“A richly-layered narrative in the best non-fiction comics tradition. Ita Mehrotra’s depictions of the characters, landscapes, forests, trees, Van Gujjar houses, animals, objects and material culture are precise and wonderfully detailed—adding greatly not only to the information conveyed, but also to the emotive quality of the experience that the book offers.” — Orijit Sen, author of River of Stories

“People, places, animals, trees: Ita Mehrotra’s evocative art brings to life the rapidly changing landscape of Uttarakhand’s hills and the dogged struggle of the Van Gujjars and Taungya farmers to claim the forest that is their home. If you care about conservation and want to learn from communities that have held on to a gentler way of inhabiting this earth, then this layered, intimate account is for you.” — Amita Baviskar, author of Uncivil City: Ecology, Equity and the Commons in Delhi

“Uprooted tells the story of the Van Gujjar community, forest dwellers who have lost their homes time and again, caught in the crossfire of a violent state, hollow development promises, and the escalating crisis of climate change. But this is not just a story of dispossession. Through stark visuals and quiet testimony, Ita Mehrotra traces what it means to live under constant gaze of the Indian State, to endure a system that treats survival itself as defiance. Uprooted is a powerful meditation on resistance, memory, and the fight to preserve both community and forest in the face of erasure.” — Suchitra Vijayan, author of Midnights Borders: A People’s History of Modern India

Ita is a comics maker and educator based out of New Delhi. Her non-fiction comics and illustrated stories have been published and exhibited widely over the past decade. She is the author of the book Shaheen Bagh: A Graphic Recollection (Yoda Press, 2021), which brought together moments and memories from the countrywide Anti-CAA protests in India. Ita leads arts education programmes with community learning centres and rural schools across India, and has been associated with the All India Union of Forest Working People and Van Gujjar Tribal Yuva Sangathan since 2021.