The long wait for home for the Mir families of Samarvada…

Mittal Patel meets Mir families of Samarvada village

“We neither have any facility for drinking water nor power. We had our hutments over a patch of government wasteland but were asked to vacate it. One generous individual allowed us to stay over his land however, he too asked us to move out as he has sold off the land. We have no place to go in all of  Saamarwada. It is so tiring and frustrating, Ben. Can you please tell the government to speed up and allot us plots. We have been requesting for such a long time but nothing seems to be working in our favour.”

The current living condition of Mir families

Pelajbhai Mir stays in Saamarvada village of Dhanera block in Banaskantha shares the plight of 12 Mir families who have nowhere to go. They have been surviving in some extremely inhuman conditions about which we have shared their status with the concerned authorities however, no favourable actions have been taken so far.

Pelajbhai Mir in his shanty

The Meer does not feature on the official list of Nomadic and De-Notified communities. However, the government ordinance of 2018 stating that houses will be provided to all homeless families and the Mir to are homeless hence, should become eligible to benefit from that ordinance. We have been stating these facts to the officials for the past 5 years but in vain.

Mir Settlement of Samarvada village

Our Prime Minister has pledged house for all by 2022, the state government remains committed to the same. Our Chief Minister has already instructed the district collectors to take necessary measures to ensure homeless families receive residential plots. As a result of this families have started receiving plots for which we are grateful to the government. However, the condition of these Mir families of Saamarvada is miserable. I go to Banaskantha 4-5 times in a month when these families come to know that I am in the region they spend on the commute and travel all the way to meet and share their fatigue and frustrations.

“We cannot afford to buy a plot, Ben. If the government gives one we shall build a house over it!!” Pelajbhai shared.

We hope the government does the needful for these families. The Banaskantha District Collector is a very compassionate human being, he has already instructed his officials. The problem of Mir is more complex than it seems to resolve which one has to look above and beyond.

Traditionally, Meer community kept  ancestry records for the Rabari community. Rabari is a  semi-nomadic pastoral community of Gujarat. They have always led a nomadic lifestyle. The Mir community has been left out from the official list of nomadic communities for some reason.  The central government is in the process of revising this list until that happens the state government will need to include them in the schemes and policies earmarked for the development of severely marginalised communities.

We are sure the government and authorities will ensure that the coming times bring rays of hope for these families.

The images shared here are of the current living conditions of these families.

‘અમારા ત્યાં નથી પીવાના પાણીની સગવડ, નથી લાઈટની સગવડ. સરકારી પડતરમાં રહેતા ત્યાંથી ખાલી કરાવ્યું. એક ભાઈએ પોતાની જગ્યામાં જ્યાં સુધી રહેવા જગ્યા જડે નહીં ત્યાં સુધી છાપરાં નાખી રહેવા કીધુ. પણ હવે એ ભાઈએ પણ જગ્યા વેચી દીધી. નવા માલિકે જગ્યા ખાલી કરાવી. આખા સામારવાડામાં બીજે છાપરાં નંખાય એવી જગ્યા નથી. હવે થાક્યા બેન, સરકારને ક્યો પલોટ આપે એ હાટુ કેટલી વનિતી કરી સે. પણ કશું થાતું નથું’

બનાસકાંઠાના ધાનેરાના સામરવાડામાં રહેતા પેલાજભાઈ મીરની આ પીડા. 12 પરિવારો સામરવાડા ધાનેરા રોડ પર સાવ અમાનવીય સ્થિતિમાં રહે છે. વારંવાર અધિકારીગણને આ પરિવારોની સ્થિતિનો ચિતાર આપ્યો છે પણ...

મીરને વિચરતી જાતિની યાદીમાં દાખલ નથી કર્યા. પણ સરકાર દ્વારા 2018માં કરેલા ઠરાવ મુજબ ઘરવિહોણા તમામ પરિવારોને ઘર આપવાની જોગવાઈ છે અને એ માટે જિલ્લા વિકાસ અધિકારીથી લઈને તાલુકા વિકાસ અધિકારીએ કાર્ય કરવાનું રહે છે. છેલ્લા પાંચેક વર્ષથી આ બાબતે લખીએ છીએ પણ..

