The river Lidder flows through verdant fir mountains and alpine meadows near Pahalgam in Kashmir, India. In the autumn of 2014, the serpentine course of this river had taken on a ravenous form, threatening all life along its banks. But before devastating floods gripped the region, a community of nomadic tribesmen had begun to migrate southwards from their high altitude camp near the Kolahoi glacier where the river originates.
They customarily make this journey in October each year with the first snowfall. But in 2014 they had begun their descent in August when temperatures were hovering around a temperate 30°C in Pahalgam. As the last of these herdsmen made their way down from the higher mountains, the valley witnessed torrential rains that resulted in the worst floods Kashmir has experienced in living history.
The Lidderwat region that has lent the river its name is the camping ground for the nomadic Gujjar and Bakarwal communities. Their lives so ensconced in nature had perhaps given them clairvoyant gifts to read the changing weather patterns around them, something modern technology had been unable to predict. These unique insights lie hidden from the world and are becoming increasingly threatened and marginalised with burgeoning development in their home state, as well as in other parts of India.
The origins of the tribe remain a contested issue among historians and anthropologists who either consider them to be part of the Central Asian tribes that migrated to the Indian subcontinent through the northwest frontier or believe they belonged to the Indo-Aryan race, particularly from the Mount Abu region in the western state of Rajasthan.
Irrespective of their origins, these itinerant tribesmen, like their counterparts in other regions of India and the world, embellish items of daily use such as garments, floor coverings and horse saddles with a distinct hand-skill craft. Colourful threads that borrow hues from their environment decorate the tribe’s dress and household goods. To revive the lost hand-skills of the tribe, and to sustain it in the increasingly mechanised world, the Shepherd Crafts project has been documenting, designing and retailing products made by the community.
Located at Langanbal village near Pahalgam, the project led by Ramneek Kaur and Devika Krishnan aims to provide an alternative source of income to the community, alongside benefits such as health care to women who principally undertake the embroidery work. Given the migratory nature of the tribe, the project is also engaged in studying their routes, schedules and base camp locations to enable streamlining of handing out materials and instructions and then receiving the finished pieces from wherever the tribal women are based at the time.
“In addition to providing a platform for craft preservation, the Shepherd Crafts project has also researched the possible route this clan has travelled since the fifth century AD. The motifs and stitches of the free-form embroidery of this tribe are an amalgamation of the various cultures the community has been exposed to during their centuries old migration from Greece through Persia, Turkmenistan, Swat valley, Gujarat and then upwards to Kashmir right up to Uzbekistan and back now,” says Kaur, who grew up in Pahalgam and nurtured a desire to help migrant tribes in the region earn a better livelihood and find a space on the map with other communities of Kashmir.
Among the many members of the project is Begum Bano, a matriarch of the Awra village Gujjar clan near Pahalgam, which migrates nearly 40 kilometres annually to pastures near the Kolahoi glacier at an elevation of 5,400 metres.
Many young girls in the tribe who have joined the project were taken out of school by their families and were either married off or needed to help around the house. They are also tasked with helping raise younger siblings, cooking meals and keeping their homes in order.
The brightly coloured embroidery created by women like them is peculiar to the clan and through the project these women are free to imbibe moods from their environment into their craft. From the colours of the spectacular vistas around them to the kameez they’re wearing on a particular day, the patterns remain their own interpretations of the world.
“The Bakarwal women of the project embroider free-form designs during winter when they are safe and warm in their homes south of Jammu, in the districts of Rajouri and Poonch. To keep their embroidery traditions alive, we have also encouraged them to apply their craft to locally made cotton. It takes a woman a month to embroider a rug covering the entire surface with stitches. They take base materials such as plain rugs and wool to their campsites and appear a month later with marvels that can brighten up a dull day,” says Krishnan.
In addition to free-form embroidery on modern-day products such as iPad sleeves, clutches and throws, the special braiding technique practised by the women has also been used to create earrings, keychains and necklaces. Design collaboration has also initiated a dialogue within communities in the region that have lived side by side but have never interacted until now.
For instance, hand painted wooden beads by an award-winning papier-mâché painter, Maqbool Jan, were strung together with semi-precious stones and glass beads by women at the project using their unique braiding skills. The project has also been exploring new ground with the craft technique of namda, traditional hand-felted wool rugs from Kashmir. It is a very laborious and smelly process, which often results in a series of sneezes and a cold that lasts for weeks.
“The families carrying out namda work are among the most underpaid artisans in the valley. The rug itself costs a pittance while the embroiderers, who belong to a different sect, earn three times as much. The middleman and the retailer earn the most and even then, you can buy a 4x6 piece for as little as Rs3,000 [Dh166],” says Kaur.
The process of making the felt rugs involves sorting the smelly wool freshly sheared off sheep, washing it several times with soap and oil, beating it out to dry, washing it again, spreading it in layers with wet sacking in between and then repeatedly rolling and unrolling, with the craftsmen spending all this time on their knees, often in sync with a fellow roller kneeling alongside.
The rug again spends several days being dried and washed, before being trimmed and beaten flat. These are then embroidered and given final touches. Rugs made using the namda technique are sourced from Kashmiri artisans and the Gujjar tribeswomen in the project then embroider on it.
The floods of 2014 adversely affected the project. The primary buyers of the goods are tourists who stayed away from the region that year and even in 2015, not many returned. However, the project continues to document the lifestyle of the communities and their unique skills and hopes to compile a book on the subject in the coming years. The project has also begun organising shepherd trails for those keen to see the community culture and lifestyle up close and even savour a meal with the families.
Having started with samples of a traditional embroidered cap and a tattered bag, the project now creates a range of accessories and home décor products with an enrolment of 60 women. New enrolments have been stopped for a few years in order to control the quality of products and to ensure there is a market for their craft, which can bring regular income to them.
“When we began, 12 women from the community came forward and we started our production-cum-training workshop as well as the project at our centre in October 2011. Within three days, the numbers grew to 24 and we had to stop enrolments temporarily. Work continued until November but had to stop as it got too cold. Our little barn, which is our work studio, had large gaps in the walls and the strong cold winds from the pine forest below swept down through us into the valley. But soon enough we had a winter studio, a Gujjar house next door that had a bukhari burning all day keeping us warm and cozy,” says Kaur.
The shepherds migrate annually in search of greener pastures along trails running through the Pir Panjal mountains in the inner Himalayan region. The Shepherd Crafts project offers a window into the lives of the migrant communities it supports and collaborates with, in turn providing the tribes a peek at the world outside.
Manika Dhama is an independent writer based in Dubai.
