NEW DELHI, Mar 21 (IPS) – While a local community prides itself on caring for a sensitive biodiverse region, and despite centuries-long stewardship of the Kaziranga, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, the authorities rebuff—sometimes aggressively—their attempts to remain involved.
Now the broader community, living close to tiger conservancies, has the threat of a wholesale eviction to contend with too.
“We take pride in the fact that the communities around Kaziranga have sacrificed so much to preserve this special biodiverse region. It is one of the areas where communities have sacrificed to protect one-horned rhinoceroses, tigers, and elephants and share a symbiotic relationship with them,” Pranab Doyle, convenor of Greater Kaziranga Land and Human Rights Committee and founder of All Kaziranga Affected Communities’ Rights Committee, says.
“But the forest department or the modern conservation industry is very antithetical to the way communities look at shared spaces.”
Kaziranga, a national park and a tiger project in Assam, India, is famous for the conservation of the Indian one-horned rhinoceros.
According to an article published in 2019, 102 one-horned rhinoceroses were killed in various parks in India between 2008 and 2018. There are also statistics for the number of poachers killed (40) and arrested (194). A more recent article says that in 2022 no rhinos were killed in the park. Rhinos in Asia and Africa are often poached for their horns, which are used in traditional medicine in some Asian countries.
Despite the success in combating poaching, the community faces conflict due to the wildlife authorities’ strong-arm tactics.
The community says there was a time when wildlife sanctuaries were used for grazing animals, as playgrounds, and for food baskets, and the community shared their crops with the animals living there.
However, because of the power vested in the forestry department, only wildlife or the department’s agenda is given consideration, the community says.
“This has led to a very militarized process in Kaziranga where multiple lines of military establishments are set in the name of protecting wildlife. There are special task forces, forest battalions, commando task forces, and the use of modern techniques of vigilance and armory in the name of poaching,” Doyle says.
Consequently, authorities often resort to victimizing people.
In 2010, a special power was given to the Indian Forest Service, where they were given immunity from prosecution when confronting poachers.
“In the year 2010, the Government conferred the power to use arms by forest officials and immunity to forest staff in the use of firearms under Section 197 (2) of the CrPC, 1973,” according to a press statement released in 2017.
Doyle disputes the official statistics and claims that since 2010, more than 100 people have died because of this law. He says that although there should be executive magistrate inquiries into it legally, there have been none.
According to the Oxpeckers Investigative Environmental Journalism website, investigations have included probes into poaching syndicates.
The strong-arm tactics used by the authorities result in a tense relationship.
“We have been constantly fighting against it, and as a result, the forest department treats us as their enemies. Instead of looking at us as people whose rights have been violated and giving us the opportunity to dialogue, they are treating us as criminals and have put multiple cases on us,” Doyle says. “We cannot go fishing in our own lakes, cultivate our own lands, and collect some basic minor forest products, which are traditionally a part of our culture, thereby annihilating everything that is our identity.”
According to the community, the authorities often cancel public meetings despite prior commitments and retaliate with legal action when pressured through mass agitation.
What is more concerning is the eviction of indigenous communities from around tiger protection reserves by the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA).
Doyle claims that they want to evict 64,000 families from 54 tiger reserves in the country. Since 1972, the Indian government has evicted 56,247 families from 751 villages across 50 tiger reserves, according to the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) data from 2019. The move has led to petitions and protests.
He says the law doesn’t give them the authority to pass an order of this magnitude.
“We as communities who live with tigers, elephants, and rhinos and have been living there for generations, strongly demand this order be revoked. It should be immediately taken into cognizance by all the bodies that claim to protect Indigenous rights and make the forest department accountable for it.”
Dr. Ashok Dhawale, President, of the All India Kisan Sabha and Polit Bureau Member of the Communist Party of India (Marxist), says the exclusionary forest conservation measures that began during British colonization continued after independence.
“The (colonialist) government took control of the forests, seizing them from our tribal people. Although the forests had always belonged to the tribes, who protected them for generations, independence brought little change.
People expected that the forest lands would be returned to the tribal communities, but what was enacted was the Forest Conservation Act of 1980.
This law focused on conserving forests, not on protecting the rights of the people who had safeguarded them for centuries.
“To address this historical injustice—explicitly acknowledged in the act’s preamble—the Forest Rights Act was passed by Parliament in 2006 after immense struggles across the country. This landmark legislation sought to ensure that Adivasis (tribals) were granted ownership of the lands they have tilled and nurtured for generations.”
But since then, India has introduced laws and amendments that undermine the rights of tribal and forest communities. The Jan Vishwas—People’s Promise, (Amendment of Provisions) Act, 2023, aims to decriminalize and rationalize offenses to promote trust-based governance and facilitate ease of living and doing business. However, it also significantly enhances the powers of forest officers, raising concerns about its impact on the rights and livelihoods of these vulnerable communities.
Another major amendment, the Forest Conservation Act (FCA), 1980, now known as Van Sanrakshan Evam Samvardhan Adhiniyam, enforced from December 1, 2023, has emphasized national security in the guise of implementing projects of national importance leading to heavy militarization in the respective areas, Dhawale says.
Madhuri Krishnaswami from Jagrit Adivasi Dalit Sangathan (Awakened Tribal Dalit Community), Madhya Pradesh, says that all these legislative changes are designed to undermine the Forest Rights Act 2006.
Krishnaswami says that capital-driven business expansion harms the climate, yet ecologically sensitive communities are unfairly burdened with the blame.
Doyle adds that the relationship of indigenous communities with the land is deeply rooted.
“The survival and health of the land and environment depend on people acting as stewards to care for them—a fact proven throughout history. Instead of empowering communities to preserve and improve their environment, the state is evicting them under the pretext of climate degradation. This approach must be entirely rethought and redesigned to prioritize and support the very people who hold the solutions to combating climate change.”
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