'Our land, our rights': Nagarahole adivasis stake claim to ancestral forest lands

Bengaluru: As many as 34 hamlets in Nagarahole issued a declaration on Thursday to protest the failure of the successive governments to undo the "historic injustice" as promised by the Forest Rights Act (FRA), 2006 and assert their rights over the ancestral lands declared as a tiger reserve.

The Nagarahole Declarations 2026 released in an online event by the Nagarahole Adivasi Jamma Paale Hakku Sthapana Samiti, a collective of the hamlets, in collaboration with several adivasi rights bodies in south India included 11 assertions, starting with the supremacy of the FRA in the field of conservation.

The declaration comes a year after 52 families entered the Nagarahole forests to reclaim their ancestral rights over Karadikallu Attur Kolli. The forest department has maintained that the rights claims filed by the families were rejected by teh FRA.

However, the adivasis contended that the FRA is also a conservation law, and "it supersedes all inconsistent provisions in other laws", including the Wildlife (Protection) Act, 1972 and the Forest (Conservation) Act, 1980.

"Our deities are trees, stones and animal spirits. Our clans have deep spiritual interconnections across the forests. Our songs name every hill, every sacred area, every burial ground. We have safeguarded the tiger as our sacred being long before there was a 'Project Tiger'," they said in the preamble to the Declarations.

Rehabilitation pending

The government has framed policies to relocate villages located inside tiger reserves on a voluntary basis. However, a high-court appointed committee in July 2014 reported that a total of 6102 people lived in adivasi settlements of Nagarahole Tiger Reserve. It expressly recommended the "historicity of displacement" while implementing the FRA.

Over the years, the adivasis, mainly Jenu Kurubas, have repeatedly noted that governments have abandoned them after "uprooting them" to create inviolate areas.

"The view of conservation that FRA promotes is the one that rejects the colonial fortress model in favour of the recognition of the historical, cultural and embodied relationship of forest dwelling communities with forests and forest resources. It is the same relationship that the systems rely upon to identify tiger habitats, critical habitats, plant species scientists rely on forest dwellers for documentation.

'Our land'

Shivu J, leader of the Samiti who released the report in Nagarahole, said the ancestral land of Jenu Kurubas has been declared by others without their consent. "First it was declared a reserved forest, then as a tiger reserve. But it is us who have a right to declare this land. We have the right to govern our lands in which we have lived for generations. The law (FRA) also recognises it. So, we are not requesting the state to give us our rights. We are reclaiming them," he said.

Radhika Chitkara, Assistant Professor of Law, National Law School of India University, said the FRA answers the larger question of who is the custodian of the forests.

"FRA promotes a view of conservation that rejects the colonial fortress model in favour of the recognition of the historical, cultural and embodied relationship of forest dwelling communities with forests and forest resources," she said, adding that it is the same relationship that systems rely upon to create knowledge about wildlife and their habitats.