Hatti Community : Protest For Scheduled Tribe (ST) Status To The Community

Hatti Community : Protest For Scheduled Tribe (ST) Status To The Community

Hatti community in Himachal Pradesh will organise a protest march on December 16 to press their demand for the implementation of a law giving the Scheduled Tribe (ST) status to the community.

• The Hattis are a close-knit community who take their name from their traditional occupation of selling home-grown crops, vegetables, meat, and wool at small-town markets known as ‘haats’.
• Hatti men traditionally don a distinctive white headgear on ceremonial occasions.
• The Hatti homeland straddles the Himachal-Uttarakhand border in the basin of the Giri and Tons rivers, both tributaries of the Yamuna.
• The Tons marks the border between the two states, and the Hattis living in the Trans-Giri area in today’s Himachal Pradesh and Jaunsar Bawar in Uttarakhand were once part of the royal estate of Sirmaur. Jaunsar Bawar was conquered by the British in 1814.
• The two Hatti clans, in Trans-Giri and Jaunsar Bawar, have similar traditions, and inter-marriages are common.
• They are governed by a traditional council called ‘khumbli’ which decides community matters.
• According to the 2011 census, members of the community numbered 2.5 lakh but at present population of the Hattis are estimated at around 3 lakhs.