In the contemporary Thar region, a number of mobile groups continue to follow very old routines of migration, despite drastic social and political transformation, particularly over the past century. Even as the Indian states of Rajasthan and Gujarat rapidly urbanize, it is still common to come across large herds of sheep or camels using the roads meant for modern transport, or to find the carts of Gadiya Luhars parked in the heart of the city. These communities form a part of the long history of this region and represent its lived past. They also represent the struggle and the dynamism for survival in a system that acknowledges their existence with increasing unease.

The previous chapter explored the rise of Rajputs as territorial rulers and the resulting political marginalization of itinerant groups as itinerancy posited a challenge to the emerging territorial political culture. However, whileitinerancy was marginalized in the political structures, itinerants of several kinds continued to travel on, and exercise control over networks of travel and circulation on the frontiers of the Thar. They also continued to challenge social boundaries created by the emerging genealogical orthodoxy and thus in a sense represented the social frontiers of the Thar. A perusal of complex mythologies and histories of these groups questions the fixity of caste identities. In fact, the oppositions between ‘mythologies’ and ‘histories’ are pointers towards the fluidity and ambivalence of caste and occupational identities, and the processes through which they were essentialised.

In the Thar, the existence of a vast population of peripatetics throughout its human history and the political compulsions of settlement, signify a struggle that cannot merely be understood by placing settlement and mobility in bipolar opposition. Mobility formed the core livelihood practice of the region, as its fragile ecology demanded a constant circulation of people and resources. Pastoralists, traders, carriers, peddlers, travelling artisans, bards and genealogists, ascetics and also some scattered hunting and gathering groups were occupationally mobile groups in the Thar Desert.