The ethnic food system of Jaad Bhotiya tribal community in the Gangotri landscape of western Himalaya: a transition in traditional practices

Study site

The western Himalayan state Uttarakhand is currently the home of five major tribal communities, namely, Jaunsari, Tharu, Raji, Buksa, and Bhotiya. The Bhotiya community inhabit over eight high mountain valleys and are named according to the valleys they inhabit (Farswan, 2017). The Jaad Bhotiya reside near the Bhagirathi valley that lies in Uttarakhand state in India and belongs to the Jaad Ganga, thus deriving their name as Jaad Bhotiya. Until the closure of borders and salt trade with Tibet, China, due to the 1962 Indo-Sino conflict, the community had their permanent settlements in Nelang and Jadhang valley, Uttarakhand, India. The community used to trade between India and Tibet, China, as barter of goods on their pack animals such as yak, goat, and sheep, thus befitting transhumant pastoralism. Hence, their traditional economy revolved around sheep and goat rearing, besides a little agriculture and trade (Roy et al., 2017). However, their dependence on various non-timber forest products and other natural resources such as medicinal plants and wild fruits from the neighbourhood forests that are dominated by tree species such as brown oak (Quercus semecarpifolia), Himalayan cedar (Cedrus deodara), Himalayan pine (Pinus wallichiana), Himalayan pindrow fir (Abies pindrow), and rhododendron are well known.

During the Indo-Sino conflict, the community was translocated from Nelang and Jadhang valley, Uttarakhand, India, to Bagori village situated at the altitude of 2,479 m above sea level. The hamlet is situated near the Harsil valley on the route to Gangotri, a Hindu pilgrimage site in Uttarakhand, India. While the pastoralist community’s major activity is livestock rearing for wool work and trade, they are also involved in agro-horticultural practices such as cultivating apple and kidney beans as cash crops in the region (Balodi et al., 2018). During winters, the community resides at winter village Beerpur situated at the altitude of 976 m above sea level, in Dunda block, which is 60 miles away from the summer village Bagori (Figure 1). Many of them are now permanently settled at Beerpur and have changed their nomadic lifestyle, including shelter, food, and food habits. The present study was conducted in Bagori and Beerpur villages in the district Uttarkashi in the western Himalayan state of Uttarakhand. As per Census 2011, these two villages are inhabited by 2,579 individuals including 1,272 males and 1,307 females with a total of 619 households of the Jaad Bhotiya community (Balodi et al., 2018).

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Figure 1.

Map showing the summer village Bagori and the winter village Beerpur of the Jaad Bhotiya community in the western Himalayan state of Uttarakhand, India (Map sourced by ArcGIS software).

Data collection

The study was conducted using a mixed method (Figure 2) to capture qualitative and quantitative data that include use of structured questionnaires for in-person interviews followed by focus group discussions (FGDs) at the community level (Bergmann et al., 2008; Nyumba et al., 2018). The FGD schedule was designed to capture information related to traditional food practices such as dishes, method of preparations, method of storage, consumption frequency, ingredients used in past and their present availability, and transition in ingredients and preparation of particular dishes. The first part (A) of the questionnaire captures data on respondent profiles that involve name, age, gender, and educational status and the second part (B) inquired on socioeconomic status of the respondent’s household. The third section (C) was focused on queries related to traditional food preparations, including ingredients’ use, variation in their method of cooking, storage, time of consumption, shelf life of each dish, consumption frequency, any change in ingredients over the years, possible reasons behind the change or use of alternative ingredients, and issues and challenges at household and community level related to a particular dish. In addition, to understand the consumption preference of the food dishes, pairwise ranking (PWR) analysis was conducted with the respondents. A list of selected traditional dishes was prepared in both row and column, and the participants were asked to vote for each dish as per their preference among the row and column. The participants chose their preferred food item one by one and moved on to the next dish. The dish chosen for maximum times was considered to be the most preferred and consumed dish by the community.

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Figure 2.

Research framework for this study.

The respondents were selected through a stratified random sampling, including respondents of different age group, gender, and educational status. Out of 619 households from Jaad Bhotiya community residing in the selected villages (Balodi et al., 2018), a total of 150 respondents (24.23%) comprising 68 males and 82 females had participated in the study. A single respondent from each household was considered for the study, and the same respondent was also not included for in-person interview or FGD to avoid duplication of information. Thus, about 83% of respondents participated in a direct interview while others participated in two FGD. To document the traditional food practices, audio-visual recordings and photographs were taken with the informed consent of the community. However, analysis of nutritional value of each documented dish was not performed under this study.

