Ground report: Why this Muslim nomadic tribe in Uttarakhand has little to gain from elections

Sitting in the one-room mud house without electricity that serves as the office of the Van Gujjar Tribal Yuva Sanghatan in Uttarakhand, Mohammad Ameer Hamja seemed certain about what the party that rules the Centre and state aim to do. He declared in a matter-of-fact way, “The BJP government wants to erase our community.”

The Van Gujjars, a migratory pastoralist community of Muslims, have long faced marginalisation as a result of the state clashing with them about their traditional forest-based lifestyle and livelihood practices.

Hamja founded the Van Gujjar Tribal Yuva Sanghatan in 2017 to help the community to assert its legal and political rights. But since then, the community’s marginalisation has only grown more intense as a result of the communal polarisation fomented by the Bharatiya Janata Party.

With the region voting on Friday, many community members to whom Scroll spoke said they are likely to press the button for the Indian National Congress, mainly as a tactic to try and keep out the BJP. Overall, however, the community harbours little hope from the voting. They are too small and dispersed a community to influence electoral politics in even an Assembly election, they say, let alone a national one in Uttarakhand.Members of the Van Gujjar community sitting in front of the...

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