Varanasi, Uttar Pradesh: “Sarkar humko basa de kahin, humko isi desh me basna hai (Let the government settle us somewhere, we want to settle in this country).”
By desh or country, V* and her husband means a permanent location that also offers them livelihood. Moving from place to place in eastern Uttar Pradesh (UP) , their dearest wish, when I met them in 2022, was to settle in Varanasi.
Falling through the loopholes or blank spots in India’s social and legal system, and unaware of their citizenship rights, local officials denied them a basic element of dignity: shelter.
Living on the pavements of Varanasi for almost three decades, V, a slim, middle-aged woman in her 40s, and her family belong to the Bansphor community, a sub-group of UP’s Dharkar scheduled caste, occupying the lowest rung of the Hindu caste system.
Classified as a “nomadic and denotified tribe” (NT-DNT), the Bansphor are a community of wandering bamboo weavers, their name derived from the bamboo that sustains them (bans is bamboo and phorna is to break).
Because of their nomadic way of life, and as a repercussion of a colonial legacy that criminalised such communities in 1871 under the Criminal Tribes Act, millions like V and their families are still denied the right to shelter, often reiterated by the courts. Such communities are called “denotified tribes”, which means they were “notified” in colonial government records as being “born criminals”.
The Criminal Tribes Act was repealed in 1952, but it was replaced in many states by a Habitual Offenders Act (here, here, here and here). The stigma of being “habitual offenders” has continued since, impeding their integration, so to say, with India’s social, economic and political mainstream.
Taking into its sweep, nomadic tribes and semi-nomadic tribes as well some settled Adivasi, Dalit and minority communities, the term ‘habitual offenders’, is sustained by attitudes, law and informal practices, as Article 14 reported in May 2020.
Several of these communities are not included in the list of scheduled castes or scheduled tribes, which means they cannot access special legal protections and government special programmes.
NT-DNTs continue to represent the most marginalised of India’s urban underclass. Although some of those I met had identification under India’s national database Aadhar and were registered as voters in their home villages, none had access to subsidised food, basic banking, water and housing programmes.
In February 2024, joint secretary of the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) Devendra Kumar Nim was quoted as saying at a consultation that the NT-DNTs remained India’s “most neglected, marginalised and economically and socially deprived communities”.
Nim said one of the most pressing issues for denotified communities was the lack of citizenship documents, which made their identity “invisible” and hindered their access to government benefits, constitutional and citizenship rights.
According to the Renke Commission report of 2008, submitted to the ministry of social justice and empowerment, nomadic communities have historically never been regarded as having land rights due to their lifestyle.
As a consequence, such communities inhabit peripheral spaces, both in villages and cities. Most live in contested spaces, such as government land, along roadways, railways, rivers and streams, near garbage dumps and slums.
Even Slums Are Unaffordable
Many NT-DNT groups cannot afford to live even in slums and end up living in makeshift accommodation on the roadside.
They face multiple evictions during their lifetime, with little or no compensation at all. Their abject housing and living conditions have been made clear by successive reports, such as this 2019 study from the Housing and Land Rights Network, a nonprofit, the Gadia Lohar, a community of iron tool and utensil-makers in Delhi, and this study from 2011 by the Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai, on the Pardhi Denotified tribe.
V and her family of six, husband M* and their four children, lived in a bamboo-and-thatch on a pavement on the outskirts of Varanasi, a city of 1.7 million. Other huts were simply bamboo and tarpaulin, to protect them from the rains.
For this family of Bansphors, there was no option but to defecate in the field nearby. Drinking water came from government hand-pumps. They had no access to the government’s much publicised programmes to rid India of open defecation and bring water to every home.
Bansphors tend to select a spot where they can pitch tents and weave bamboo in front of their ‘home’, creating beautiful baskets and other household items. They exhibited their products before their homes, and that tended to attract customers, said V.
As we spoke, all six of them, including the four children, wove baskets from bamboo fibre. They earned Rs 300 in the wedding and festive seasons from selling up to four to five baskets a day, just enough to take care of food and clothing for the entire family.
According to the 2011 census, the Dharkar population in India was 113,515, with 100,238 living in rural areas and 13,277 in urban areas. The population of Bansphor was 59,804, with 44,520 in rural areas and 15,284 in urban areas.
Invisible In Urban India
Homeless communities are the most visible populations in Indian cities; working, sleeping and living on pavements, but invisible to the mainstream, particularly at a time when inequality in India is on the rise.
During the fieldwork for my M Phil, researching urban public spaces in Varanasi, I met members of the Thakar nomadic tribe from Maharashtra, the Chamarmangta community from the neighbouring districts of Varanasi and the Kanjar denotified tribe from Madhya Pradesh.
The Rajnarayan Smarak Park, also called Beniya Bagh, the biggest open ground in the heart of Varanasi, was home to these three NT-DNT communities from July to September 2017.
The Thakar community sold rosary beads and colourful stones near the temples and ghats of the holy town. The Kanjar community sold balloons and plastic toys around the temples, market and traffic signals. Men from the Chamarmangta community wandered around the ghats and market areas, offering to clean the ears of locals and tourists.
Around 2017-2018, Beniya Bagh was taken over by Varanasi Smart City Limited, under the “smart city mission” to “beautify” the city, as the government put it. Between 2020 and 2022, the development of the area resulted in the eviction of large groups of families.
