Mobility, as seen in the previous chapters, was an essential aspect of the social, cultural and economic structures in the Thar Desert. Mobile communities in the Thar had not always been placed in opposition to sedentary ones and interchangeability between mobile and sedentary ways of life had been a common phenomenon in the society. In fact, the opportune placing of each segment in the society was aimed towards optimum use of scant natural resources that were precariously balanced. Therefore, mobility in the context of the Thar refers to the ways in which people, cattle, merchandise, services and ideas have circulated over the region and not merely long range movements undertaken by the pastoralists or merchants.

However, by the late nineteenth century, as British officials began exercising greater influence in Rajput states, mobility and settlement were increasingly posited as two contrasting ideas in the administrative ideology of the states. As the chapter on Rajput polity discusses, Rajput states of the Thar region had been assimilated in the Mughal imperial structure by late sixteenth century and had increasingly replicated Mughal administrative structures and practices, with emphasis on land as the basis of rule. The agro-centrality of these norms was also useful for the Rajputs as they progressively emphasized on sedentary agrarian administrative structures. Nevertheless, given the predominantly arid and mobile character of the Thar, even in the nineteenth century, a number of mobile groups regularly circulated across the Thar for socio-economic reasons. In the Mughal period, Rajput states like Jodhpur, Bikaner and Jaisalmer had attempted to regulate mobility by trying to monitor routes on which warriors and traders travelled. But there still remained large spaces, which remained outside the direct control of the rulers of these states, and thus in which the movements remained largely unchecked. However, as the present chapter discusses, the late nineteenth century in the Thar witnessed the extension of control over movements of a wider range of travellers including pastoralists and bards, as well as ‘criminalisation’ of certain kinds of mobilities in this region.