આપણા વડાપ્રધાન શ્રીએ 2022 સુધીમાં ઘર વિહોણા તમામ પરિવારોને ઘર આપવાનો સંકલ્પ કર્યો છે. રાજ્ય સરકાર પણ એ માટે કટીબદ્ધ છે. આપણા મુખ્યમંત્રી શ્રીએ તો આવા પરિવારોને રહેવા પ્લોટ અને ઘર આપવાની સૂચના તમામ જિલ્લા કલેકટર શ્રીને આપી છે. તેમની લાગણીને લીધે ઘણા કામો થઈ રહ્યા છે. જે માટે સરકારના આભારી છીએ પણ સામરવાડાની સ્થિતિ બહુ દયનિય છે. હું બનાસકાંઠા મહિનામાં ચારેક દિવસ જવું છુ આ પરિવારોને ખ્યાલ આવે કે હું બનાસકાંઠા છું તો હું જ્યાં હોવું ત્યાં મને મળવા ભાડા ખર્ચીને પહોચી આવે છે.

પેલાજ ભાઈ કહે છે, ‘બેન અમારી તાકાત પ્લોટ ખરીદવાની નથી. જમી સરકાર આપી દે તો એની માથે ઘર અમે બાંધી દઈશું’

તેમની આ વાતને સમજી યોગ્ય કરવા માટેની અપેક્ષા રાખીએ છીએ. કલેક્ટર શ્રી પોતે પણ ભલા માણસ એમની સાથે વાત થઈ એમણે કહ્યું સૂચના આપી છે.. પણ મૂળ પ્રશ્ન આ પરિવારોને જમીન 

A leading newspaper Hindustan Times recognizes VSSM and its humanitarian efforts for NT-DNTs..

Hindu, Muslim and homeless: Gujarat’s nomadic tribe Mirs stuck in no man’s land

The Mirs are a nomadic tribe in Gujarat who are both Hindu and Muslim. Caught between pressures of religious hardliners, they make a case for a third religion, like a third gender.

Vagabhai Lalabhai Mir writes his name with his fingertip in the soft brown sand on the outskirts of Deesa, Gujarat. The patriarch of the Mir tribe is a turbaned, beedi-smoking septuagenarian with a sense of humour. Despite never having been to school, he can read and write Hindi, Gujarati, Arabic and Kathiawadi, a Devnagiri script in which he maintains records. The Mirs are illiterate on record, and sign all government documents with a thumb imprint. Ask him how he reads if he was never taught and Vagabhai taps his head. He trained his mind to. Where did he learn to write? He points to the ground, finger in the sand. Vagabhai asks his son to bring the book.

The Book of the Mirs is a carefully wrapped, leather-bound sheaf of pages that has been updated for centuries by the tribe. Passed down from father to son, it maintains hand-written records of the tribe’s births and deaths, and important incidents in their lives. The book is wrapped in plastic, to protect it from the rain, and again in embroidered cloth, to protect it from the dust. It records what the government fails to: that the Mirs belong to the nomadic de-notified tribes, or vicharti jati as they are known in Gujarat, with a rich 700-year-old tradition of being both Hindu and Muslim. The Renke Commission of 2008 updated the Gujarat state list of nomadic tribes with the Faqirs as only the Muslim tribe.

The Mirs are classified instead as an economically and socially backward class, and tagged as Muslims, along with the Mirasis and Dholis. This does not only fail to record their true religious and social identity, leaving them open to pressure groups, it also takes from them the benefits of the nomadic status. Since they don’t have a permanent address, this would enable them to claim rations, reservations and loans.

A Rabari shepherd dressed in white shows up at the bramble-encircled Mir settlement. He will not sit down with these, his closest cousins, because he is above them clan-wise, since they embraced another religion. The Mirs exist like a third gender, neither here nor there, says Mittal Patel, of Vicharta Samuday Samartan Manch, an organisation that has worked to get the Gujarat election commission to include those without address proofs on the electoral rolls.

