Raipur: On February 7, noisy scenes erupted in the Chhattisgarh assembly. Congress legislators protested the felling of 15,000 trees on December 21, 2023 in the Hasdeo-Arand forests to clear the way for a coal mining project. It was an example, not just of a political tussle between two parties but, of the way a peoples’ movement – the Hasdeo Aranya Bachao Sangharsh Samiti – has exerted power and gained momentum.
Led by Adivasis in the Hasdeo-Arand forest of Chhattisgarh against coal mining by Adani Enterprises Limited, the movement has been ongoing for some 13 years. The latest trigger was logging – cutting, processing, and moving trees – conducted over 137 hectares for phase two of coal mining in the Parsa East and Kete Basan coal blocks. Allocated to the power generating company Rajasthan Rajya Vidyut Utpadan Nigam, the Adani Group was awarded the contract as ‘mine developer and operator’.
The tree felling occurred with the support of a massive police force and Adivasi villagers were detained for the day. Protests erupted and on January 7, 2024, barricades were erected in Raipur, Bilaspur and elsewhere to prevent hundreds from participating in the rallies. Nonetheless support has been pouring in well beyond the local level. The cry of “Hasdeo Bachao” has found resonance in neighbouring Bastar, and has transcended state boundaries, finding echoes in Madhya Pradesh too.
Alok Shukla, one of the founding members of the struggle and convenor of the Chhattisgarh Bachao Andolan, an umbrella body for movements across Chhattisgarh, points out how despite repression, the movement has garnered solidarity from a vast cross section of society. These include farmers’ organisations, mine workers, environmentalists, and movements against iron ore mining, among others. It attracted the urban-centric population of Chhattisgarh. Shukla spoke of doctors trying to cross the barricade at Raipur during the protest. As a mark of how widespread the protest has been, he also highlighted the situation of a “gau rakshak” or cow protector who doesn’t subscribe to the politics of Hindutva but is concerned that cattle will suffer if the forest disappears.
Alok Shukla is one of the founding members of the struggle. Photo: Freny Manecksha
Such widespread support, Shukla said, comes because of the powerful Adivasi articulation of beliefs and culture which resonates with wider issues.
“It is not about trees being cut in one particular village or about opposing one project. Emphasis is on the forest as a whole, whereby felling of trees or the dying river reflects destruction of a rich ecosystem and crucial wider environmental impact. Climate change and the survival of the planet – these are issues the whole world is talking about,” he said.
Stretching across 170,000 hectares, the Hasdeo-Arand is one of India’s most pristine and contiguous tracts of forest. It houses Gond Adivasis and is home to several plant and animal species, many of which are endangered. It is the catchment area for the perennial Hasdeo river that flows into the Mahanadi and provides water to the Surguja district.
The forest contains a coalfield of over a billion metric tonnes of coal located close to the surface and easy to mine. These coal blocks have become the flash point despite it once having been declared a ‘no-go’ zone by the government.
Political party lines have blurred when it comes to taking a stand on the mining and tree felling. Both the Congress and Bharatiya Janata Party trade charges over which government first allowed it. Shukla points out that what is remarkable, though, is how it was the movement’s dogged determination which brought about the unanimous resolution passed on July 26, 2022, in the assembly. Both the BJP and the Congress which was then in power, asked the Union government to ensure that no mining activities would be carried out in Hasdeo.
It is significant, he adds, how Adivasis up against powerful forces have been able to counter arguments on development and put out their own narratives based on their vision and ethics.
Also read: Hasdeo Arand Deforestation Raises Questions of Adivasi Justice for Chhattisgarh’s First Tribal CM
As Arunopol Seal, a senior development consultant on desirable change, wrote in Sahapedia, Adivasis have a symbiotic relationship with the forest, and see it as a living being. Forests provide livelihood and sustenance. Adivasis have so far kept away from seeing them as circuits of capital. They envisage themselves as guardians protecting the environment.
Exemplifying this holistic view of the forest, Sunita Porte, a fiery young woman from Fatehpur village, spoke to me of how the rivulet that flows across their region feeds the Hasdeo river. “There is water all year round. Our opposition to mining protects this river that provides water for the farmers. Korba, with its numerous power plants, is dependent on that plentiful water. What will happen if the river dries up with tree felling and mining?”
Significantly, farmers of the region were among those who attempted to take out a rally in support on January 7. At the national level, Bhartiya Kisan Sangh leader Rakesh Tikait spoke out strongly and vowed support for the struggle.
Sunita also voiced concern for wildlife, and for the man-animal conflict. In typical Adivasi narration, akin to that of a fable, she said, “It is not only us whose homes will be uprooted if the mining continues but wildlife too. Where will the birds and others go?”
She spoke of a small herd of elephants coming out of the forest, of a lone elephant separated from the herd, roaming close to people’s homes after the trees were cut. “We heard they damaged some houses. People say the houses were those of agents of the company.” ‘Company’ is the word commonly used for the Adani Group in these areas.
