Alternative Futures: Sustaining Van Gujjar Wisdom and Identity
- Samiksha Goel
- Aug 5
- 9 min read
Written by Samiksha Goel
Photographs by Maee
Region: Uttarakhand
Organisation: Jeevan Shiksha (Project: Maee)
Area of Work: Education, Preservation of Indigenous Knowledge, Biodiversity Conservation, Livelihoods
About Maee:
Established in 2018, Maee is an independent initiative of Jeevan Shiksha, dedicated to the Van Gujjars of the Western Himalayas. It is the first intervention of its kind for the Van Gujjar community in Uttarakhand. Through our model, we provide primary and nature-based education via Community Learning Centres (CLCs), ensuring that every child has access to a curriculum designed in their language and rooted in their lived experiences. These sessions are facilitated by trained teachers—youth from within the community—who bridge traditional knowledge with structured learning.
Beyond education, Maee empowers community youth with training in forest-based livelihoods, including nature guiding, birdwatching, and biodiversity conservation fellowships. These youth then become champions of change, driving sustainable progress and securing a dignified future for the Van Gujjars.
In addition to education and livelihood support, Maee engages in research and documentation of the community’s culture, language, and learning traditions. By developing resource materials and archives, we work to safeguard Van Gujjari identity and indigenous knowledge for future generations.
At the heart of Maee’s approach is deep engagement with the community—our primary stakeholders—to co-create sustainable solutions that uphold their heritage while fostering resilience.
Maee, an initiative for the education of Van Gujjars, was the name given to a small independent project started in some of the most remote Van Gujjar villages in Uttarakhand. It was founded by two individuals who, above all, cared for this community—one on the verge of systematic collapse due to a lack of dignified livelihoods and social security. They were especially committed to the children, who had been excluded from formal education.
Whispers of the Forest: The Van Gujjar’s Sacred Bond
Taukeer Alam, one of the founders, is himself a member of the Van Gujjar community in Uttarakhand. As a traditionally nomadic pastoral tribe, the Van Gujjars migrated seasonally to find fresh grazing for their buffalo herds. Living in mud houses known as chhans and sustaining themselves on milk from their buffaloes and foraged plants from the forest, the Van Gujjars led a life of constant movement and hard work. Amidst their travels and daily labor, they developed a deep, symbiotic relationship with the forests and the ecosystems around them—an intimate connection that fostered vast intergenerational knowledge of the land and its living beings.
As Taukeer often recalled in his stories, the birds and insects of the forest played a guiding role in the lives of the Van Gujjars. If the Indian Cuckoo starts speaking, it is interpreted to be saying ‘Loko Topo’, literally meaning that the sun is too hot now and it's time to move again. If you can hear the insect Cicada, it is a direct sign that the rains are on their way. One bird would tell them to take care of their milk, and another would tell them to mind their buffaloes. These narratives are a testament of a lifestyle where humans are not superior beings exploiting nature and its gifts, but simply co-habitants of the forest.
Even when the community lopped a tree branch for wood, they followed a specific method that allowed the tree to grow back. Their language even has distinct vocabulary for this practice, indicating when a tree has been lopped and must be left untouched for the next three years. This deep-rooted respect for the forest enabled them to coexist and live sustainably while contributing to its preservation and the well-being of its wildlife.
For much of their needs, money was rarely required—only for some items like metal utensils and clothing. Traditionally, the Van Gujjars traded milk and butter with passing traders during their migrations, relying little on cash transactions. As a result, their connection to the market remained minimal. Even in recent decades, milk has remained their primary source of livelihood, and the income from its sale has been more than sufficient to meet their necessities.
A Legacy Displaced, and the Forest Fades
For generations, life continued as it always had—until a few decades ago, when, as everyone fell victim to changing times, everything began to shift. In 1983, Rajaji National Park was established across the Haridwar, Dehradun, and Pauri Garhwal districts of Uttarakhand, later expanding to include the Shyampur forest range of Haridwar and parts of the Kotdwar and Laldhang forest divisions. In 2015, it was further designated as a Tiger Reserve.
The Van Gujjars had lived in these forests for centuries, but with the forests’ newfound status as a “protected” area, the community was forced to leave. Thousands of Van Gujjar families were displaced and granted land on the outskirts of the forest. Taukeer’s family was among them—now resettled in the rehabilitated Gujjar Basti.
Displacement, as it often does, meant uprooting the community from its culture and traditional way of life. The Van Gujjars were given land for farming—but they had never been a farming community. For those now living in the Basti, migration stopped, taking with it their traditional livelihood. In its place, new western aspirations shaped by urbanization and capitalism began to take root. However, without knowledge of urban life and markets, and lacking industrial skills or formal education, the Van Gujjars found themselves vulnerable—at the mercy of city traders and government officials.
Yet, many families continued—and still continue—to live in forest hamlets. But life is far from what it once was. Land permits remain a major challenge, as they are not considered ‘legal residents’ of the forests. At the same time, the lack of livelihood opportunities and persistent social vulnerability cast a shadow over nearly every Van Gujjar in the region.
Guided by Birds: The Journey of a Young Naturalist
The vast reality of change and denial facing his community was not what initially drove Taukeer to start Maee. It began, quite simply, as a passion project—born from his love for nature. As a child, he spent countless hours watching trees, birds, and insects, developing a deep fascination with the world around him. “I am intrigued and in awe of every single thing that moves in nature,” he has often been heard saying.
An early school dropout, Taukeer began assisting scientists and researchers conducting wildlife assessments who needed local guides through the forest. It was during this time that he used binoculars for the first time to observe a bird—and everything changed. He developed a deep interest in birdwatching and began to understand the intricate relationship between forests and the world beyond. Recognizing the urgency of conservation, he immersed himself in learning about wildlife and ecology.