Data analysis

The statistically quantitative method (one-way analysis of variance [ANOVA]) was applied to analyse the socio-demographic characteristics of the selected respondents from the study site. The observed results of p values ⩽ .05 were considered statistically significant in the study. The data obtained on traditional food were analysed through the Direct Matrix Technique or PWR (Ghosh-Jerath et al., 2015; Narayanasamy, 2009) to understand the preference for a particular food recipe and its consumption. The causes of transitions in traditional foods were analysed as percent records on each cause quoted by the respondents. In addition, principal components analysis was performed to analyse causative data observed from respondents during the survey. Qualitative data on traditional food preferences within the community was further evaluated by the hierarchical clustering method (Rosario Battaglia et al., 2015) for a clearer understanding of the results of the PWR. The data were arranged to analyse the average linkage clustering technique that involved average distance between and within the clusters. Data were collected from 150 respondents with 13 cluster variables: “chore” (a dry snack made of fermented milk and cheese produced from boiling cow or buffalo milk), “dhuru” (a semi-solid, thick, salty pudding made from grain or millet that is served with clarified butterfat), “ghima” (a meat-based sausage made from the small intestine of goat or sheep and stuffed with wheat flour and blood), “gojeshya” (a barbequed non-vegetarian dish made from hard part of goat, such as pastern, hock, and stifle), “momo” (steamed dumplings stuffed with vegetables, soya chunks, meat or chicken, and preserved sundried meat), “nangji” (a sausage that contains both meat and chopped veggies prepared from the large intestine of goat or sheep), “nyog-je” (a thick, semi-solid pudding consisting of grains, millet, or pulses that is eaten with buttermilk or curd, also known as baadi), “pili” (a cereal- or millet-based pancake made with wheat flour, onion, and egg that is usually served with vegetables such as pumpkin), “polda” (a ready to eat food made with roasted flour of grain or cereal and millet), “shenyuli” (a traditional cereal or millet-based pasta made of wheat flour, edible refined oil, onion, tomato, garlic, other spices and vegetables), “syakamu” (non-vegetarian prepared from sundried meat of goat or sheep), “thujpaka” (sweet dry snack prepared from fermented milk and cheese produced from cow or buffalo milk, together with sugar and clarified butterfat) and “thupa” (traditional soup comprised of millets and grains with chicken, radish (Raphanus sativus), and rai (Brassica rugosa) in addition to preserved sundried meat) and were analysed through the R Studio 3.5.2 version for clustering.

The frequency of preparation was calculated based on the average preparation events of each recipe in a year. The frequency range was represented through a virtual scale of 1–10 points, where, the minimum, 1 point was given to the cuisines prepared less than 10 days in a year, and 2 points were given to the dishes prepared for 11–20 days/year. Similarly, a maximum of 10 points was given to the foods being prepared for more than 90 days in a year. The foods represented by less than 3 points were considered as severely prepared or lesser consumed foods among the community. Moreover, the cuisines with scores of 3 to 4 indicated the rapidly decreased preparation while the other foods represented with 4 to 5 points showed a slight decrement in consumption among the respondents. However, the dishes being prepared for more than 50 days in a year were considered as constant or in a better state.

Socio-demographic characteristics of the respondents

A total of 150 respondents including 68 males and 82 females participated in this study. The respondents incidentally belonged to five age groups from 16–30 years (16%), 31–45 years (20%), 46–60 years (30.6%), 61–75 years (20%), and >75 years (13.3%) provisioning an equal representation of all ages (Supplementary Material 1). The test results of the one-way ANOVA indicate no significant difference between male and female respondents (p value = .038). Similar results were observed between informants’ age (p value = .028), and education (p value = .013) as the p values were ⩽ .05. The participation rate of female respondents was 54.6%, which is higher than the males (45.3%). It was also observed that the community women had extensive knowledge of the traditional food system, owing to their predominant contribution in household tasks including cooking activities. The respondents in the elderly age categories (46–60 years and >75 years) provided more significant information as they hold much ancestral knowledge of traditional food systems. Approximately, 90% of respondents were literate, and about 8% of respondents were found to be illiterate among the Jaad community in the present study. Earlier, Wanjohi et al. (2020) and Sharma et al. (2019) did infer a similar stratification of respondents’ age while studying TKSs in the Indigenous communities (Sharma et al., 2019; Wanjohi et al., 2020).

