ST status: 'Dhangars need to be considered compassionately'

PANAJI: Padma Shri awardee Ganesh N Devy, who has worked for decades on language conservation and development of indigenous communities, has said that the case of Goa's dhangars, to be recognised as scheduled tribes (ST), needs to be considered compassionately and they deserve to be recognised as people worthy of benefits. Goa's dhangars have been struggling for several years now to attain ST status. Their culture and origins also need deep study, Devy said.
Devy, known for the People's Linguistic Survey of India, said that the language of pastoral nomads had great memory stretching back to times even before the vedic civilisation emerged.
"The Dhangars' request for tribal status needs to be considered compassionately. The British had brought nomadic pastoral communities under an act, wherein they were seen as trespassers and therefore, as criminals who had to be detained. Later, the governments in Goa, Maharashtra and Karnataka decided to demarcate some land as grazing grounds. But these lands were not sufficient and the nomadic pastoral community had to borrow money and thus became indebted," he said.
No studies have been done on them and they deserve to be studied and recognised as people worthy of state benefits, Devy added.
He said the first wave of homosapien migration to India arrived 55,000 years ago, followed by a second wave 45,000 years ago from Egypt and Syria.
"At first they took to life as hunters and gatherers and later developed skills and became pastorialists, keeping animals, breeding them and thereby getting food from them. These pastorialists along the sea coast of India are a very peculiar phenomenon. Their tradition - 7,000 years before our times - began of migrating inland from the coast and they used to return to the coast post the monsoon," Devy said.
He said that while over the years some took to agriculture, others did not and continued their life as nomadic ls.
"Later, these communities were divided into clans based on various factors like the number of animals they possessed. The clans acquired names for their communities given by others. Dhangars are historically products of the same cosmology. These communities continued their practices all through the feudal kingdoms till colonialism arrived," explained the scholar.
Eventually, during colonial times, said Devy, the dispute between Portuguese and British emerged on the right of passage through the forests at the borders of their territories. With this restricting the movement of the pastoral communities, their clans became more separated than before in their development.
Devy will be speaking on October 21, at 5.30pm, at an event of the directorate of art and culture and Centre for Study of Mythology and Culture at Sanskruti Bhavan, Panaji.