Herder’s homecoming

Rabari community Explained

• The Rabari are a nomadic camel-herding people  whose name means "outside the way." Most are Hindus. The Raika are their Muslim counterparts.
• They are one of perhaps a dozen castes of live-stock breeding seminomadic peoples or northwest India.
• The story of their arrival in Kutch (also Kachchh), Gujarat, is a story of momentous migration from the Himalayas to Punjab, Haryana, Mathura, Rajasthan and, finally, into Kutch via Pakistan. 
• The community is known by different names in different states, like Rabari in Gujarat, Raika in Rajasthan, Pal in Punjab, among others.
• They are predominantly endogamous but marriage between sub-groups is permitted.