A leader of a tribe in India, which made headlines around the world when it won a David and Goliath battle against a British mining corporation, has died in police custody – following a violent police campaign of harassment and intimidation against activists.
Bari Pidikaka of the Dongria Kondh tribe was arrested and detained on his way back from a protest in October 2015, and died this week.
The Dongria from central India report systematic “intimidation, abduction and wrongful incarceration” of their leaders by state police, who they claim are acting to “further the interests” of Vedanta Resources, a British-based mining company.
Local police also arrested Kuni Sikaka, a 20-year-old Dongria activist and relative of the two most prominent Dongria leaders. She was dragged out of her house at midnight, despite the fact that police had no warrant.
She was then paraded in front of officials and local media as a “surrendered Maoist [member of an armed resistance group]” despite there being no evidence to support this.
Other members of the tribe have also faced brutal harassment. Activist Dasuru Kadraka has been detained without trial for over 12 months. Dongria have been beaten, and tortured with electric wires to force them to stop campaigning for their rights.
With the support of local officials, Vedanta has previously attempted to pressure the tribe into allowing bauxite mining on their ancestral land in the Niyamgiri Hills. In a historic referendum in 2013, the tribe unanimously rejected the proposal.
But the Dongria fear that, as long as Vedanta operates its refinery at the foot of the hills, the threat of mining remains. Those detained claim that police demanded that they stop protesting against the mine.
In an open letter to the President of India, over 100 independent Indian organizations said: “In the last 2-3 years, several Dongria Kondh youth and elders have been arrested, harassed, and killed, and one has committed suicide after repeated harassment and alleged torture by security forces. In none of these cases have [officials] been able to produce evidence linking them to so-called Maoists.”
Dasuru Kadraka said: “I was arrested and taken to the superintendent of police’s office. There I was tortured with my hands tied and electric wires attached to my ears and electric shock given to me, to force me to surrender… and to make me leave the Save Niyamgiri movement. But I refused… The movement is my life, I will never stop protecting the Niyamgiri hills and forests.”
The Dongria Kondh’s right to their ancestral land has been recognized in Indian and international law. Survival International led the global campaign to protect their land, and will continue to fight for the Dongria to be allowed to determine their own futures without harassment.
Survival’s Director Stephen Corry said: “It’s now clear that there’s a brutal campaign to harass, intimidate and even murder the Dongria Kondh, to weaken their resistance to the exploitation of their land. But the Dongria are absolutely determined to protect the Hills, which not only provide them with food, housing and clothing, but are also the foundation of their identity and sense of belonging.”
I love being at home, in Wayanad, when the south-west monsoon arrives. This hilly district of northern Kerala is still full of tall trees and myriad creatures, and drenched in rain for several months in a year. From my window, I see Banasuramala, a beautiful mountain 2,000 metres high, gracing the southern horizon, and canopied hills to the west. Small farms make scruffy patchworks on the other sides. To the north-east are the shola grasslands of the Brahmagiris. All around, streams born of millions of seeps gifted by trees gather to flow to the Kabini and then to the Kaveri.
I work at the Gurukula Botanical Sanctuary, where a small team of dedicated ecosystem gardeners, skilled in various aspects of horticulture, plant conservation and Western Ghat ecology, grow native plants of this mountain ecosystem, or biome, through techniques honed over four decades of experimentation and practice. We cultivate plants that are highly endangered in the wild, some 2,000 species in all, accounting for 40% of the Western Ghat flora. We deploy a range of methods, from intensive-care nurseries to outdoor habitats rich with herbs, tubers, succulents, shrubs, trees, creepers, climbers, epiphytes (plants that grow on other plants) and lithophytes (plants that grow on rocks). These species have been initially brought from different parts of the Western Ghats, mostly from areas that have already been deforested. Much of our work is a search-and-rescue mission, and we refer to these plants as refugees, similar to human refugees suffering the depredations of war, displacement, climate change and general toxification of the environment. We also speak of species being rehabilitated when they form mixed-species communities that eventually become quite independent of our care.
