This Land We Call Home

Nusrat F Jafri, is a Mumbai based award-winning cinematographer. She has over fifteen years of experience in filmmaking. Born and brought up in Lucknow, she moved to New Delhi for graduation and post-graduation in Mass Communication. Her professional journey includes stints as a journalist with The Pioneer and CNBC Awaaz.
Nusrat is a mentee of the first cohort (2021) of South Asia Speaks. She was featured in the second edition of Rising Beyond The Ceiling: 100 stereotype-shattering stories of Muslim women of Uttar Pradesh, India.
She lives in Mumbai with her husband, son and a cat named Jamia.

In 1871, the British enacted the Criminal Tribes Act in India, branding numerous tribes and caste groups as criminals. In This Land We Call Home, Nusrat F. Jafri traces the roots of her nomadic forebears, who belonged to one such ‘criminal’ tribe, the Bhantus from Rajasthan.
This affecting memoir explores religious and multicultural identities and delves into the profound concepts of nation-building and belonging. Nusrat’s family found acceptance in the church, alongside a sense of community, theology, songs and carnivals, and quality education for the children in
missionary schools.
The family’s conversion to Christianity in response to caste society highlights their struggle for dignity. Parallelly, we see the family’s experiences during Gandhi’s return to India in 1915, the Partition, the World Wars, the Emergency and the prime ministers’ assassinations.
In a way, this is a story like and unlike the stories all of us carry within us—the inherited weight of who we are and where we come from, our tiny little freedoms and our everyday struggles and, mostly, the intricate jumble of our collective ancestry. Nusrat pays homage to her foremothers, the first feminists, and her forefathers, the ones who tried hard to fit into a caste society only to be disappointed, eventually choosing alternative faiths in pursuit of acceptance.

'There has never been a better time to read This Land We Call Home.
Nusrat F. Jafri’s memoir is more than the history of one family, it is also
the history of India. Vividly written and deeply felt, this is a book to
cherish'

‘This book is a literary sensation. Nusrat F. Jafri’s meticulously crafted
mosaic of family stories weaves a tapestry that reveals the lost stories of
India’s vibrant diversity. With passionate curiosity and an extraordinary
eye for detail, Nusrat delves into her personal history to illuminate the
intricate bonds that connected seemingly disparate communities and people.
Nusrat F. Jafri’s book is evidence that stories of our lived realities are the
hope and healing we need in these fractured times’

‘Deeply grounded yet uplifting, This Land We Call Home is a singular
portrait of an Indian family, but also of India—of surviving pain, growing
through faith, perennially changing’

‘Deeply insightful, tender and urgent, This Land We Call Home is as
much a journey of self-discovery as it is a documentation of nationhood.
Jafri is a gifted writer and determined researcher, writing the lives of her
ancestors—their histories, complexities, diversities, aspirations, hardships
and sacrifices—into an extraordinary memoir of caste, religion, identity and
love’

‘The countless castes manifest in infinite ways, every time shaking our
sensibilities more than before. Here is a story of Bhantu criminal tribe of
Rajasthan that suffered double oppression, societal exclusion and stateordained
incrimination. The story, narrated through the saga of a family
by a noted cinematographer and writer, would have been simply lost to the
past if her maternal great grandfather had not decided to discard the caste
cage of the Hindu society and convert to Christianity. This well-researched
and ably written book is a rare account on the so-called criminal tribes,
that additionally chronicles our present. Surely, one of the best books in
its genre!’