When trade fades, so does the Karnali’s economy and social fabric

From l to r: Humla herdsmen cross the border bridge into Tibet with Nepali timber to barter for food and alcohol, mountain goats with salt on their backs arrive in Mugu. The traditional trade routes from Tibet and India into Nepal in the early 1950s.Canny Karnali traders therefore had extra rice from Achham and salt from Tibet. It seemed as dependable as the sunrise in the east—the land of salt was the north, Tibet, and the land of provisions was the Achham plains. It seemed as if the salt traders would tread this loop forever. The promises all parties involved made, the lengths they went to ensure trust and reliability created an aura around Tibetan salt that is evident even today. The Nyinbus of Humla still keep a wooden box full of old Tibetan salt in the most sacred room of their house dedicated to the family god. Humli Khampa people, who are now settled in Bajura are still reluctant to use the iodised salt distributed in Martadi. They continue to use salt from the Tibetan plateau. As a matter of course, the farmers from the south who barter their red rice and barley and salt traders in Tibet establish ritual friendships with people they deal with, sealed with a vow to Mt Kailash and the holy Manasarovar Lake. This pact on mutual objects of faith ensured there was no treachery or distrust. The parties make their promise before a heaped plate of rice symbolising Mt Kailash and water in a kalash (a ritual vessel) standing in for Lake Manasarovar. Then dai chamal achheta (yoghurt mixed with rice) is shared by the new ritual partners. Once such a friendship is established, it is believed both their bodies merge into one and the relation is as permanent that of Shiva and Parvati, lasting as long as there is snow on Kailash and water in Manasarovar. An economic transaction changed into a social one, adding new meaning to an exchange between peoples of two different religions and cultures. This economics of travel that arose from basic need put down roots like a wayward tree, penetrating every aspect of the lives of trading communities. Many of the resultant practices and phenomena took on a patina of natural, age-old phenomena and it was not until the caravans started slowly coming to a stop in the mid-1970s that they were revealed to be the centre of a vital web. What forced the change? Geo-political realities and the inexorable march of “development”. The Chinese arrived in the remotest parts of Tibet, India fought a war with China, Nepalis got more mobile—the country forged more roads and entered the jet, or at least chopper, age. Malaria was eradicated in the tarai, better health care and nutrition meant Nepal’s midhill population increased, and changing patterns of population and consumption resulted in deforestation and eventually community forestry in the middle hills. In the 1950s, with the Chinese presence in Tibet, the Bhotia, the Drogpa (Tibetan nomads) and the Taklakoti of Tibet, who barely knew what paddy and wheat looked like, started consuming rice and flour produced in China brought to them via the newly constructed highways on the high plateau. And so the land of salt also became a food supplier. The 1962 Sino-Indian war destroyed the traditional caravan trade between areas in western Nepal and bordering areas of Himachal Pradesh and Kumaon Garhwal in India. In Nepal, meanwhile, new roads and a malaria-free tarai ensured that iodised Indian salt started making inroads into the condiment market. As the Indian salt trade started from the small haat bazaars (multipurpose markets) in the tarai after the eradication of malaria in the 1930s, the trans-Himalayan caravans moved their base to the plains. The Thakalis settled in Butwal, the Khampas of Mugu in Surkhet and the Sauka of Darchula, who started running yak caravans in Mahendranagar. The Salt Trading Corporation started flying out iodised salt to the furthest reaches of the kingdom in an effort to combat goitre and cretinism. Wherever an airstrip was built, there was now a monetary alternative to the barter economy. The growing middle hill population started stripping forest cover and encroaching on public forest—making the denudation alarming enough for a community forestry programme to be implemented since the 1980s. This meant nomadic shepherds lost their customary rights to grazing grounds. After 1990, there was nothing to replace the traditional guarantee that caravans could use commons to camp or let their animals graze. Among the first casualties of this rapid change were the haat bazaars along the Nepal-Tibet border. They used to be held every alternate year on the Tibetan and Nepali sides. But after the 1950 Nepal-Tibet treaty, this became history. Haat bazaars in the tarai, on the other hand, were flourishing with Indian goods and iodised salt. Migrant western hill people could fill many of their needs more easily at the bazaars in the south than in the north. Initially, the caravans with Indian salt meant alternative business and increased employment. Caravan runners started transporting Indian salt from the tarai up to the middle hills. More haat bazaars were started. The caravans of Karnali, especially those from Humla, played an important