Local stream, headwater of Kaveri
Surrounding these “refugee camps” we also have once-denuded patches, adding up to an area of more than 60 acres, which are recovering to forest through natural processes of succession under our vigilance. Since we are on the edge of a reserve forest, still rich and diverse despite its small size of about 100 square km, reforestation happens easily if the land is simply protected—because insects, birds and mammals transfer spores and seeds. Beyond all this, we educate students and visitors about the centrality of the natural world, first of all to itself and then to human lives, including the economy, something most urban people seem to deny, to our collective peril.
Over time, this botanical sanctuary has become a zoological sanctuary. We have noted 220 species of birds, including Malabar trogons, flycatchers, frogmouths and laughing thrushes. Many unusual mammals, reptiles, amphibians and insects abound, and several are endemic to the Western Ghats, such as the iridescent shield-tail snake, the Nilgiri marten, a nimble and ferocious small mammal, and many species of bush frogs.
The sanctuary has become a river-maker too. I’ve seen how moss-laden trees condense mist, how droplets of water gather on downy grasses, how cool it is inside the infant forest we have grown, and how water trickles out of the toes of trees to form tiny rivulets, which flow into neighbours’ fields. By leaving large areas of the land to natural succession, and not deliberately planting trees, as practised by other agencies, and giving time, a slowly restoring area acquires many important properties of a healthy ecosystem. These include species diversity, a thick layer of leaf litter decomposing to humus, a robust water cycle, layered and dense vegetation, and different climates from the canopy all the way down to the shady interior.
Monsoon clouds over Gurukula
As gardeners and habitat-restorers we, of course, are dependent wholly on the timing and duration of the monsoon, on its intensity and quantity—because our wards, namely the land and the plant species we conserve, are. On an average we require 500 cm of rainfall a year, and most of it in the south-west monsoon. The weather features regularly in our speech. Much of our work hinges on the fine sensibilities of land-based peoples: common-sense knowledge to do with life-cycles in the forest and our own intuitive understanding of weather patterns, instead of measurements and forecasts alone.
Changing Monsoon
Most Indians believe that the monsoon is unassailable: a wind system 18 million years old, which has breathed life into the subcontinent since the rise of the Himalayas, whose formidable heights block it from travelling to Central Asia, condensing it instead into long hard rain. Its intensity varies from year to year, but we believe it will blow. But ever since I have been here, about 24 years now, I have heard people talking about how the monsoon has gone awry, that it is no longer what it used to be. We also know this from scientific data, but crucially for us, we know this from the behaviour of the plants and animals in our sanctuary.
Stream in our valley
We depend on both monsoons, together called the double monsoon, but the south-west matters more, as it brings more than 90% of what we need annually. The north-east monsoon, however, makes this a rainforest, along with locally generated thundershowers between the two monsoons, by extending the wet period to cover more than eight months of the year. Typical rainforests have rain or mist throughout the year, as we do here. Luc Lambs, an eco-hydrologist at the University of Toulouse in France, studies the double monsoon system in South India—its variation over time, the role of the forests in water–vapour recycling and what meteorologists call the “gatekeeper” effect of the Western Ghats range. He says the south-west monsoon has weakened considerably over the past three decades, while the north-east monsoon is getting stronger. He also affirms that forests are necessary to condense rain as are the icy heights of mountains.
Impatiens flowers under cultivation
Anecdotal evidence also suggests that the monsoon is changing in fundamental ways. The monsoon was much colder when she was a little girl in this valley, says Laly Joseph, my colleague, recalling how it poured from June to October, with a brief break during Onam, which usually falls in September. For the past decade, however, it has rarely arrived on time, often disappearing after setting in, sometimes drying up in August only to rain very heavily in winter.
The garden is open to the public
Plants Confused
All this fluctuation spells trouble for monsoon-dependent plants. Laly propagates 100 species of endangered native balsams, which belong to the genus Impatiens, all endemic to the Western Ghats, with succulent stems and brightly-coloured flowers, considered by many naturalists to be a flagship group of the range. She says that many species are struggling because they are confused by changing environmental cues: plant hormones are, after all, finely attuned to tiny changes in seasonal patterns of moisture and temperature. For example, species rescued from higher elevations are not doing well at the sanctuary’s 750-metre elevation any more because it is becoming too warm and the rain is often interspersed with long dry spells, which, if too long, can signal the end of the monsoon to these species. Laly is growing these delicate plants in the nursery because their natural habitats have been eroded.The sanctuary’s plant conservation programme envisages that at least a few can be given a toe-hold chance for survival by our tribe of ecosystem gardeners, if lost in the wild, because of rapid alterations to global climate conditions. Also, rising temperatures bring new diseases and many species are succumbing to these.