Another anecdote – that of a bear giving birth to cubs near someone’s home because it had to flee the forest – was narrated not just by Sunita but has become something of folklore, gaining currency on X, formerly Twitter, to bolster the meta-narrative of displacement.
It was concern for this wildlife which spurred Adivasi youth Yogesh Markam to cycle across neighbouring Bastar district to raise awareness of Hasdeo, as his act of solidarity. A local daily featured his journey.
The local daily in Bastar carried a photograph of Adivasi youth Yogesh Markam who was on a cycle trip rallying support for the Hasdeo struggle.
Such smaller stories are indicative of the manner in which the movement is spurring Adivasi youth to tell their own stories, in their individualistic ways. “They are leading the campaigns in social media. It is their voices that are being amplified,” said Shukla.
Jacinta Kerketta, acclaimed Adivasi poet and activist, arrived at the dharna site where protesters have been sitting in, in a relay, for over 700 days, to show her support. Since her visit, she has posted on social media as well.
In Kanker, North Bastar, Rubjee Salaam, an Adivasi law student, took time out between studying for his impending exams to lead a small rally and hand a memorandum to the Collector.
Disputing the popular notions of development, he told me, “Why are Adivasis who lived in isolation and without any government intervention, coming out on the streets? Why do we oppose road building? It is because we know it is land acquisition for mining that is at the core, not vikas [development] or any yojana [public scheme] agenda.”
Hasdeo, he said, is a fight for all of Chhattisgarh, for central India and the nation. “Saving it is our collective responsibility.”
Dual strategy
Another notable feature of the Hasdeo movement is the way it has adopted a dual strategy. Beside civil disobedience through protests, rallies, padayatras, and dharnas it has sought to challenge the state and the Adani Group through the assertion of rights and guarantees for Adivasis under the constitution. It is also a struggle where women have been very forceful and displayed their capabilities.
Prasaddobai Porte, in her sixties, whose son Jainandan Porte is the sarpanch of Ghatbharra, one of the project-affected villages, spoke in Chhattisgarhi of this legal route. She traced the journey from days of a determined “Ni chhaiyet, ni diyat (Don’t want compensation, won’t give land)” to the assertion of “Hamri jameen (the forest is our land).” It is an example of how simple determination was later buttressed by information and political consciousness. This includes being familiar with the Forest Rights Act and the Panchayats Extension to Scheduled Area (PESA) Act which gives some degree of self-governance to people in certain areas. Gram Sabhas or village councils need to give written consent for mining or any other project to be undertaken.
Legal activist Shalini Gera explains how an attempt to deploy the Forest Rights Act, a landmark legislation, was made.
“People have been living in forests for years and because of jhum cultivation they sometimes moved from one area to another but there was no question of pattas or formal titles. In the 1900s the British brought the notion that forests belonged to the sovereign, nationalizing it so to speak, and prohibiting shifting agriculture and collection of forest produce. People who lived in forests were seen as encroachers.”
This continued after independence. Adivasis’ activities were seen as criminal even though their lives revolved around the forest. They were at the mercy of the forest department.
In 2006 the Forest Rights Act was passed. It, said Gera, acknowledged that “forest dwellers” who had access to the forests till December 2005 already possessed the rights to the forests. Authorities created in the Act would record these rights that already existed. It was also path-breaking legislation, she adds, because of the concept of community rights. People could stake claim on the forest that they had been accessing till the cut-off date.
The Act was notified in January 2008 and whilst people were familiar with individual rights it was only around 2013 onwards, said Gera, that community forest rights came to be understood and claims made.
“Ghatbarra in Hasdeo forest, slated for mining, was probably the first village in Chhattisgarh to make the claim of community forest resource rights (CFRR). The CFRR title, giving the Gram Sabha the right to manage the forest within its traditional boundary, was given in September 2013. Villagers opposed to the mining were now asserting to the Adani firm when it came to do surveys that the forest land belonged to them and not the company.”
The mining site which has ravaged the land. Efforts to begin phase two are on with the latest round of tree felling by the newly elected BJP government despite a joint resolution in the assembly on July 26, 2022, asking the Centre to desist from mining. Photo: Freny Manecksha
On January 8, 2016, the village received a notice from the district collector, divisional forest officer and assistant commissioner of tribal development that their CFRR had been cancelled. The Adani Group had complained that they received forest clearance for mining before the villagers staked their claim.
Legal experts in forest rights opine that the law is very clear that the rights are vested in the people from the very day the Act came into being and not when they received the title.
It has also been argued the district collector did not bother to check or clarify the company’s pretext of having received forest clearance.