role in the establishment of hill towns like Silgadhi in Doti, Sanphe Bagar, Bayal Pata, Kuchchi Binayak in Achham, and Martadi and Kolti in Bajura. The caravans didn’t just bring salt, but virtually every necessity. The Dadeldhura-Doti highway in the 1980s virtually wiped out the caravans. And when the Kohalpur-Banbasa highway was built, even the tarai haat bazaars dried up. And this was how salt started coming from the south and food from the north—once as unimaginable as a western sunrise. After the trade stopped, people had to negotiate all over again how they deal with land, livestock, food and each other. The impact has been devastating. Border villages like Chala, Chyaduk, Dojam and Nepka of Humla district and Mugal of Mugu district are among the worst-affected. Tibetan was the language of commerce, so they acted as interpreters for the Thakuri landlords, given responsibility of the weighing procedures by the Rana rulers. They were paid in flour and as their livelihood depended on border transactions, they did not own much land or have any established agricultural base. When the salt trade ran dry, they had nothing to fall back on. The caravan highway extended from Tibet to the tarai along the banks of the Karnali, the Seti and the Mahakali rivers. The open pastures were used by the caravans, and the sheep droppings were rich fertiliser. In Humla there was a system of collecting a royalty in exchange for allowing caravans the use of pastures. Now the market has dried up and the Humlalis have registered the pastures as private farms. With the yaks and sheep gone, they will have to find new ways to fertilise the soil. The change in the forestry act and lack of proper governance in recent years has led to a mass selling of sheep. Earlier honoured as a god of wealth, similar to the cow in Hinduism, sheep now fulfil the growing demand for meat, becoming the favourite snack in western Nepal’s growing urban areas. The urgency for border posts is obvious if you live in Humla. The biggest western Tibetan border town of Taklakot, adjoins Humla. When the caravans were still making their trips, Humlis were self-sufficient as far as food went, and the caravan used to supplement the scarce food supply in Taklakot. The Taklakot elite build up ritual friendships with their counterparts in Humla. When winter was around the corner, Taklakotis entered Nepal as far as Yalbang Chaur in Muchu Village District Committee to stock up on tito phapar (bitter buckwheat) flour, and bhuse jau (barley with a thick bark), which grows in Rodikot in Humla. Taklakot is now connected by road to other centres of supply, and the market, which also catered to Humla, does not function anymore. Humlis are now completely dependent on the Taklakot market for food supply and commodities. Because there is no checkpoint or customs post at the border in Hilsa, Humlis must now travel at their own peril and dogged by considerable harassment to inner Taklakot to buy their basic needs. The price? Deforestation and alcoholism. In Taklakot, Humlis pay for food with Nepali timber sold for as little as 7 Yuan (Rs 56) per kg. Worse, Humlis are sometimes forced to barter the wood for thope, the local alcohol. (See ‘Nepali timber to Tibet’, Nepali Times #17) The tradition of polyandry is also collapsing. The well-to-do Nyinba community, among others, had evolved a unique system of brothers dividing the caravan work equally amongst themselves and marrying a single wife. Since all the brothers’ earnings from different sources went to the wife and relations between all the husbands and the wife were equal, the families prospered. “A wife from a good family, water from a good spring”, goes a Nyinba saying. But now, as the sheep stocks are sold for meat, there are few or no pastures, the single wife will be married to many unemployed brothers. Many retired herders are now forced to take on a completely alien tradition: a single household with a sort of large joint family. In their old age some are settling down with individual wives and earning their livelihood running teashops and lodges in Simikot. Nyinba women who used to proudly wear along (traditional golden earrings), now line up in front of the Chief District Officer’s office with a coupon that entitles them to 5 kg of rice. And these are people who were earlier among the biggest salt traders of the upper Karnali. There is corruption and politics involved in the food coupons, tainting these straight-forward, honest and hard-working folk. One-third of the Himalayan region including Karnali once depended wholly on the caravan economy. Now, there is nothing to replace it. The Karnali is not the only region to be affected by these changes, but it is most desperate here. The people of the Karnali have been proud and self-sufficient for centuries. They don’t want handouts, they want a life of self-sufficiency and dignity. But the march of time, the encroachment of the outside world, and an uncaring faraway capital has forced them to speak out. And now that they are speaking out, the government considers them a nuisance. They are seeking their rights not as bohemian caravan runners romanticised in Oscar-nominated films, but as alert citizens of Nepal. All they are want is their dignity back.