Upstream from GBS
For the past three years, Impatiens stocksii, a small plant with white flowers that is endemic to Coorg and Wayanad, has been sprouting two weeks later each consecutive year, says Abhishek Jain, our plant scout at large, who travels through the mountains documenting species in the wild. They are thus a month late this year, and haven’t sprouted yet in early June. Both Laly and he say that pre-monsoon convectional showers that lead up to the main monsoon are critical to the dormant tubers setting out their annual leaves and shoots. The pre-monsoon allows for the dormant tubers to start growing underground, and once the main monsoon starts, the plants quickly put out leaf shoots as if assured that a long period of growth lies ahead. The tubers gain in size from the starch made by the photosynthesising leaves. Flowering and seed formation can happen once enough energy is accumulated, usually towards the middle or latter half of the monsoon. Shockingly, this year we had no pre-monsoon rain, and Impatiens stocksii is even more delayed.
I have been keeping a diary to note when trees flower, fruit, produce seeds, drop leaves and flush. There’s a marked difference in these timings between last year and now. Jackfruit, for instance, has fully ripened and fallen in end-May instead of in late June or early July. Mala-elengi (Chionanthusmala-elengii) has flowered and fruited a full six weeks ahead of last year. The southern rudraksh (Elaeocarpus tuberculatus) flowered copiously in early February this year instead of the usual March. I am concerned that some of the trees are masting this year, a term used for synchronised and exceptional production of flowers, fruits and seeds. I’ve heard that this can happen sometimes in anticipation of death by drought. It takes consecutive years of drought to kill mature trees, but when they reach survival’s edge they put their final energy into the next generation by producing copious quantities of seeds.
The Monsoon’s Needs
So we know that the forest needs the monsoon. But we don’t give as much thought to how much the monsoon also needs forests, although most of us have an inkling that plants cool the land and that forests are intimately connected to rain and rivers. Scientists used to refer to rainforests, particularly the Amazon, as the planet’s lungs. Now, some like Luc Lambs and Antonio Nobre, an earth-systems scientist in Brazil, talk about forests acting as biotic pumps, whereby trees release organic molecules into the atmosphere, thereby changing air pressure, which creates a drag effect to draw in the winds from the sea. The proponents of this theory are a pair of Russian nuclear physicists named Anastassia Makarieva and Victor Gorshkov, who studied the contribution of forests all over the world to the global hydrological cycle.
Yet deforestation proceeds untrammelled. A report released in the first week of June by the Indian Institute of Science shows that Kerala has lost half of its forest cover in the past four decades. It is no wonder that the quantity of rainfall has also decreased. If we could reforest more of the land and protect whatever remains of old forest, we could keep droughts and floods at bay, because vegetation has an ameliorating effect on both. Indeed, we keep saying that the monsoon is necessary for agriculture, but we hardly ever talk about what the monsoon needs. In an era when an Indian court redefines the Ganga and Yamuna as “living persons,” let me propose that we look at the monsoon as a being, with its own needs: cooler oceans and lands, glacier-bearing Himalayas, forested Western Ghats, a vegetated India. Further afield, it needs the Siberian permafrost to not melt. It needs the Antarctic to remain icy.
Sights and Sounds
Lately, I have been falling asleep to the songs of different bush-frogs and crickets. Tonight, they outdo every other sound—thunder, passing vehicles and barking dogs. Last week, birds such as nightjars, frogmouths and owls were clearly audible and now they’re drowned out by the insect–amphibian choir.My ears hurt. This raucous medley is a sure sign that the monsoon is here or about to arrive very soon.The trails are full of jackfruit (Artocarpus heterophyllus) and smashed, partly-eaten remains of its relative, the ainili (Artocarpus hirsutus), which sports smaller orange fruits with a spiny skin enclosing lobes of sweet flesh and large seeds. Wild jamuns and mangoes, rose apples, guavas and sweet limes, and dozens of forest tree species are also fruiting. Bonnet macaques, Nilgiri langurs, Malabar grey hornbills and giant squirrels are gorging in the canopy. Someone reported seeing a troop of lion-tailed macaques with babies. It is feasting time for everybody in this valley: wild boar, humans and cattle included. Elephants come by at night, attracted from afar by the smell of overripe jackfruit—to them, a delicacy.
