THE Shri Ramdeo Pashu Mela lies at the intersection of the pastoral, peasant, performative and artisanal economies of the Thar desert. For one week in Nagaur in western Rajasthan, poor and not so poor peasants and seasonal nomads gather for an animal fair. The scale is phenomenal.

Last year there were 50,000 animals, including bulls, horses and camels. The Nagauri bull is a particularly handsome and hardy animal, for the plough-based agrarian economy. This year the fair is a shrunken version of the previous years. The peasant-pastoral economy has been battered by several seasons of famine. Both buyers and sellers are dispirited. This year the crop has been good, the winter rains, timely. But for the past three years the fair has suffered at the hands of the State. First came a State Government order banning transportation of bulls below the age of three. After the State was persuaded to lift the ban, the High Court slammed a stay order again banning the transportation of animals below the age of three outside the State.

Tragically this latest onslaught has been accomplished by sections of the ruling class in the name of ahimsa. Persons associated with the legal profession and affiliated to Jain organisations and the Sangh Parivar and its associates have been working behind the scenes to curb the traffic in animals. While they have been campaigning to rename the fair as himsa, the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) has also been viewing the transport of animals exclusively in terms of cow slaughter. Why, in their logic, is the sale of bulls three years old and above permissible, is something one may well ask. After three years these animals will no longer be fit to be butchered for beef. Most of those behind this move of the judiciary are linked to powerful mercantile interests and other urban structures of power. Out of touch with the Indian village life, they have nothing to lose from the erosion of the livelihoods of pastoral and peasant groups. What is being defended in the name of the ideal of ahimsa is violence against shepherds and subsistence agriculturalists, many of whom have only a single crop to fall back on and one that has been failing all too frequently.

India and Pakistan have already put a stop to the transactions of trade and travel across the border.

Nagaur is one of the cities of the desert that was a part of the ancient silk route. The railway stations at Merta, Parbatsar and Nagaur came into being to sustain these medieval markets. Caravans wove their way through the cities of Ajmer, Nagaur, Phalodi, Pokran and Jodhpur carrying goods that included silk and sandalwood, ivory and copper, spices and opium. They continued through the city of Jaisalmer, a kingdom that in the precolonial period had an income of some three and a half crores from the transit trade. Jaisalmer's prosperity was responsible for some of the most beautiful architecture in the world. Its characteristic yellow sandstone gave Jaisalmer fort the appellation, Fort of Gold or sonar kela, which is commemorated in Satyajit Ray's delightful detective film of the same name. At Jaisalmer, the trade that went to Pakistan and Afghanistan intersected with the east-west trade route between China and Central Asia. The transit trade made the Marwari merchants prosperous and also made for the sustainability of the arid hinterland as the benefits of trade trickled down to the artisan and the pastoral-trader.

The newly formed States of India and Pakistan have, since Independence, steadily forged a border that was initially drawn by the Radcliffe Boundary Commission. The Commission's Report, is itself an act of violence, as it sundered regions, villages, kin and families but also networks that had grown around trade and travel. It made independence a particularly savage and blood drenched "tryst with destiny" as India and Pakistan "awoke" to freedom at midnight. The declaration of the Report of the Boundary Commission launched a spiral of violence in north India shocking Sikhs, Muslims and Hindus into a brutality that has hardly ever been witnessed in the history of humankind. It is memorialised in the poet Faiz Ahmed Faiz's famous lines, "Ye dag dag ujala. Ye voh sahar to nahin, ki jiski arzu lekar chale the kahin."

Despite the new marking of territory and boundaries, the people of the post-colonial States of India and Pakistan were responsible for what has in effect been a popular subversion of the border. Consciously and unconsciously, the Indo-Pakistan international boundary was eroded and undermined. Groups continued their travel and trade relations, religious sects and ascetics continued their pilgrimages and families their kinship alliances. Even India's Border Security Force was involved in the crossborder smuggling, not to speak of the informal relations that existed between the Indian and Pakistan armies. Like the feuding groups of yore, which would fight during the day and smoke the hukka together at night, the armies of India and Pakistan fought many wars at the behest of their masters and mistresses, but the dialogue was never really suspended. It continued despite the crossborder firing, as alcohol and other transactions were made between army officials and jawans. There has been of late a new genre of films on war and terrorism. The film "Refugee" is an instance of the popular (re)construction of the border. It depicts the love of a couple who live on either side of the border and whose marriage is eventually possible only with the connivance of Indian and Pakistani officers. Regrettably in real life, these have been made increasingly difficult. The ancient roads have fallen into disuse, the train (and now bus) to Pakistan has been abandoned, the social transactions of love, marriage and kinship rendered virtually impossible, trans-subcontinental trade and travel have been subverted by politico-military interests. The name Pokharan today tragically symbolises the nuclearisation of the border rather than the centuries-old exchange.