Gujarat was the first state to implement this process of inclusion for homeless people and nomads in 2005, making way for national policy changes to election lists. All the subsequent identity, ration and Aadhaar cards for these tribes were made possible because of this.

The lack of a nomadic tribe certificate leaves the Mirs unable to settle. They must prove their address to gain even the basics, such as the registration of births and deaths, and state aid during natural disasters. They can be evicted from the plot of land they live on near Deesa, as they often are from other places to make room for rapidly expanding cities. Their settlements, on once-vacant plots, are increasingly seen as encroachments. Their last spot was taken up by a builder who rented out the open-air space for weddings and parties.

The Mirs are also susceptible to pressures from religious ideologues —both Hindu and Muslim. Most Mirs have two names, a Hindu one and a Muslim one. The Book of the Mirs, on which each page begins with the word ‘Kaaba’ written in Devnagiri script, traces their history back several hundreds of years. It dates back to a time when their births were registered under the Rabari tribe during the rule of the Solanki or Chalukya king Jayasimha Siddharaj. By historical estimation, that would date the records back to the 11th century. The book gets a physical upgrade with every generation as the pages fall apart.

According to SR Khan and Radhey Shyam in the Encycopaediac Ethnography of the Indian Muslim, the tribe’s conversion dates back 700 years. Nomadic tribes do not have a concept of dates and years and function by noting the passage of Uttarayan and Dakshinayan, the winter and summer solstices.

Other versions claim the Mirs are descendants of Kashmir’s Butt tribe, which migrated into Gujarat. The Vishwa Hindu Parisad (VHP) has in the past claimed that they were originally Gandharvas, or Hindu temple musicians. “They are noted for playing the shehenai, a practice that continues in the Vaishnavite Bet Dwaraka temple where Mirs are crucial to the morning and evening aratis, according to anthropologist Professor JJ Roy Burman, at the Centre for the Study of Social Exclusion and Inclusive Policies, Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai. “The confluence of multiple influences makes theirs a ‘liminal religion’ representing the unique syncretic cusp of both Hinduism and Islam.” In other regions, they were known as the breeders of Kathi horses. And with mastery over Arabic, Urdu, Gujarati and Hindi, they became major influencers of poetry in the region.

The Rabaris, who clashed with filmmaker Sanjay Leela Bhansali over his alleged misportrayal in the film Ram Leela, are a nomadic clan predominant in the Kutch region of Gujarat. Legend has it that they were appointed guardians of the goddess Parvati’s camels, and remain a fiercely orthodox tribe.

The Gulf of Khambat was one of the first regions to receive Islamic influence via trade. Mir legend has it that a Muslim leader or tradesman wanted to marry a beautiful Rabari women. Raja Siddhiraj refused to allow it. By some confusion or trickery, as Vagabhai’s group tells it, some members of the clan ate the food and drank the water at a feast thrown by the Muslim suitor. In those days of forbidden intermingling, this was taken to mean that the part of the tribe that participated in the feast had been converted. The Rabari tribe refused to accept them back into the fold and Raja Siddhiraj banished them from the temples. The Mirs then began wandering, and became scribes and bards in the courts of the kings and sultans.

They became the keepers of Rabari genealogy, writing in books with wooden styluses dipped in ink. The Mirs survived on the patronage of their clients, and as kingdoms broke up, the Mirs became attached to various Hindu or Muslim families and clans.

A battle over the Mirs has been underway in Gujarat for two decades now. In the 1990s, the VHP convinced several thousand in the Kutch region to “come back to the fold” and embrace Hinduism. Sometimes, local mullahs who stop by to read the Quran with the Mirs try to convince them to discard their overtly Hindu ways and embrace the Islamic pyjama-kurta and other modes of life. But for many humble Mirs like Vagabhai’s family, they are comfortable being both.