Traditional food dishes of the Jaad Bhotiya community

During the permanent settlement in Nelang valley, Uttarakhand, India, the community was isolated from the outer world, and their staple food habits mainly comprised meat, millets, and milk-based products. The consumption of millets was reported in the valley as jau (Hordeum vulgare), phaphara (Fagopyrum tataricum), kotu or ougal (Fagopyrum esculentum), mandwa or kodu (Eleusine coracana), marcha or chaulai (Amaranthus sp.), uva (Hoycleum himalayanse), cheena (Panicum miliaceum), koni (Setaria sp.), and jhangora (Echinochloa sp.). Although some of these millets were cultivated by the community, however, few were arranged through a barter system with adjoining Garhwali community (an ethnolinguistic group native to Uttarakhand state in India). Wheat and rice were the least preferred as these were only available in markets. Occasionally, the variety of red rice was preferred, as it was grown in the adjoining villages. This study revealed that the community shifted itself to new food habits such as consuming rice, wheat, varieties of pulse, and vegetables due to their relocation from ancestral villages. Use of market-available packaged and fast foods, spices, and condiments have also increased to a great extent in their foods. Nonetheless, 13 traditional food dishes, namely, shenyuli, thupa, momo, thujpaka, pili, dhuru, chore, nyog-je, polda, ghima, syakamu, nangji, and gojeshya, are still prepared and consumed by the tribe (Supplementary Material 2). Among these, pili, dhuru, nyog-je, and polda are chiefly made up of cereals or millets while, shenyuli, thupa, and momo cuisines are made from cereals or millets with vegetables and meat. Other foods like thujpaka and chore are milk-based products and prepared through processed buttermilk (Figure 3), whereas syakamu (Figure 4), ghima, nangji, and gojeshya are purely non-vegetarian delicacies of the tribal community.

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Figure 3.

(a). Traditional food thujpaka (sweet dry snack prepared from fermented milk and cheese produced from cow or buffalo milk, together with sugar and clarified butterfat) and (b) chore (a dry snack made of fermented milk and cheese produced from boiling cow or buffalo milk made from buttermilk) (Photo by Shobha Bhatt).

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Figure 4.

Syakamu meat drying process in sunlight (Photo by Shobha Bhatt).

Analysis of consumption preference of traditional food

The data were analysed based on participant’s preferences among the respondents through PWR (Supplementary Material 3) and hierarchical cluster analysis (Supplementary Material 4). Food variables such as momo, thupa, and shenyuli showed the highest ranking in PWR (Supplementary Material 3) with minimum height and distance in cluster dendrogram (Supplementary Material 4), indicating that these food items are most preferred among the community. Among the pure non-vegetarian variables, syakamu and ghima are the most popular food items followed by nangji and gojeshya. In the snacks category, the ready to eat polda showed the average consumption while dishes such as chore and pili showed even lesser consumption among the community. Out of 13 variables, dhuru, thujpaka, and nyog-je were represented by maximum height and distance between clusters and lowest ranking in PWR. The maximum height and distance between clusters are suggestive of the least preferred and diminishing consumption pattern of traditional foods within the community.

The non-vegetarian cuisines thupa and momo were especially preferred among the young and middle-aged men, while thupa made of vegetables is preferred by elderly members as their routine dinner course at Bagori village, generally to counter the cold. These two popular dishes are now easily available in the market and attract many people due to their diverse tastes and spices. Traditional food polda is fast to cook and mostly consumed during busy work schedules, such as during wool shearing and agricultural activities, especially in the summer village. Pili was once the main food of the community as a substitute for chapati (a round flatbread made of wheat flour) or roti (a round flatbread made of wheat flour); however, these days, it is consumed occasionally as a pancake and often given as lunch to schoolchildren (Figure 5).

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Figure 5.

Community women cooking their traditional cuisines: (a) pili (a cereal- or millet-based pancake made with wheat flour, onion, and egg that is usually served with vegetables such as pumpkin), (b) shenyuli (a traditional cereal- or millet-based pasta made of wheat flour, edible refined oil, onion, tomato, garlic, and other spices and vegetables), (c) polda (a ready to eat food made with roasted flour of grain or cereal and millet), and (d) a traditional gharat (water mill) grinding wheat flour (Photo by Shobha Bhatt).