Local forest
Herbaceous plants and creepers are suddenly exuberant with the prospect of regular rain. They grow fast during the onset of the monsoon, infused by nitrogen from lightning and the perfect combination of sunshine and water. Soon, if the monsoon arrives and sustains, the trails and rock-walls will be covered in Impatiens flowers, ground orchids and ferns—a spectacular visual treat.
I fantasise sometimes about a perfect monsoon. Rain that is not too much or too little, neither lasting the whole year nor only a few days, arriving perfectly on the first of June and lasting till October. Rivers full and flowing, everyone happy and well-fed, reservoirs lasting through the summer, and fields and forests growing lush and fecund.
Immersive Programmes
I worry, though, that the monsoon, with its moods and savage powers, might altogether cease. Daily, I awaken to an inescapable prospect in the middle of paradise, this botanical sanctuary in Wayanad. Plant conservation is precious work, and it must be done. But what if the monsoon fails? What will happen if forests and drought get into a positive feedback loop? In other words, what if drought leads to forest fires, leading to less rain, and then to more forest fires and so on? What, then, of rivers and the millions of people downstream?
So I busy myself with thinking about how to conserve the monsoon. I believe it is mostly a matter of stopping toxic or destructive activities. Author Derrick Jensen writes that a single Trident nuclear submarine is capable of destroying 408 cities at once. What sort of a mind could conceive of creating such a machine? It seems to me, it is the same mind that is killing the monsoon. The US army alone can stop the murder of the monsoon. It is the single largest contributor to global warming. Why do I say murder? We know that the military–industrial complex is destroying the planet, and we know that it is happening willfully.
Whom shall we serve? The machines or the monsoon?
Suprabha Seshan (suprabha.seshan@gmail.com) lives and works at the Gurukula Botanical Sanctuary in Wayanad, Kerala. She is the sanctuary’s managing trustee and is an Ashoka Fellow. On behalf of the sanctuary’s ecosystem gardeners, she received United Kingdom’s Whitley Award in 2006.
A massive communal and arson attack on four Jumma localities was carried by the Bengali Muslim settlers with the support of army and police in Longadu under Rangamati hill district of Chittagong Hill Tracts (CHT) on 2 June 2017. This organized and army-police-backed arson and communal attack claimed more than 300 Jumma houses burnt to ashes, of which it counts more than 200 houses and shops in Tintila of Longadu upazila headquarters and more 120 houses (around 40 houses in each of the three villages) in Manikjorchara, Battya Para and Baradom villages to have been completely burnt down. It is reported that at least an aged woman named Guna Mala Chakma (75) w/o late Rabichan Chakma was killed in this arson attack. Parbatya Chattagram Jana Samhati Samiti (PCJSS) expresses strong protest and condemnation over the setting fire and looting in the houses of indigenous Jumma peoples and massive communal attack.
It is learnt that centering recovery of a dead body identified to be of a driver of motor cycle Nurul Islam Nayon in Khagrachari, a belligerent procession of the Bengali Muslim settlers from Battya Para of Longadu upazila took to street under coverage of the army and police forces around 9:00 am. When the procession reached at Longadu upazila headquarters around 10:00 am, the settlers from within the procession began looting and setting fire in the Jumma houses and shops including the PCJSS office without any provocation. At this, 200 houses and shops belonging Jumma people got burnt down. Afterward, the Bengali Muslim settlers left for nearby Manikjorchara to attack the village under army and police force protection. At this, around 40 houses of the village were completely reduced to ashes.
The local administration promulgated Section 144 around 12:00 noon. But it was learnt that despite being so, the settlers moved ahead under army-police guard and set fire in the villages of South Manikjorechara, Battya Para, Boradam, etc. Jumma localities and these were being carried out at the time of origination of this report. In this attack, 30/35 houses in Battya Para and 40 houses in Boradom villages were burnt to ashes.