The Mirs bury their dead, are circumcised and marry by nikaah the Islamic way, but they do not practise polygamy. Some eat meat and beef, but not of the cow. Most men and women both smoke profusely. They celebrate Moharram and Bakr-Eid, but “we do not sacrifice the goat, we milk it” they say. They read the Namaz every Friday but also perform godhbharai ceremonies and celebrate Janmashtami and Navratri the Hindu way. Holi is a major festival for them. “When we die, we are all the same, so why can’t they let us be both?” Vagabhai asks, as he gestures to show that if you cut his hand the blood would be the same.

Others seem more concerned about what religion they belong to. Some upper-caste Hindu communities don’t like them to settle on open grounds near them. Some Muslim communities are overeager that they join the fold. The incessant wandering means the Mirs are left vulnerable to whosoever’s kindness they may need at the time. They take up manual labour where they can find it.

An endless cycle of being thrown out from one clan to another over a choice of religion has shadowed the Mirs through the centuries. As long as they must choose, they remain in No Man’s Land. Perhaps ‘third religion’ needs to be a valid policy option for them.

For full article CLICK HERE.

We do exist…

Mittal Patel witnessed self-owned leadership - The community
Leaders joining hands proactively for Mass Campaign

We are coming together in Palanpur on October 14th 2017 to let the world know that we exist. The number of people arriving is going to be huge for sure. Such a measure of gathering calls for some advance planning and preparation. The organizers are nomadic and de-notified communities, hence there had to be some distribution of responsibilities!!

Mittal Patel discussing the plan of action with 150+ Nomad
Community Leaders - Mass Campaign planning under progress

We held a meeting in Deesa to assign responsibilities to the community leaders of Patan and Banaskantha. The prolonged discussion was followed by deciding on the agenda for that day. We announced that those willing to take responsibility can stay back while others may leave and come at the venue on 14th. There were around 150+ leaders present in the meeting, we were hoping that 40-50 of them would stay back but, to our utter surprise not a single person stood up to leave!! We changed our seating arrangement and went in the corner so that we could have more focused discussion within a smaller group  but all of them overwhelmed us with the requests to assign responsibilities. “You do not worry about my community, we are all coming!” we were assured by each of them!!

Such overwhelming response means that these communities are tired, they are tired of waiting for these never-ending delays to come to an end. They are eager to talk about the little efforts that are required to change their lives for better!! They will not be opposing or agitating, they are gathering  to make everyone realize that they too exist….  

 ‘અમે પણ છીએ’

કહેવા 14મીએ પાલનપુર ભેગા થવાના. મોટી સંખ્યામાં લોકો આવવાના એ નક્કી. વ્યવસ્થા અને આયોજન મોટુ. વળી નિમંત્રક અને આયોજન કરનાર તમામ વિચરતી વિમુક્ત જાતિ એટલે જવાબદારીની વહેંચણી પણ કરવાની.

ડીસામાં પાટણ અને બનાસકાંઠામાં રહેતા વિચરતી વિમુક્ત જાતિના આગેવાનો જવાબદારીની વહેંચણી માટે ભેગા થયા. લાંબી ચર્ચા પછી શું કરીશુંની વાત કરી, જેને જવાબદારી લેવી ને નિભાવવી હોય એ બેસે બાકીના વ્યક્તિઓને 14મીએ મળીશું એમ કહીને જવા કહ્યું. દોઢસો કરતાં વધુ આગેવાન ઉપસ્થિત હતા. અમને હતુ કે, ચાલીસ પચાસ માણસ બેસસે પણ આ તો જબરૃ થયું એકેય આગેવાન હલ્યા નહીં. અમે જગ્યા બદલી. એક બાજુ ખુણામાં જઈને બેઠા તો ત્યાંય વીંટળાઈને, ‘અમને કો અમે શું કરીએ. બાકી મારી નાતની ચિંતા તમે છોડી દો એતો આખી આબ્બાની.’

થાક્યા છે લોકો એટલે કોઈના વિરોધ માટે નહીં પણ અમને શાંતિથી જીવવા નાની મદદ કરોની વાત કરવા તત્પર થયા છે... સ્વયં ભૂ દરેક વ્યક્તિ પોતાનો આગેવાન લો બોલો છે ને મજાની વાત....