Sometimes the remarks of our parents, or elders, stick in the mind right till the end. It is like traditional wisdom being passed on. Every time we returned home late, my father would invariably remark: “Baddo (nomad) has returned”.

Also every time we were allegedly naughty he would say: “Baddo”. It never occurred to me just who was a ‘baddo’, that is till recently while researching the ancient history of Punjab and Lahore it came across clearly that the very first inhabitants of our land, as of other lands, were nomads. In short, all of us have nomadic ancestors. As one dwelt on the subject with interest it became clear that nomads, who were and are, primarily hunter gatherers, finally settled in villages with agriculture as their mainstay. They selected a ruler chosen from among themselves, who ruled and was hence a ‘raja’ and from there grew the word Rajput - those who serve the Raja, or ‘sons of the raja’.

The original inhabitants of Lahore were nomads who settled on the main mound of old Lahore. Today the Lahore Fort exists there. It was a safe place from floods, and there they built the very first mud houses, also creating pottery. The 1956 Lahore Archaeological Expedition digging in front of the Diwan-e-Aam went to a depth of 50 feet, uncovering seven different periods of our past. Carbon-dating shows that the oldest fragments of pottery were 4,500 to 4,250 years old. Similar samples collected from Mohallah Maullian inside Lohari Gate showed pottery being 3,500-3,250 years old.

Now let us tie in this scientific data to how the nomads started off and finally settled in, initially, villages, and then small towns and finally in larger urban sprawls. Human behaviour is such that nomads still suspect city folk, and I will narrate an incident in this regard. Villagers normally suspect nomads, and still do. But then this is a universal phenomenon. All over the world the Roma Gypsies, all originally from the banks of the rivers of Punjab, are suspected as unreliable. Recently the gypsies of Ukraine were not allowed to cross over to other countries. On television the explanation by a soldier was: “But they are not human”. Imagine.

The amazing stories of gypsies, the very word coming from the French description “la Egypte”, as Napoleonic forces first encountered them as they travelled westwards. Today they exist in every country of the world, and they just keep moving on and on. But then the question comes to the mind just where did all of this start? Better still ‘where was the beginning of the nomad’. After all it makes sense to acknowledge that in the beginning all of us were ‘baddos’- nomads. A very short explanation is in place.

Once the African continent saw the first homo-sapiens walk away in every direction, the very first walked along the coast of the subcontinent, itself a breakaway continent from Africa, they finally reached Australia. Today they are dubbed as Aboriginals, a racist description. Their DNA clearly shows that they are Dravidians and match those in the South of India, as also the inhabitants of coastal Baluchistan. For that matter the origins of Pakistani languages is classified as Euro-Indian, while the sole exception is that language spoken in the South Baluchistan is Brahui, a Dravidian-based language. They live in Kalat, Khuzdar and Mastung, as also in Larkana. This language is spread over parts of Iran and Iraq and Qatar. Geographic location speaks for itself.

As the nomads from Africa moved up the River Indus and its tributary rivers they settled on the banks. These are today’s ‘baddos’ or gypsies. They remain mobile and always on the move. No matter how deeply they assimilate with other races, they remain mobile, simply refusing to settle and sticking to their origins. A few years ago while browsing through used books in Hay-on-Wye in Wales it came as a shock when ‘English gypsies’ were speaking Punjabi mixed with other languages of which I have no knowledge. In a way their roots spoke for them. A normal English person attributes very negative traits to them, just as that Ukrainian soldiers classified them as inhuman.

But the ‘baddos’ living on the banks of the River Ravi remain on the move and move on they do where they manage to find a reasonable economic gain. A few years ago while researching for a small portion of a United Nations project on 150,000 gypsies, my sample size was a mere 50 living on the banks of the Ravi River. Very soon as the doctor taking blood samples also found out, they all live in comfort in their tents, cook excellent food and have an amazing sense of humour. Their favourite subject is the behaviour patterns of ‘settled folk’. Not surprising. The UN sample of 150,000 samples in 150 countries discovered that they all had the same DNA. They are all of Dravidian stock.

It is a good excuse for all of us ‘settled’ people to take a look into our own lifestyles. The ‘baddo’ joke about villagers, who are suspicious about them, but then villagers laugh at the behaviour of city folk, who in return have a negative image of village folk. In schools a child who does not understand a subject is described as a ‘paindoo’ or villager. To the other extreme city folk consider nomads as thieves.

A few more examples might help to understand human behaviour in terms of ‘settlement’. We tend to forget that our original ancestors were all nomads, and primarily of Dravidian stock. As they moved north of Africa, the climate and foods available worked on their appearances. For example over 7,000 years ago the people of Britain were darker than today. Scientific research and DNA analysis has proven that fact. Then the Turks and Greeks invaded and changed them.

The fact that my dear father, who was highly educated and experienced, loved to use the word ‘Baddo’ as a funny expression, was reflecting the common perception of a person who did not adhere to a time schedule. City folk thrive on schedules and timings. In a way it optimises output and brings regularity and, hence, predictability, to life. Hence it is understandable.

But then urbanisation is increasingly being studied against the depletion of natural resources. The Rigveda says ‘the more trees were cut the more people moved towards cities’. But then the Veds were all written in Punjab and we see the Aryans from the West move into a highly civilised and organised Dravidian people, who were decimated. Brute force overcame the learned. The discovery in Harappa with very few weapons shows that amply. But the Aryan hordes were themselves nomads who were more prone to prefer village life and agriculture. Sadly in Punjab and northern Sindh they decimated a highly civilised people.

This does give rise, exceptions aside that from the illiterate and violent Aryans in villages, have our people as a whole risen to Harappa literacy? The ruling foreign Persians or Turks or even Afghans did promote a myopic ruling class with a foreign language. In the end it was a mix of languages, pidgin in essence, that arose. Today we suspect nomads, are unsure about villagers, and even among city folk we see a rise of a culture that is not attached to the majority. Such are humans. No wonder they like to move on.

Published in Dawn, May 22nd, 2022