As his work in nature and natural sciences deepened, Taukeer built a career as a nature guide. Soon, he extended his efforts beyond himself—training other local youth to follow the similar paths. Taukeer has become one of Uttarakhand’s top birdwatchers and nature guides and was awarded the Young Naturalist Award by the Sanctuary Asia Foundation in 2019.
While he worked to deepen his skills, Taukeer took on a small project with the Nature Science Initiative, where he was tasked with strengthening schools' capacity to teach Environmental Science (EVS) effectively. The team believed that the path to nature conservation begins with nature education.
Seeds of Change: Maee’s Path to Conservation and Education
It was during this time that Taukeer, along with his colleague and friend Ashish, first articulated what was missing in his own community. As they navigated the challenges of working in private schools in Dehradun, the stark reality of deprivation among Van Gujjar children became impossible to ignore. In collaboration with the Nature Science Initiative, Taukeer and Ashish launched Learning Centres in the remotest Van Gujjar hamlets near his home. These centres soon became the heart of Maee’s work—and its most ambitious undertaking.
Maee currently operates and runs three Community Learning Centres, serving up to 150 out-of-school children—many of whom have no other access to education. Here, they learn literacy and mathematics while also engaging in arts, sports, and other activities. As expected, nature education remains a core focus. Regular events such as nature walks, birdwatching, and moth screening help reconnect the children with their environment.
The goal is to restore the community’s broken relationship with nature and instill a sense of responsibility for conservation in the next generation. Scaling the Learning Centres is essential, but sustainability will require collaboration with the government and like-minded initiatives—a path Maee is already pursuing.
A different and equally important aspect of nature education is youth involvement. Through conservation efforts, we not only raise awareness and promote environmental stewardship but also create livelihood opportunities for young individuals in the Van Gujjar community.
This initiative began in collaboration with the Centre for Ecology Development and Research (CEDAR), Dehradun, and now continues with the support of Green Hub Western Himalayas. In addition, Maee also works to collect and contribute extensive data on local flora and fauna.
Following a ‘Citizen Science’ approach, we upload this data to online platforms like eBird.org, contributing to a global repository of ecological information and natural phenomena.
In 2020, to strengthen our work with children and youth, the Maee Library was established at our base in Gujjar Basti, Haridwar. It has since become the heart of our operations, symbolizing our efforts in mobilization, education, and empowerment through books and knowledge.
Today, the library houses around 500 books across various genres, including education, fiction, non-fiction, nature and wildlife, and birdwatching.
The Last Migration: Indigenous Way is the Only Way
As we immersed ourselves in this work and deepened our connection with the very community we live and work with, an overwhelming sense of loss took hold—a haunting reality of everything the Van Gujjars once had and were now losing.
This Muslim nomadic pastoral Adivasi community, with its rich yet undocumented traditions and culture, remains invisible in India's mainstream narrative. Without urgent efforts to document and preserve their way of life, it risks fading away entirely. This realization profoundly shifted our vision for the future.
Suddenly, it was no longer just about educating a few children or conserving nature in one area—it was about something far greater. We came to understand that the only real path to sustainability lies in indigenous ways of living, which now stand on the brink of extinction. Preserving this knowledge while navigating the demands of an urban, capitalist world became our new imperative.
For Maee to endure—and for the Van Gujjars to sustain their identity—we must bridge these two worlds: the wisdom of an indigenous way of life and the realities of the modern market economy.
Through our work, we aim to empower the community to take pride in their identity and draw from their traditional values to lead dignified lives. At the same time, we seek to address the community’s broader vulnerabilities—the looming threats to their survival posed by various socio-political factors and their struggle to keep pace with a rapidly changing world built on singularities.
Our goal is to preserve traditional Van Gujjar knowledge and bring visibility to their deliberately neglected lives and struggles. As part of this effort, we have followed the Van Gujjars on their annual migration journey, documenting the flora and fauna they engage with along the way.
Folklore for the Future: Documenting a Vanishing Heritage
In an attempt to study these complex factors and develop a well-defined and efficient problem statement—one that expands our interventions beyond education to the community as a whole—we began documenting Van Gujjari life. This includes their stories, folk tales, traditional food and architecture, and, most importantly, their language.
This work started with the support of the Samvaad and Praxis Fellowships, when Taukeer and his team took a very ambitious project of documenting Van Gujjari folk tales, folk songs, riddles, and other traditional narratives - in the language of Van Gujjars itself. Of course the question arose as to who would read books in a language which is merely even considered a language. But that was not the point; the point was visibility, the point was a denial to extinction. And finally in May 2024, we launched the first ever publication in Van Gujjari language, 3 titles containing indigenous Gujjari lores, and 1 Gujjari to Hindi dictionary, thus preserving the language in history forever.
Cover pages of first ever books published in Van Gujjari language, written by Taukeer Alam
Even though we have been creating learning materials for children in Gujjari language since the beginning, our next step towards indigenous education and language conservation is to publish books for children in their language. We are currently on our way to develop a series of 5 learning books for children from Level 1 to 5, and one book specifically on nature education and citizen science, all in Van Gujjari language.
The Long Road Ahead — We are not Alone
Now as we look back, we see the long road we have walked, but we see a longer one ahead of us. The one that makes us realize that our battle is not exclusive. In a world moving towards a form of monoculture that sustains on over-consumption, our very own existence is an act of rebellion. And in this rebellion, we will need many allies-and we are grateful to have them-and we get to be allies for so many of other indigenous communities.
Today, Maee stands as an alternative to erasure—a space where education, conservation, and cultural preservation come together to empower the Van Gujjars. By bridging traditional knowledge with new opportunities, we strive for a future where the community can sustain itself with dignity, resilience, and pride in its identity.
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