Vol. 5 · No. 1 · 2001 · pp. 168-172

Changing Values among Mon Pa Pastoralists and their Ecological Implications for Rangelands in the Eastern Himalayas

Nehal A. Farooquee and K. S. Rao

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This brief paper represents some preliminary results of a survey conducted among the transhumant Mon Pa pastoralists of the alpine terrain of Tawang, in Arunachal Pradesh in the eastern Indian Himalayas. The term Mon Pa is an exonym and means 'the others' in Tibeto-Burmese. These primarily yak herders who are indigenous to the area also own some cattle, mules, horses and sheep, and practice limited horticulture in their village lands, around 3000m. While Mon Pa men take their herds over long distances in search of pasture, women, children and the elderly remain throughout the year in these villages, tending some of the livestock and collecting firewood. Till quite recently, Mon Pa pastoralists, who are Mahayana Buddhists (Sarkar 1980) were polyandrous, and since herds are owned jointly by brothers, one herder can be replaced after a while by his brother. Thus, yak herds live in the forests and alpine meadows (Farooquee 1997) continuously, with the herders in charge rotating. With rapidly shrinking pastures and the breaking down of exchange relationships with the Mon Pa farmers of the Tawang region, who bartered grain for yak cheese, butter, and meat, (Nanda 1981, Fürer-Haimendorf 1982, Jha 1988, Duarah 1992, Farooquee 1997) the entire community is struggling against the severe impact of economic change