths of origin retainedand new opportunities, symbolised, for example, by the revenue generated by the production of milk and by women's embroideries and their entry into both the national and international marketplaces. In this exploration of the complex, overlapping, intermeshed and shifting meanings of lineage, purity, home, religion, identity, migration, urbanisation and modernity, people's words and stories find an important place, allowing the reader to look beyond the discourses of 'traditional' histories and ethnographies, at the somewhat messy world of people's lives where identities never remain fixed, and reality is always contingent.

This is not, however, a work that addresses only questions of identity. Rather, by tracing the transformation of this one-time grassland from a place known for its pastoral communities, to one which acquired a reputation built on milk and embroidery, to one that is now facing new challenges, the author maps a trajectory of change and modernity and the adjustments that are made to these, as people learn to cope with electricity, cell phones, travel, development and a host of other things. No longer is life that 'innocent', no longer can it remain 'pure'if it ever was, for although a sort of relative isolation and a quest for purity have in many ways been central to Banni's self perception, negotiations with the outside world have not been entirely absentwhether in the shape of a more rigid version of Islam than Banni's inhabitants have known, or in the form of travel across once-fluid borders, or indeed in negotiations between communities that cross and confound the borders of religion and identity.

Similar contradictions and complexities are played out in the more recent, and more aggressive forms of modernity that now confront Banni. In recent years, Banni's very isolation, its vast and unoccupied tracts of land, have turned it into an attractive destination for big industry and the Gujarat government's strong promotion of 'resurgent Gujarat' has facilitated and encouraged the arrival of such industry. What will this mean for Banni? Loss or gain? The disappearance of the old ways of life or the arrival of possibilities offered by change? How does the presence of big industry, perhaps the 'modernisation' of Banni, square with another developmentthe promotion of Banni as an exotic, timeless, traditional society and a tourist destination, something that is premised on the 'traditionality' of Banni's people's, the colourful embroideries made by its women?

Remarkably free of jargon, and yet deeply informed by theory, this is a biography of a land and its people that enfolds within it many key issues: how do people create and transcend borders of identity and religion through interpersonal negotiation and day-to-day living; what does the construction of administrative and territorial borders mean for their often unbordered lives? What is lost and what gained? How do people negotiate change? How do they hold on to the old? How do they negotiate with and greet the new? What conflicts and anxieties, what hopes and fears does this give rise to? These are questions that scholars have grappled with time and again, and that confront populations caught in the march of modernity the world over. Rita Kothari's elaboration of them in the context of Banni, her location of these questions in the rich terrain of this once-isolated region, her questioning of the very notions of region and nation, make for rewarding reading. You will not be disappointed.

U RVASHI B UTALIA
November 2012

Preface

A border region in northern Kutch, where on one side of the international boundary lies the beautiful Sindh swinging in its cradle the ancient civilisation of the Mohan-jo-Daro. On the other side lies Kutch and swinging in its cradle is the Dholavira, a part of Sindhu civilisation, striving to meet its other half across the border. The cold winds of Thar bring messages of affection from Sindh to the people of Banni who have nurtured the Sindhu civilisation and emerged as its custodians.