“Living like animals”
Starting with social forestry in the 1970s, co-management in the 1990s and the constitutional recognition of forest rights in 2006, the general impression was that India’s forestry regime, which has remained a state prerogative since the colonial era, was gradually becoming subject to democratic decision-making processes. However, a parallel tightening of biodiversity protection laws has enabled the Forest Department to retain its privileges and moral authority over the forests in several Indian states, to the detriment of the local populations. This article questions subject-making and citizenship for a population of nomadic herders, the Van Gujjars of Uttar Pradesh and Uttarakhand, looking through the prism of their relationships with wild or domestic animals: tigers and leopards, swallows, macaques and buffaloes. Analyzing a range of material and immaterial relationships in which animal figures interfere with the political management of forests, the popular mobilization and the political demands of traditional forest dwellers, this article draws on multispecies ethnography to highlight mechanisms of inclusion and exclusion within forest areas and the impact they have on the lives of historically marginalized groups like the Van Gujjar nomadic herders.