Changes in preparation methods and ingredients of traditional foods

The traditions of preparing most of the reported dishes have undergone various changes either in their ingredients or methods of preparation or consumption pattern (Supplementary Material 2). For instance, traditionally, the gharat (water mill) (Figure 5) was used to grind millets for cooking foods, now it is replaced with modern flour mill machines. A similar trend of changes in traditional ingredients such as buckwheat, finger millet, barley, or uva used for cooking pili, dhuru, polda, and shenyuli (Figure 5) are now replaced by single wheat grain. The availability of newly introduced vegetables, onions, tomatoes, garlic, and other spices in the region has added value to some dishes such as shenyuli, momo, and thupa. Similarly, the traditional cuisine pili made with wheat is now being prepared with eggs and vegetables and generally preferred as lunch for children. Generally, the availability of modern vessels has altered the preparation method of some cuisines. For example, momos, which were earlier boiled in water, are being steamed now in an aluminium steamer.

The consumption of nyog-je is replaced with rice and prepared on rare occasions for the elders. Most importantly, dhuru, which was ritualistically served to a newly married couple as dessert and also considered healthy for lactating mothers during the postnatal period, is now rarely prepared. Similarly, thujpaka and chore are hardly prepared by limited households due to the less availability of buttermilk. However, the non-vegetarian foods, syakamu, ghima, nangji, and gojeshya, have also changed their methods of preparation. This is primarily due to access to more spices and condiments and is consumed by deep-frying the meat instead of boiling with salt and the wild herb jhimu (Allium humile).

Perception on causes of transition in Indigenous food preparation and consumption

The perceptions on causes of transition in food habits of the community revealed that modernization led to changes in the lifestyle and acculturation, and consequently, transition in traditional food dishes (Supplementary Material 5). The increasing trend of in- and out-migration has resulted from acculturation that is reflected in the introduction of new food choices and preparation techniques. The wide range of packaged and ready-to-eat delicacies available in the market is being preferred by the community in their daily life. Moreover, farming in community villages has become gradually limited, due to sequential cultivation of cash crops over the recent decades. The cultivation of predominant cash crops such as French bean (Phaseolus vulgaris), lima bean (Phaseolus Lunatus), apple (Malus domestica), walnut (Juglans regia), and almond-leaved pear (Pyrus amygdaliformis) has started to enhance the economic benefits of the community.

As a result, cultivation of traditional food crops has declined, and availability of ingredients used in preparation of dishes like pili, nyog-je, polda, and dhuru has reduced over the years. This situation has encouraged the community to adopt alternative ingredients in their traditional food preparation. However, it has led to disappearance of traditional varieties of food crops such as barley (Hordeum vulgare), tartary buckwheat (Fagopyrum tataricum), buckwheat (Fagopyrum esculentum), finger millet (Eleusine coracana), pigweed (Amaranthus sp.), and a variety of barley (Hoycleum himalayanse) in these villages. The principal components analysis was also performed for the causative data set (Figure 6).

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Figure 6.

Principal components analysis (PCA) performed to show the causative data of transitions in the traditional food practices.

Principal components analysis successfully extracts two components, PC-1 and PC-2, that contribute to about 71% variance of the transition in traditional food. Figure 6 shows the two components PC-1 (approximately 41.3% of variance) and PC-2 (approximately 30% of the variance). The causative factors migration and introduction of new food products are strongly associated with PC-1 while acculturation, lack of traditional food knowledge, and lifestyle changes are strongly associated with PC-2 (approximately 30% of the variance). However, the causative factor lacking traditional crops farming shows a weak correlation with either PC-1 or PC-2.

Current status of the traditional cuisines

The current status related to the purpose of preparation, frequency, and consumption pattern of traditional foods shows that out of 13 ethnic foods, about 38% are prepared regularly while the remaining 62% are prepared occasionally (Supplementary Material 6). The food preparation varied from 6 to 9 points in the category of regular consumption demonstrating that the dishes are prepared 60–90 days in a year. In the occasional preparation category, the foods are cooked between 10 and 50 days in a year ranging from 1 to 5 points. Among them, about 30% of foods are prepared for health care purposes while 23% are prepared for ritualistic purposes. Most of the dishes (69%) are prepared by female members except some meat-based cuisine such as ghima, gojeshya, syakamu, and nangji. The preparation frequency of about 30% of dishes such as thujpaka, pili, dhuru, and nyog-je have severely decreased over the years and are rarely prepared around less than 20 days/year and by a very few households. About 15% of dishes including chore and polda are rapidly decreasing and are prepared for about 30–40 days/year while 15% of other dishes, such as nangji and gojeshya, are prepared for about 40–50 days/year. However, dishes such as shenyuli, thupa, momo, ghima, and syakamu are prepared regularly for about 60–90 days in a year.