The Last Caravan: Van Gujjars in a Burning April

April, 2026

It's burning in April, burning summers, hotter than ever. Do we still need more proofs for global warming? Climate skeptics seem to have leathery, insensitive skin, harder than even crocodiles to call it a hoax. Well, they seem to be different species altogether. 

Summers are getting hotter each season, and still we have global warming skeptics leading the world as the most powerful persons on Earth. They don't believe in climate change, destruction of ecology. All they are interested in is adding to business, more money. They are not bothered about at what cost it comes.

All that matters is just more money, more dollars, more real estate, more weapons sold to stage-managed war crises in different countries, so that the war-material mafia is able to increase its business by selling more and more weapons throughout the world.

In any case, that is the bigger world of bigger people engaged in bigger-than-ever follies that will spell doom for the smaller people like me and you.

Here in this countryside of Haryana, Rajasthani nomads, the migrant cattle herders, walk pensively in soiled whites and big red headgears. You can see them wandering in North Indian states, their famished, big-horned cows clogging the roads, creating traffic hassles.

People get irritated, repeatedly honk, mutter, but they respect cows, thankfully, and somehow digest the loss of precious minutes on the road.

I always welcome a group of cattle on the road because that puts a pause on blindingly running traffic.

And then there is an offbeat sight: a big herd of buffaloes, sleek, not too famished. The invisible citizens with their buffaloes. An unusual caravan passing through the burning countryside. Things aren't definitely ok when the mountain herders are forced to come to the unwelcoming plains. It seems like the last miles of an ancient caravan. Buffaloes, burning roads and the invisible citizens of mother India. The sad sight of Van Gujjars: a culture on its last leg.  

And I am surprised as I come across this big flock of buffaloes lining across the road, covering half of it, moving in rhythm.

It's very surprising. Even shocking. Even sad. 

Van Gujjars in this part of Haryana! Their buffaloes are not famished like the cattle of Rajasthani nomads who come from the desert, where the cattle have to fight for sparse blades of grass.

Van Gujjars, they come from the hills. Their buffaloes are fed on mountain grasses, but it's sad to see them seeking survival on leftover crops in harvested wheat farms.

This is late April, so wheat harvesting is almost complete in this part.

In their traditional pasture lands, the forest department officials turn more and more strict these days, and Van Gujjars are the invisible citizens of India, so they are trying to sneak out a thin trail of survival.

Things are getting worse politically as well. Van Gujjars are Muslims, Muslim herders, and that adds to the challenge that they face.

The old man, he drags his feet with effort, a long hennaed beard. A woman leads the herd. Another woman mans the herd's rear. The man is in the middle, sandwiched for safety.

People will be less rough to the women herders. At least this is what they suppose.

Their carts with cloth canopies, laden with their bare essentials, are waiting a few hundred yards ahead on the road.

Communalism is getting hotter, each mile more challenging, each step more challenging than the previous one.

Van Gujjars are Muslims in name only. What do they know about religion? The Mughals must have forced them to convert. Now there is a counterforce. And here we have a distinct culture taking its last breath.

It's a very sad sight to see this caravan of Van Gujjars with their buffaloes in the scorching heat of the plains, away from the lush, verdant valleys and greens where the buffaloes would eat nourishing, succulent grasses and herbs.

And now here they are, surviving on dried leftover crofts in harvested wheat fields, getting harsh words from passersby.

People are not as lenient as with the cow herders to these buffalo herders; obviously for the reasons that are an open fact now. So there are lots of harsh words hurled at them.

A big car stops while crossing the leading woman herder in front of the caravan, and the young man must have said something very obscene, because I see her touching her ears and saying, “Tauba, tauba.”

A very sad sight.

Forest laws are becoming stricter, and the movement of their buffalo caravan is almost impossible now through reserve forests and national parks.

This distinct culture is on its last leg. Undoubtedly. It's dying. 

I think in the coming decade or so they will be gone. They will be forced to sell their buffaloes, and then they will become labourers because they don't have the skills, they don't have education, they don't have permanent residence.

They are the unknown and invisible citizens of Mother India.

It will be quite challenging for them in the coming days, even if the government does its best to make them settle at a particular locality.

But even there they will find it very difficult to earn a living because they don't have any education or special skills to make a living.

They are just buffalo herders.