On receipt of the news of setting out a procession with the dead body last night, the local Jumma public representatives and leaders called on Longadu army zone and Longadu police station authorities to apprise their sense of danger and lacking of security. This morning, the 2nd-in-Command (2IC) Major Rafique of Longadu army zone assured on behalf of the army zone saying: “Staging procession is a democratic right of the settlers. They will exercise their right peacefully. No untoward incident will be allowed to happen. Hence, there is nothing to be worried.” Saying so, the commander assured the local Jumma public representatives and leaders, but it is a great irony that the settlers carried out organized attacks, looted and set fire in the Jumma houses and shops in all time presence of Longadu Zone Commander Lt. Col. Abdul Alim Choudhury psc, 2IC Major Rafique and Officer-In-Charge (OC) of Longadu police station Mominul Islam along with the joint forces.
It is learnt that the militant procession of the settlers was also participated by the national parties irrespective of their ideologies and differences, such as, ruling Awami League, BNP, Jatiya Party, Jamat-E-Islam etc. including the so-called Parbatya Chattagram Samo Odhikar Andolan (CHT Equal Rights Movement) and other upstarts organizations of the settlers. As part of their solidarity, Juba League, youth wing of the ruling party, organized a procession at 11:00 am today in Rangamati town in protest against killing of the said motor bike driver. It has been reported that anti-Jumma communal slogans were shouted during the demonstration.
Despite assurance given on part of the army and police authorities, the unabated looting and arson attack in the Jumma houses in the very presence of the authorities who ensured verbal assurance, it can safely be concluded that the Bengali Muslim settlers procession with the dead body has been a deliberate one in orchestration of the army-police forces and local leadership of the ruling party.
PCJSS considers this sort of organized communal and arson attack that happened today, has been conducted with the support of state machineries and local leadership of the ruling party to evict the Jumma people from their ancestral lands, to obstruct the implementation process of the CHT Accord, and over all to achieve their mean objective of turning the CHT region into a Muslim-dominated region.
The PCJSS, calls upon all the parties concerned to stop the army-police-backed communal and arson attacks by the Bengali Muslim settlers and to step up legal measures to bring all those army-police personnel and settlers responsible for the attack, looting and arson in the Jumma houses and shops, on an emergency basis.
In a press release signed by Assistant Information and Publicity Secretary of Parbatya Chattagram Jana Samhati Samiti (PCJSS) Sajib Chakma dated 1 June 2017, PCJSS strongly protested against illegal search in the house of Areise Marma, President of PCJSS Raikhali Union Branch and and ill-attempt of planting explosive materials inside the house, beating and undue harassment upon his family members.
PCJSS says, a BGB troop of 19 Battalion from Wagga BGB Zone and Dongchari BGB camp entered the No.1 Para of Narangirimukh under Kaptai Upazila of Rangamati Hill District and conducted a thorough search in the house of Areise Marma (55), President Mv Raikhali Union Branch of PCJSS at the wee hours of today, 1 June 2017. It was learnt that the BGB searching party handcuffed Mathuiching Marma, wife of Areise Marma and slapped their daughter Unuching Marma.
As per the statement on the occurrence, the BGB personnel surrounded Areise Marma’s house at 01:30 am and having waken up the inmates of the house, began their search and this continued till 4:00 am. The BGB searching party were looking for Areise Marma who was not at home by then. At certain point of their search, Unuching Marama, daughter of Areise Marma noticed the BGB personnel digging the inside floor by theft and planting some explosive materials taken out from their bag that they carried along with and soon she offered challenge saying that it was they who brought in those articles, which were never part of their household objects. The BGB person concerned, for being unsuccessful, got tempered and slapped Unuching Marma with might.
At certain phase of searching, the BGB personnel locked Mathuiching Marma, wife of Areise Marma with handcuff. They entered into the bedroom of Areise Marma’s son and daughter-in-law and muddled the household articles including the wears and all. They snatched the mobile phones from the family members and mounted heavy pressure upon them seeking to know whereabouts of the arms and show the cached arms to them. The BGB kept them under threatening of sending to jail and filing up cases against them, if they did not show the location of the arms. The BGB personnel did not let them go to bed and harassed all the family members outside their house till 4:00 am. While leaving around 4.00 am they BGB wrote a note in a piece of white paper stating that nothing was done to the family members and made Unuching put her signature in the paper.