In fact, forest clearance had been set aside by the National Green Tribunal (NGT) in 2014 and whilst the Supreme Court in its partial stay of the NGT order allowed mining, it did not stay the part related to forest clearance. Gera, who is representing the villagers in the case in the high court says this leaves one in a very grey zone, where mining is allowed despite there being no valid forest clearance order.
The matter of community forest rights has been in the high court since 2016 but no finding has yet been recorded.
Duping
The other charge by the villagers increasingly being reiterated is that of fake Gram Sabha proceedings. Villagers have charged that the mandatory written assents under PESA for Hariharpur, Salhi and Fatehpur are fake. Ghatbharra in 2011, and again in 2021, had passed a resolution in its Gram Sabha proceedings opposing mining.
In 2018 when people came to learn that fake signatures had been collected, complaints were filed in the police station and also with the collector but no action was taken.
In October 2021, hundreds of villagers from Hasdeo made a 300-km foot march over 10 days to Raipur to demand a probe into the way land acquisition and forest clearances went ahead despite their complaints of false dealings and fake Gram Sabha proceedings.
They met Bhupesh Baghel, then chief minister, and Governor Anusuiya Uikey who assured them a probe would be ordered. But nothing was done.
Says Sunita, “We have met whoever we could from the administration. Collector, tehsildar. We have knocked on every possible door of justice. They hear us out silently and do nothing. We met T.S. Singh Deo [former minister of energy and later deputy CM in the Congress-led government] who assured us there would be no more tree felling. But then the BJP formed the government and just days later, it has begun.”
Nandai Kumari Portai is a feisty member of the movement from its earliest days. Photo: Freny Manecksha
Also participating in the padayatra of 2021 was Nandai Kumari Porte of Ghatbarra, a feisty old lady, possibly in her late sixties. She was eager to share her vibrant memories of the struggle. Whilst she was fuzzy on exact dates she did convey vividly the emotions and anecdotes of a people in protest.
“I remember when the Company first arrived in the village. The administration set up a tent, gave us chai biskoot which we refused and tried to talk to us.”
She credits the late Hira Singh Markam, Adivasi leader of the Gondwana Gantantra Party, with arousing political consciousness and educating them on the effects of mining and the market value of their lands. Thereafter she helped mobilize others and attended many rallies affirming they would not give up their land. They sat in dharna in Fatehpur and again at Hariharpur.
She says when they met former chief minister Baghel she complained about how hundreds of their trees were cut. In unequivocal tones she told him the Company had to go. “Company baandhe apna boriya bistar, loha lakkad. Chale jai apna des…Nahi jayega toh kaatenge usske pahiyae. Hum hai Adivasi, Maarange chhar lathi.”
(The Company should pack up all its belongings and materials and go back to its own lands. Otherwise, we will cut off its wheels and wield our lathis. We are Adivasis!)
She dismisses the Company’s plans for re settlement at Basan in the small one-bedroom house kitchen colony that has been constructed. “Nobody stays there and nobody knows where the people of Kete went after they were displaced.”
At the dharna site just a short distance from the mine, where men and women have sat in relay for over two years, the men talked of the extreme repression they faced on December 21, 2022 before the tree felling operations began.
Protesters have been sitting in dharna at a particular site in the forest, close to the mining area, for over 700 days. They take it in turns to come and sit and it is the venue at which all other supporters and media persons come. Photo: Freny Manecksha
Ramlal Porte narrated how around 5 am, a policeman in uniform and some others in plainclothes forced their way into his house. Holding him by the hand they announced he was being taken to the police station to meet with a senior officer.
“I asked them, ‘Why at this hour?’. When my wife tried to make a video on the phone they stopped her. Seven of us were detained including two sarpanchs and two deputies. They treated us as if we were hardened criminals, not even allowing us to wear chappals or put on clothes at that hour of the morning.”
A tight cordon was thrown around the villages with blockades to prevent the villagers from accessing the tree felling site on December 21. “They were not allowing us to come out of our houses,” said Sunita. “Those who tried to get there were beaten. We have been peaceful, followed the law and they have taken advantage of that.”
A small banner at the dharna site carries the message of the Adivasis. Photo: Freny Manecksha
In the latest effort to keep up the momentum, protestors formed a human chain during Rahul Gandhi’s Bharat Jodo Nyay Yatra that passed through Surguja district of Chhattisgarh on February 13. The protesters met and interacted with him briefly.
I asked them at the protest site how they would continue to resist the combined clout of the state and the Adani conglomerate.
One of them replied, “When your very existence is in peril you don’t wait to see how much power they have or not. You see them as looters. Fighting back is our duty.”
As I left, I could see above the makeshift shelter a small poster fluttering in the breeze. It said:
“Jal, jungle, jameen ka raksha kaun karega. Hum karenge. Hum karenge.”
Who will protect the waters, the jungle and the lands? We will, we will.
Freny Manecksha is an independent journalist from Mumbai who is interested in human rights and development issues.