Mohammad Hussain, 70, was an anonymous nomad until recently. Of late, he has become the most talked about man in Tattapani — a small village famous for hot water springs and coal mines in Kalakote tehsil of Rajouri district in Jammu and Kashmir. Courtesy: demonetisation.

Hussain, who belongs to the Bakarwal tribe of goatherds and shepherds, took everyone by surprise when he came to J&K Bank’s local branch with demonetised notes in sheepskin sacks earlier this month.

The bankers allegedly refused to entertain him. Deeply disappointed, he returned to his plastic-sheet tent on an isolated, forested hillock. “Even if I’ve one crore (rupees), what’s the government got to do with my money... it’s my toil… my life’s savings… Did the government ever give us something? Does it come to our rescue when our people and cattle die in snowstorms on high mountains,” says the agitated septuagenarian, who doesn’t have a bank account, voter identification card, ration card or an Aadhaar card.

Seasonal migration

“At the start of seasonal migration, we arrange money by selling livestock and borrowing from moneylenders. Being vagabonds, we can’t rely on banks. If we queue up outside banks every day, who’ll tend to our cattle?” asks Hussain, sporting a white turban and a neatly trimmed white beard.

“Now what are we supposed to do when they (banks) are not allowing us to either deposit our money or exchange the old currency notes. We’ve over 300 cattle. The expenditure for each sheep — on grains, medicines and fodder — during our winter stay here comes to over ₹3,000. We don’t enjoy any freebies. Cashless, we fear that our livestock — sheep, goats, horses, buffaloes and dogs — are going to suffer from disease and die of starvation.”

Like thousands of people belonging to the Gujjar and Bakarwal tribes — which constitute the third largest ethnic group in Jammu and Kashmir — Hussain sets out twice annually on a journey of several hundred kilometres between the lower and upper altitudes of the western Himalayas, to escape two climatic conditions: harsh winter and scorching summer. For the summers he goes up to Gurez Valley and during winters comes down to Kalakote.

His mud house in Kalakote, he says, collapsed in September 2014 — the year Jammu and Kashmir saw unusual rains, landslides and floods.

“When militancy broke out in Kashmir Valley, the high-altitude pastures at Talail in Gurez Valley — where I’d built a mud house — were taken over by the army. Thereafter, we were never allowed to camp on those pastures.”

Hard work, blocked money

Many small villages and towns in the Pir Panjal range are abuzz with stories of nomads visiting banks with sacks of scrapped currency.

“They are believed to be hard-working people. The money they possess could be described as blocked money but not black money,” says a local teacher, Ranjit Khajuria.

On the flip side, there are nomads like Javid Iqbal, 19. “I tend to the cattle of other members of my community and villagers,” he says, adding with a grin, “I don’t have any money and therefore... no worries.”

Hussain says that as the population grows and forests shrink, nomadic herders often find themselves locked in tense confrontation with the police and indigenous people when their cattle stray onto farmlands and forests. Even though the State government’s forest policy provides some ‘concessions’ to nomadic herders, tribal activists demand that the Forest Right Act 2006 must be extended to Jammu and Kashmir.

In compartment 107 in the Bhalessa forests of Bhaderwah, for example, 38 hectares have allegedly been encroached upon by some local villagers. “The encroachers have destroyed the nursery of Deodar and Kail saplings and grown food-crops on the land,” says Paras Ram, former naib tehsildar, adding, “people belonging to nomadic tribes who migrate from Udhampur, Kathua, Bani, Basholi and Bhaderwah to Kishtwar and Padder have been facing hardships due to the blockade of their traditional route.”

While border conflict, militancy and extreme climate remain the biggest challenges facing the two nomadic tribes, they find themselves trapped in a complex web of modern life. You find them struggling with a pervasive feeling of being out of sync with changing times and the rest of the world.

The writer is an independent Jammu-based journalist

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