For the first time since the 1990s, adivasis whose ancestral homelands are in the forests that are split between Kerala, Karnataka and Tamil Nadu, held a three-day meeting to discuss adivasi rights and build solidarities in the face of resistance from Karnataka’s Forest Department.
A knot of about 200 adivasis, most of them from different parts of Mysuru and Kodagu districts, and a small number of participants from Kerala and Tamil Nadu, held a two-day meeting at Nanachi Gate of the Nagarahole Tiger Reserve (NTR) in Kodagu district.
The organisers, Nagarahole Adivasi Jamma Paale Hakku Sthapana Samiti and the Federation of Grama Sabhas of Mysuru and Kodagu districts, had invited experts, including journalists, from all over the country to speak at the event. It took place between May 5 and 7 at Murkal, the location of a historic win for Karnataka’s adivasi communities.
The Taj Group of Hotels and the Karnataka government had planned to set up a resort in Murkal, inside the Nagarahole tiger reserve. However, adivasi resistance led to a court battle in which the Karnataka High court struck down the agreement between Taj and the state government.
When participants of the meeting gathered at the Veeranahosahalli gate of the reserve on May 5 to head towards Murkal, the Forest Department blocked access, making people wait for hours. Nithin D Rai, a scholar who studies the impact of conservation on local communities, was forced to go back to Bengaluru without addressing the gathering.
Inter-state solidarities
On May 6 and 7, adivasi community members and non-adivasi activists from all three states spoke of the issues they faced.
Meena, a Paniyar community member from Sreemadurai village in Nilgiri district in TN, told TNM that this was the first time that she had travelled for such an occasion even though the struggle for land is familiar to her.
She believes that the consultation is important because it helped her see that other people were also struggling even though there were differences.
In her village, around 495 families from the Paniyar community are fighting to get land in their name. Although a Christian landlord had given them land long ago, since 2011 Tamil Nadu’s forest department had been claiming that land as forest land, and had only given them rights to the patch of land their houses stood on, even though they had been cultivating.
“We have some rights in our village, houses, employment guarantee livelihoods, bank accounts from which we get our salaries… But the people here have it much harder. It is difficult to see how much they struggle. I’ll tell my people what I saw here so that we can do something about it,” Meena said.
Chowdamma, a elderly Jenu Kuruba woman, spoke of the impact the government’s rehabilitation scheme had had since people had been evicted from her ancestral village Bogepura in 2011 to a rehabilitation colony.
“They told us to leave our ancestral villages saying tigers will eat us, elephants will attack us. But we were fine when we lived in our village inside the forest. Living in the rehabilitation village is very difficult,” she said. The forest department prohibits them from performing religious rituals and gathering forest produce such as roots and tubers, she alleged.
Chowdamma said that 29 people from her ancestral village, many of them young, had died in the resettlement village Shettihalli. “There are barely any elders above the age of 40 (to pass on knowledge). We fear we will die if we continue to stay there,” Chowdamma said.
Gange, another elderly Jenu Kuruba woman, spoke in the Jenu Kuruba language to laughter and applause from the audience. “What does the forest department know about the forests? Do they know where they can find a particular tree? Where to find honey? Tubers? We, Jenu Kurubas, know. Our ancestors lived in these forests.”
Sannaiah and others had left their ancestral village Adugundi after the government promised to give them three acres of land, and cash compensation. “But all they did till now was lie. Nothing has been done so far,” he said, adding that people of his village had since written to the Forest Department conveying their intention to go back to their ancestral village.
“Three years ago we decided that we should go back. We are now trying to work out a way to go back,” he said.
Janardhan who belongs to the Oorali community in Kerala spoke of how the Muthanga agitation had sought self-rule and implementation of the Provisions of the Panchayats (Extension to the Scheduled Areas) Act 1996 in 2003. He said that the Forest Rights Act was the best means to secure land and community rights for tribal people.
On May 7, a graphic poster depicting the history of conservation policies in Nagarahole and their impact on the adivasi community was released.