Fed Before the Household: Care, Belonging and Human–Animal Relations among Gujjars of the Pir Panjal Himalaya

The Science of Caring: More Than Just Feeding

Imagine a world where the line between "family" and "farm" isn't drawn by biology, but by the daily grind of living together. This paper sits at the intersection of anthropology (the study of human cultures) and multispecies ethnography (a way of studying how humans and animals build lives together). Instead of asking, "Do animals have feelings?" or "Are they just property?", this research asks a simpler, deeper question: "What does it actually look like when a family treats an animal as one of their own?"

To understand this, we need to know a few things. First, pastoralism is just a fancy word for a lifestyle built around herding animals, moving them to find food and water. Second, care in science isn't just a warm fuzzy feeling; it's the actual work you do—feeding, healing, carrying, and mourning. Finally, kinship is usually about blood, but scientists have found that families can be "made" through shared life experiences, not just DNA. Why does this matter? Because how we treat the animals we live with changes how we see ourselves, and it might explain why some farming communities fight so hard to keep their traditions alive, even when it seems "unprofitable" to outsiders.

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The Gujjar Family Album: Where the Buffalo is the Grandmother

Meet the Gujjars, a community of Muslim herders living in the rugged Pir Panjal mountains of the Himalayas. For fourteen months, a researcher named Mohd Junaid Jazib lived with 62 of them, listening to their stories and watching their daily lives. What he found was a world where the family album isn't just photos of humans; it includes buffalo, goats, dogs, and horses, all with their own names, histories, and places at the dinner table.

The most striking thing? The Gujjars don't just "love" their animals; they feed them first.

Imagine a winter where food is scarce. In a normal house, the humans might eat a little less to save the pet. But for these Gujjars, the rule is strict: the buffalo eats before the family does. If the fodder is short, the humans wait. One herder put it simply: "When the buffalo has not eaten, how can we eat?" This isn't a metaphor; it's a daily reality where the animal's hunger takes precedence over the human's.

But it goes deeper than just the stomach. The Gujjars treat their animals like people with full life stories.

• They have names: A buffalo isn't just "the cow"; she is "Rani" (Queen) or "Kali" (Black).
• They have genealogies: The herders know the great-grandmothers of their animals. They can trace a goat's family tree back three or four generations, knowing exactly which mother bore which offspring. They use these family lines to decide which animals to breed, just like a human family might look at a family tree before planning a wedding.
• They have biographies: The family remembers that a specific horse crossed a stormy pass without dropping its load, or that a dog once chased a leopard away from the flock. These aren't just "good jobs"; they are shared adventures that bind the animal to the family.

Two Ways to Join the Family

Here is the twist: You don't have to be born into the herd to be a family member. The paper suggests there are two different paths to becoming a "beloved" animal, and they don't always overlap.

1. The "Born Here" Path (The Lineage): If an animal is born in the herd, it gets a family line. The herders know its mother, its grandmother, and its great-grandmother. This animal is part of the family history.
2. The "Work Together" Path (The Life Story): If an animal is bought or given as a gift (like a working dog or a horse), it has no family line in the herd. But, it gets a life story. Because it works alongside the humans, faces danger with them, and shares their journey, it earns a spot in the family.

The researcher found that a dog in a flock-keeping family is treated with the same deep respect as a goat born in the herd, even though the dog has no ancestors in the group. They are both "family," but for different reasons. One is family because of bloodlines; the other is family because of shared work.

The Cost of Love (It's Not Free)

The paper makes it very clear: this kind of belonging is expensive. It's not just about saying "I love you." It costs money, time, and energy.

• The Price of Food: When food is short, the humans eat less so the animals can eat more.
• The Price of Labor: If an animal gets sick or breaks a leg, the family carries it. They don't leave it behind on the mountain. They nurse it for weeks, hand-feeding it and keeping it warm, even if the animal can never produce milk or wool again.
• The Price of Grief: When a beloved animal dies, the family doesn't just sell the body. They bury it under a tree. They stop cooking that evening (a sign of mourning usually reserved for humans). The children cry for days. The family remembers the animal for years, using its birth or death to date their own history ("That was the year Kali had her calf").

What It's NOT (And What the Paper Rules Out)

It's important to clear up what this study says is not happening.

• It's not just "Economics": You might think, "They love the animals because the animals make money." But the paper shows this isn't true. In some families, the most cherished animal is a dog that sells nothing. In others, the most valuable cash animal (a goat) is treated like a number, while the buffalo (which might be less profitable in that specific context) is treated like a daughter. The love follows the work, not the price tag.
• It's not just "Magic" or "Religion": While the Gujjars are Muslim and have religious ideas about caring for animals, the paper suggests the religion explains the rules, but the daily work creates the bond. Even people who don't use religious words still carry the sick animals and feed them first.
• It's not "Sentiment" alone: The researcher argues that "love" is too soft a word. It's about obligation. It's a duty. You don't feed the buffalo first because you feel a warm tummy feeling; you do it because that's what a family does.

The "Graded" Family

Not every animal gets the VIP treatment. The family is "graded."

• The Core Members: The main milk-producing buffalo or the flock-herding dog get the full package: names, genealogies, first bite of food, and burial.
• The Peripheral Members: Animals raised just to be sold (like young goats in a buffalo family) are treated well, but they don't get the deep family history or the "feed first" rule. They are "livestock," not "family."

The paper suggests that this system is fragile. If the government forces herders to stop moving (sedentarization) or builds roads that block their migration, the "work" that creates these bonds disappears. If you can't walk the mountain with your dog, or if you can't nurse a sick animal because you're stuck in a city, the relationship changes. The paper suggests that without the hard work of herding together, the deep family bond might fade, turning the animals back into mere "assets."

The Bottom Line

In the end, this paper tells us that for the Gujjars, a family isn't just a group of humans related by blood. It's a group of humans and animals who have lived a life together. Whether an animal is a "daughter" because she was born there, or a "brother" because he saved the flock from a leopard, the result is the same: they are fed first, carried when they are weak, and mourned when they die. The Gujjars show us that family is something you build through shared struggle, not just something you are born into.