Those on the move have a fascinating cultural identity. Unlike communities associated with agriculture and industry, the identities of pastoral groups have been far more elastic. Cultural contact and exchange fostered through travel and trade has rendered these cultures like open houses ventilated by numerous windows to the universe. The immense fluidity of the Rajput identity has been fostered through the participation in the military might of medieval India and contact with Islam. The Raikas and Raibaris of western Rajasthan, the Bhotias of Tibet, the Gujjars of the Kashmir Valley, the Bhils of Gujarat-Rajasthan-Madhya Pradesh, and the Jats and Meos of Sind-Punjab-Haryana-Uttar Pradesh-Rajasthan represent communities with highly creative cultures, that are usually lumped under the term "syncretic". The dual processes of State and caste formation have, however, eroded their lifestyles characterised by considerable freedom and mobility ("chut" or freedom as the Bhils evocatively called it). They have been "settled," as colonial officialese put it, by a set of State policies that might be better described as disciplined and tamed. Nonetheless, the remarkable fluidity of these identities continues despite their assimilation to modernity and more settled lifestyles and modes of production.

The question with respect to pastoral people is, however, one of survival and not of identity. The Nagaur fair represents one of the last major vestiges of pastoralism in the Thar Desert and suggests the attempt to adapt to the peasant and industrial economies. How? The answer derives from the question, "Who comes here and why?" The massive mela ground is divided into three areas demarcated for bulls, horses and camels and their respective sellers. Among other States, there are buyers from Punjab whose agriculture is mechanised and tractor-based. Then why bullocks? Punjabi peasants use bullocks for a new sport: racing. It is a mark of prestige for a Punjabi peasant household to possess a winning bullock. The post-harvest season is one filled with fun-packed races. In eastern Uttar Pradesh and parts of Madhya Pradesh, however, the oxen-driven plough still prevails. And then there are the Rajasthani traders who buy animals for sport and transport and also to re-sell them at other fairs. These transactions can, in a good year, total a turnover of Rs.500 crores.

There are, in addition, important fair adjuncts involving the rural artisan and performer. As I walked through the fair, rows of small open shops displayed the craft of rural artisans. Farmers are seated behind piles of gleaming red chillies. Blacksmiths display a range of pots and pans and decorative items such as swords and shields. An artisan interrupts his stitching of the jutis or hardy village shoes, to sell a pair to a villager. A carpenter markets wooden farm implements. One can buy camel seats, saddles, bells and other items here to decorate one's animals; also hammocks and cloth and jute for a rural household. I am intrigued by a display of what seems like piles of shredded cloth and thread. This waste from factories is strung into rope that is then used to weave matting for cots. I go for a set of brass bells that tinkle, bringing home the sound of cows returning home at sundown. I am intrigued by the carving of a name, "Munne Khan Nava Bakas" on one side of the bell and "Choudhary," signifying a Jat peasant, on the other. Munne Khan, it turns out, is a well-known manufacturer of bells for bulls and "Choudhary" presumably is the caste of Jat peasants dominant in western Rajasthan.

This is clearly a male dominated world, the men being responsible for market transactions in the rural Indian sexual division of labour. The camp has a bare minimum of amenities. Most persons sleep in the open. As the sun sets, small cooking fires are lit and the men begin to roast their millet rotis and cook their vegetables. The loudspeaker announces the evening entertainment, a khel or play from Bhilwara. Only men can attend. Why? The abuses are so strong, this is no entertainment for women! In the days to come, more performers will come. Some of the best Khyal teams come here to perform a theatrical genre. This is no government-sponsored attempt at the promotion of art/culture/tourism, but a self-sustaining performing arts tradition. The Khyal genre of Indian classical music originates from the Khyal theatrical tradition. We have yet to investigate the long association between "folk" and "classical" in a comprehensive manner. With all this, the mood at the Nagaur Fair ought to be exuberant; iIt is despondent instead. "I have been coming here since as long as I remember. My bap-dada (ancestors) came here. This fair is being held for generations. Two years ago after we had sold the animals, the government prevented them from being loaded onto trains. We had to leave them stranded. An order had been passed stopping the buying/selling of bulls below the age of three." The district administration complains that it had on hand a major crisis, having suddenly to find fodder and water for thousands of bulls, horses and camels. Even as it wants to support this phenomenal example of rural energy and entrepreneurship, the lack of clarity in the State's stand and the more recent initiative of the judiciary, one is short-sighted. The move augurs disaster for pastoralism in the sub-continent, it is a mode of violence against the lives and livelihoods of several thousand rural households. A violence accomplished in the name of non-violence!

The writer is a Fello, Institute of Development studies, Jaipur.