Van - Waral Chowk | Preserving Warli Identity

Dahanu is a narrow transect between the Northern western ghats and the Arabian sea comprising diverse units of landscape varying from highland forest, midlands to the coastal wetlands, mudflats and marshes. The Vahindra river starts from the highlands and empties in the coastal area. It acts as a connector for the different landscape units and the communities (Warlis, Kolis, Wadwals, Parsis) that reside within it. It was declared as an ecologically fragile area in 1991 and is today at the crossroads – ecologically, socially, and culturally. The forest dwelling Warli community’s traditions underwent assault due to the British colonisation, leading to their displacement from their forests. Being forest dwellers, they were primarily hunters gatherers and cultivated a small piece of land known as waral as subsistence farming and practiced shifting cultivation, which was engulfed by settled agriculture, orchard plantations and lead to migration due to lack of income. The vision is to re-establish the traditional slash and burn agriculture in a sustainable way and to restore the identity of the Warlis while reconnecting them to their forests by establishing a forest fringe community system. The project identifies plots of land that are degraded along the forest fringes and show a combination of abandoned cultivations and social forestry. The intervention proposed, thus focuses on re-associating the Warlis to forests by creating a crossroads system by integrating the Van (forest) and Waral (cultivated land), while celebrating prosperity and fertility of the land, in a central space – The chowk. It aims to redefine the practice of Adar, a form of shifting cultivation, in a sustainable way to reap optimum benefits while protecting the core forest. The produce derived hence is then celebrated, exhibited and stored in a space identified as a central celebratory space which will hold together the Warli Identity.