The PCJSS strongly protests against such conspiring and ill-attempt of planting explosive materials inside the house of Areise Marma, President of PCJSS Raikhali Union Branch, beating and undue harassment upon his family members and demands immediate stop to such conspiring and illegal searching.
It is worthy to be cited here that a group of BGB personnel from Wagga BGB Zone arrested No.4 Raikhali Union Council member and also Vice-President of PCJSS Raikhali Union Committee and his son Kyawhing Hla Marma, President of Kaptai Thana Branch of Pahari Chhatra Parishad by unknowingly planting explosive materials inside their house on 31 March 2017. They were taken to Rangamati Amy Zone and brought out heavy inhuman torture upon them. The BGB and Army Zone authorities made the severely wounded father and son say what they were taught to confess to the local press media.
In recent days, searching operation elsewhere by army and BGB, filing up false-based and fabricated cases entangling the Jumma people including the PCJSS members engaged in the movement for rights and implementation of the CHT Accord, taking the arrested by secretly planting fire arms and sending to jail, meting out physical torture and harassment have become a very common scenario with intensity. The PCJSS has the ground to believe all this design to have been being directed to achieve mean objectives of identifying the just movement for implementation of the CHT Accord as an act of terrorism, destroying the dynamic leadership of PCJSS and over all, to obstruct the implementation process of the CHT Accord and to utter surprise to note that the atrocities upon the members of PCJSS and its associate organizations are being meted out by the army-BGB-police forces with the support of the ruling party, the misdeeds of which can never yield in wellbeing to the national interest.
The Indian government is harassing and attempting to silence the leaders of the Dongria Kondh tribe, famous for winning a “David and Goliath” court battle against a British mining giant.
The Dongria’s resistance to mining on their lands has continued since their landmark victory in 2014. Leaders including Dodi Pusika feel that the risk of mining remains as long as a refinery is operational at the foot of the Niyamgiri hills, an area which the tribe have been dependent on and managed for generations. A recent protest at the refinery was met with a baton-charge from police.
Pusika’s daughter-in-law, Kuni Sikaka, was arrested in the middle of the night of May 3 and accused of links with armed Maoist rebels. In exchange for her release, Dodi Pusika and other members of his family were made to “surrender” as Maoists and paraded in front of the media.
There has been an alarming increase in arbitrary, politically motivated arrests of tribal people who are resisting mining operations or government policies which endanger their lands and communities. Typically, those arrested are accused of Maoist links – usually without evidence.
Human rights activist and doctor Binayak Sen and tribal teacher Soni Sori have both been imprisoned for alleged Maoist connections and only subsequently released after national and international campaigns.
In April, the Home Ministry issued a report claiming that Maoists were “guiding the activities” of the Dongria’s organization, the Niyamgiri Suraksha Samiti (NSS). On the contrary, Maoists instructed the Dongria to boycott the very meetings at which they delivered their decisive “no” to mining.
Lingaraj Azad, a member of the NSS, stated, ‘We have always opposed violence – either State violence or Maoist violence. We will not bow down, but continue our struggle to protect Niyamgiri from being mined.’
Survival International is calling on the government to drop these fabricated charges, stop this persecution of the Dongria Kondh, respect their decision about the Niyamgiri mine, and to uphold their right to protect their lands and determine their own futures.
Featured image: A Baiga woman surveys the land in Amaniya panchayat, Chhattisgarh, much of which falls in the area of the proposed tiger corridor between Kanha and Achanakmar National Parks. In the tribal belt of central India, indigenous communities are being manipulated, evicted, and impoverished in the name of conservation. Photo: Heera Bai.
Throughout India today there are a total of 645 Adivasi communities recognized by the government. With a combined population of about 70 million, these communities maintain an impressive array of cultural identities, languages, customs and economies that go back millennia. But despite their resilience and their relative isolation from the perils of extreme extraction, Adivasis—the Hindi term for Indigenous Peoples—have not been able to escape any of the hardships that other Indigenous Peoples so often face around the world.
Across the Tribal Belt of Central India, where 90 percent of the population is still completely dependent on agriculture, indigenous communities are constantly being evicted from their ancestral lands to make way for development projects, industry, tourism and government-sanctioned conservation initiatives.
