Over a thousand snake charmers formed a human chain in Ahmedabad on Monday to protest against the lynching of a woman from their community and demanded that they be given licence by the state government to catch snakes.
The snake charmers, who gathered under the banner of Vicharta Samuday Samarthan Manch, will submit a memorandum to the state government on Tuesday.
The 40-year-old woman was lynched in Vadaj area of the city last week by a frenzy mob that mistook a group of four women, who were begging on the street, as child lifters. The three others were badly injured. Several people were arrested in the case in the following days.
Mittal Patel of VSSM, working for the nomadic community, said that ever since a few videos of child lifters started doing rounds and incidents of attacking the snake charmers have been reported in the last one month, the latter have stopped venturing out from home.
According to her, there are about 2.5 lakh snake charmers in Gujarat.
Ever since snake shows were banned under the Wildlife Protection Act, the snake charmers have been finding it difficult to earn a livelihood, said Patel.
Gorakhnath Vadi, a snake charmer from Surendranagar district, said that the community stopped catching snakes when the forest department officials started harassing them. Vadi demanded that they be given licence to catch the snakes so that they could earn a livelihood out of it.
People from civil rights organisations also joined the snake charmers to form the human chain.
Patel pointed out that it was only a couple of years ago that the community became aware of the ban on catching snakes.
She said that these snake charmers should get the benefit on the lines of Eurla Cooperative Society in Tamil Nadu. In Tamil Nadu, the snake charmers get between Rs 5,000 and Rs 7,000 for catching a snake. The venom collected is sold to the venom bank at the rate of about Rs 70,000 per 10 gram.
According to Patel, when thousands of people die every year with snake bite, as anti venom (an antidote) is not available on time, these snake charmers should be given licence to catch snakes.
She said when Narendra Modi was the chief minister of Gujarat, sometime in 2013 he had initiated a feasibility study for giving licences to snake charmers. However, nothing happened.
Vadi said that the community has always remained close to children as children would come and see their snake shows and in turn give them grocery. “Do we have less children that we will lift someone else's children? We are people who catch snakes, not children,” he said.
Showing tricks and playing with a scorpion, Mirkhan Nath Jadugar asked what they should be doing now. “They have stopped us from catching snakes and even doing the snake shows,” he said. Jadugar is attached to an organisation working on busting myths in the society.