Ignored by the planning authorities, and too poor to afford rental housing even in slums, they had no choice but to live on city streets. Considered outsiders and called ghumantu (nomadic or wanderer) the nomadic and denotified tribes living in Beniya Bagh were made invisible—yet again.
Deepa Pawar, a Gadiya Lohar and an activist working with nomadic and denotified communities, explained in a 2021 article in the Economic and Political Weekly how “dominant groups” were mainly considered in urban planning, ignoring and excluding the “city builders”.
Uttar Pradesh has the highest houseless population of 329,125, with 180,929 in urban and 148,196 in rural areas.
The Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana-Urban, a flagship programme of the government of India that aimed to provide housing for everyone in urban areas by 2022. Landless and houseless among NT-DNTs are eligible for the scheme under the “affordable housing in partnership” vertical.
However, a March 2023 report called the Evaluation of Implementation of Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana(Urban) or PMAY(U) cited reasons why there was little interest among such communities to sign up for government housing, one being the “inability of certain sections of people like weavers, etc., to keep their work sheds and non-acceptance of multi-storey buildings”.
“Many communities are not in favour of housing under the PMAY(U) schemes, since such housing doesn’t support their livelihoods,” said Aravind Unni, a Delhi-based urban activist. “This could be a strong reason for them to reject housing units in multi-storey buildings.”
Homeless & Landless Nomads
In some 3,700 grievance petitions and memoranda from organisations and individuals received by the Idate Commission Report (2017), the demand for housing and land for farming was second to the demand for sanitation and infrastructure, such as roads and drainage, toilets, community centres and cremation grounds.
Homelessness signifies an everyday struggle for dignity, citizenship and identity. People with mental illness, the elderly, substance abusers addicts, the disabled and NT-DNTs form the majority in homeless populations in Indian cities. Among the homeless, families or groups of families living together have a higher chance of belonging to a NT-DNT community.
The life and livelihood of nomadic and denotified tribes have been impacted by mechanisation, urbanisation, commercialization, large-scale infrastructural development, growth in communication and transportation, shift from an agrarian economy to an industrial one, and enhanced social and spatial mobility that occurred in the 1980s and 1990s in India.
The unequal and exclusionary nature of urban development projects has led to evictions and demolitions, worsening the condition of marginalised populations.
Homeless Are The Most Marginalised
The question of land and housing in India revolve around historicity, hierarchy and identity.
In cities, the homeless and slum dwellers primarily belong to marginalised groups, such as NT-DNTs and other Dalits. Homeless people are part of the casual labour fabric in India’s informal economy, contributing cheap labour to the city.
Caste is not just a rural phenomenon—as much as it decides the ownership of agricultural land in villages, domicile ownership in cities is often still decided by the community. The urban phenomenon of caste is exemplified in the case of the homeless population.
In 2021, on my visits to the Dharkar and Bansphor community deras (settlements) at five locations in Varanasi, I met individuals who worked at their traditional craft and did odd jobs on daily wages to get by.
Their children do not attend school and end up learning the trade from their parents, with bamboo and tools the trade their toys.
“I was born in Sultanpur district and stayed there for 15 years, living on the road,” said R*, a father of three. “I came to Varanasi 20 years ago. Our whole life will be spent living on the road. But what about the future of my children?”
As I said, due to their nomadic and migrant lives, the Dharkar community lacks citizenship documents essential to access government schemes.
A recurrent complaint I encountered: “The government provides benefits only to those who already have resources, no one ever asks about our needs.”
While Dharkars are eligible for all government schemes meant for scheduled castes, most are uneducated and unaware of their social and legal rights.
On my visits, I met over 100 members from the Dharkar community, of whom older adults had voter identification cards registered at their native villages in Azamgarh and Mau. Many said they had been promised Aadhaar and ration cards in their native villages but had not received these documents.
A Circle Of Denial
The Deendayal Antyodaya Yojana National Urban Livelihood Mission, the union government programme for the urban homeless, makes no specific mention about nomadic and denotified tribes, even though housing and land are major issues for them, according to the Idate and Renke commission reports.
For communities of basket weavers, manufacturers and sellers of iron tools, homes are also workplaces. Settling the communities in spaces that meet their livelihood demands could be a first step towards the welfare of NT-DNT communities.
Land and housing are interlinked with other rights, essential for a dignified life. According to a 2019 State of Aadhaar Survey survey by Dalberg, a research agency, 30% of India’s homeless population does not have an Aadhaar number, which excludes them from government or government-aided housing.
To acquire identity documents such as Aadhaar, an address is needed, and to access government housing programmes, an Aadhaar is needed.
While section 5 of The Aadhaar Act (Targeted Delivery of Financial and Other Subsidies, Benefits and Services) Act, 2016, says members of a nomadic homeless population can acquire an Aadhaar number through special provisions, the lack of literacy and awareness among the Bansphor community in Varanasi hinders access.
The February NHRC consultation previously quoted also stressed the importance of implementing the recommendations of the Idate Commission and repeal habitual offenders laws.
NHRC member Dnyaneshwar M Mulay was quoted as saying that “proper documentation” of their identities needed to be “speeded up”, so that the government could provide for the basic needs of NT-DNTs and they could benefit from government welfare schemes.
*Denotes protected identities
(Aditi Mishra is a doctoral candidate in the School of Social Work, Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai.)
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