In the states of Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh, the Baiga community have faced a legacy of evictions that dates back more than 30 years. They are constantly being forcefully, and often illegally, relocated from their fields and villages that live in and around the borders of the Kanha and Achanakmar National Parks.
Women from Hirapur, a Baiga village which was relocated from Kanha National Park in the 1970s. “This lush green jungle – we can only see it, but we cant touch it. We cant take anything which was our traditions, our daily bread, it was everything to us. Our rights are written down in a book but we are illiterate.” Photo: Heera Bai
The Baiga are classified as a Particularly Vulnerable Tribal Group (PVTG) by the Indian Government, and the present adult generation had little access to education. The majority are illiterate and know no other language than their regional dialect. Their villages are incredibly isolated, accessible only by foot or motorbike on tracks through the forest. The distance between these villages makes cross-community solidarity or resistance logistically difficult, increasing their vulnerability to exploitation.
Until recently, the Baiga community was dependent on the jungle and the surrounding environment for survival. However, they existed in a symbiotic relationship with the forest generously providing them with everything they need including food, ‘jhari-booti’ (jungle medicine) and wood to build homes and tools. However, after decades of increasing rules and restrictions placed on their access to forest resources and the criminalisation of practices such as ‘bewar’ (shifting cultivation), their way of life has become increasingly difficult to maintain.
Noonsari, the makeshift village of displaced Baiga adivasi, in Mawai district Madhya Pradesh. This is a dhanoosna, a weapon used by their ancestors for hunting in the jungle. It takes a whole day to make a single arrow from peacock feather and cartilage. Photo: Heera Bai
“For us, only the jungle for us is good,” Bazaari Singh Baiga of the Peepatola village in Chhattisgarh said. “We don’t want fields or houses in another place. We want to stay living in the jungle, we don’t want to move to a city, where would we get wood from? We get everything we need from the jungle. If we moved from here we would die very quickly! We don’t buy things, we take everything from the jungle and make things ourselves with our own hands.”
“We don’t want fields or houses in another place. We want to stay living in the jungle, we don’t want to move to a city, where would we get wood from? We get everything we need from the jungle,” says Bazaari Singh Baiga. Photo: Heera Bai
All Baiga villages in Kanha National Park in Madhya Pradesh have been displaced. The evictions began in the 1970s and the last five villages were evicted in 2013. It is a legal requirement that villagers give free, informed consent to the relocation of their village, but consent is forcefully taken after threats, harassment and manipulation.
“The Forest Department came and told us that if we don’t leave willingly they will bring elephants to trample our homes and fields,” Shakti Baiga said. Baiga lived in Benda, one of the last villages in Kanha evicted in 2013. “They brought documents into the village and made us sign it. But we’re illiterate, how could we have known that we were signing our land away?
“I had 5 acres of land in Benda. Here, I could only afford to buy 1.5 acres to support my whole family. I could only afford this land because chances are, this village will be also displaced in the near future. A new [Bhoromdeo] Wildlife Sanctuary has now been created and the fences are starting to go up around the village… There are only two families from Benda here, I don’t see any of the original community anymore.”
“How could we have known that we were signing our land away?” asks Shakti Baiga. Photo: Heera Bai
There is a strong World Wildlife Federation (WWF) presence in both parks. The infamous panda logo is seen in across the region, from the gates of the national park to small forest villages on the edge of the buffer zone. Despite denying any vested interest in tourism in Kanha, they offer $8,995 ‘tiger tours.’’ Survival International has confronted them about their complicity in illegal evictions in the National Park, but they have denied the illegality of these displacements.
The Forest Rights Act, implemented in 2006, supposedly recognizes ‘any traditional right customarily enjoyed’ by any ‘forest dwelling Scheduled Tribes’ or ‘Traditional Forest Dwellers’. These rights include not only those of forest habitation, but also ‘the right to cultivate for their livelihood, the right to collect minor forest produce, the right to graze cattle, the right to convert leases or grants (pattas) to titles, the right to manage the community forest resources, and the right to enjoy any customary/traditional practice.’
