This land is whose land?

What is a nation for?

- AMRITESH MUKHERJEE

What is a government supposed to do? The textbook answer is that governments are supposed to protect its citizens, to serve those who grant it authority. But what if the government is your biggest threat? When, in the name of conservation, your disappearance is demanded? When development begins with your displacement? When the forest you've tended, protected, known by its bark and seasons and animal movements, suddenly belongs to a government that wants you gone?

“Wild animals and forest fires don’t scare us. We know very well how to deal with all that. What is scary is the threat of the Junglaat and sarkar,” Noorjahan, a Van Gujjar woman, tells It a Mehrotra.

The junglaat—the forest department— and the sarkar—the state—are more dangerous than any predator, more destructive than drought or flame.

It a Mehrotra’s Uprooted, through evocative prose and stunning black-and white illustrations capturing years of fieldwork, narrates the displacement of Van Gujjar and Taungya communities across Uttarakhand’s Terai region— communities that know forests intimately. Yet under Indian conservation law, they’re squatters. Ms Mehrotra’s book, then, is a visual counter-archive of displacement, of resistance.

‘The Van Gujjars are semi-nomadic Muslim buffalo herders who have migrated seasonally between the Himalayan foothills and alpine meadows for centuries: Winter in the lower valleys (deras), summer in high pastures (bugyal), the entire year calibrated to the needs of their herds and the forest’s capacity. They prevent forest fires (critical in Uttarakhand’s climate crisis), manage grazing to maintain biodiversity, create firebreaks, sustain water sources, essentially operate as a “middle unit” between wildlife and settled communities.