Hatti Community

Oct. 29, 2022

The central government decision to bring the Hatti community under the Scheduled Tribes list in Himachal Pradesh’s Sirmaur district is spreading resentment among some sections.

About:

  • 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.
  • Parts of the Trans-Giri region, where most of the Hatti community lives, also come under the Assembly Constituencies of Renukaji, Shillai, and Pachhad.
  • The two Hatti clans, in Trans-Giri and Jaunsar Bawar, have similar traditions, and inter-marriages are common.

SC & ST Population of Himachal Pradesh:

  • As per the most recent Census (2011), 5.71% of the State’s population is ST and 25.19% of the population is classified as SC.
Source : The Hindu