The Forest Rights Act also stipulates procedures for evicting a community from its land. The Panchayat Extension to Scheduled Areas (PESA) means that the Gram Sabha (village level decision making body) must give full, informed consent to the displacement. The community are supposed to be given three options: 1) Reject the eviction and stay on their land, 2) Agree to the eviction, and accept 10 lakh Rs in compensation, or 3) Agree to eviction, and move to a government provided Resettlement and Rehabilitation site.
Maki Bai and Sombati Bai from Ajanpur (displaced, now squatting on land in Bhari village, Madhya Pradesh) “All the land that was ours before, where are we going to find that now? We won’t find it. we were the kings of the jungle, but here they treat us like dogs. It’s only sadness here. We can’t even taken wood. Our lives are like dogs!” Photo: Heera Bai
There is no evidence in any of the Baiga villages evicted in the Kanha National Park were given any choice in the relocation, no village was given the option to stay. Even when a rejection is given, this is manipulated; a ‘no’ at the village level gram sabha becomes a ‘yes’ at higher levels of government.
In recent years, the government has run out of state land around Kanha National Park to offer the evicted communities as part of a Resettlement and Rehabilitation package. Villagers from Johar, Benda and the three other villages that were evicted in 2013 received just 10 lakh per adult male, in compensation (women and children under 18 are entitled to nothing). Now, they are struggling to find land that they can afford to buy and the communities have scattered across the region.
In the second park, Achanakmar National Park in Chhattisgarh, there are still 19 tribal villages inside the Core Zone, and many more in the Buffer Zone. So far, five villages have been evicted from the Core, and five more have been given their eviction notice. Those evicted were rehabilitated in resettlement villages on the outskirts of the National Park, where the concrete houses and the dusty road is a far cry from the lush green surroundings they left behind. They were promised five acres of land, a home, a village school and two years of paid work. The fields are drying up after just two harvests, after two years the school building is still awaiting completion and the promised work is yet to materialise. Men of the village are starting to go to distant cities like Lucknow in order to find menial, exploitative daily wage labour.
“If we have no choice but to leave Rajak, then we will only be relocated to Jhiriya Behera,” says Ramcharan Baiga. Photo: Heera Bai
Villagers still living in the forest have seen the resettled villages and refuse the offer of relocation. In Rajak, a core zone village, the villagers are unanimous in their rejection of the displaced and the proposed resettlement site. “Of course we want to stay in our village,” Ramcharan Baiga, a residents of Rajak, said. “If we can stay, then we will. We have told the District Collector that we will not go to Bharatpur because the land there is not sufficient to support our families. If we have no choice but to leave Rajak, then we will only be relocated to Jhiriya Behera.” The District Collector is refusing this compromise and insisting that the villagers have no choice in their resettled location.
The National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA), Ministry of Environment and Forests, have recently and surreptitiously passed an order stating that:
“In absence (of) guidelines for notification of critical wildlife habitats, no rights shall be conferred in Critical Tiger Habitats which is duly notified under the Wildlife (Protection) Act 1972.”
The Forest Rights Act states explicitly that the rights conferred within apply to all forest areas without exception; therefore the attempt by the NTCA to bypass this is illegal, and will be devastating for the communities affected. There is mounting evidence that suggests that the presence of Adivasis in critical wildlife habitats, including tiger reserves, is in fact conducive to preserving and managing these areas of biodiversity.
In addition to this, there are also plans to create a ‘tiger corridor’ between Kanha and Achanakmar. There are over 700 villages in the proposed area, and many residents do not even hold the most basic land titles. Their evictions will be quick and they will have no grounds to resist. WWF and the state government have assured people that there will be no evictions in the area, but local people do not believe this at all. There are villages about every 7 km in the proposed corridor area, meaning that tigers will not be able to move through the ‘corridor’ without presenting a huge threat to villages. Therefore locals have come to conclusion that the reassurances they have had about there being no evictions are not true.
“That’s what they said when Kanha became a national park, they said the same for Achanakmar. They have already started putting up fences and restricting people’s access to the forest,” said Naresh Bunkar, a local man who was been working with adivasi communities in the region for 30 years. “It’s all lies. Slowly slowly, everyone here is going to be evicted.”
Heera Bai is a freelance journalist who works at Brush & Bow, a platform for creative journalism, working on documenting individual stories through art and music. Follow them at brushandbow.com and on Twitter @brushandbow2
