THE ASIAN INDEPENDENT
PRESS INVITE
Date: 2nd June 2025
On 5th May 2025, 52 families of the Jenu Kuruba Adivasi/Indigenous community reclaimed their homelands by asserting their ancestral rights vested under India’s Forest Rights Act 2006. The Jenu Kuruba families were forcefully evicted from their village, Karadikallu Aturu Kolli, 40 years ago by the Karnataka Forest Department. It is pertinent to note that several villages like Karadikallu were forcefully evicted from Nagarahole forests in the name of wildlife conservation and their ancestral lands and forests were arbitrarily declared as Nagarahole National Park (estd: 1988) and Nagarahole Tiger Reserve (estd: 1999). These evicted families were pushed into slavery overnight in the coffee plantations located just outside the park boundaries.
Since 5th May, there have been several relentless attempts by the Forest Department and Tiger Reserve authorities to evict the villagers from Karadikallu Aturu Kolli. On 14th May, the Forest Department put up a board at the entrance to Karadikallu Aturu Kolli, which stated, “As per Section 27 of WLPA 1972, trespassing in a Tiger Reserve is a punishable offence”. Undeterred by the forest department’s threats and intimidation, the Jenu Kurubas successfully conducted their Gram Sabha (village council meeting) on their ancestral lands after 40 years on May 20th. In the said Gram Sabha meeting, the people resolved as an exercise of their ancestral as well as constitutional rights to start setting up their traditional huts in the village. The people also decided to put up a board next to that of the Forest Department’s, declaring their rights under the Indian Constitution, Forest Rights Act 2006, Wildlife Protection Act 1972 and stated therein:
“Under Section 9 of the Forest Rights Act 2006: Our forests, our lands, our rule”.
“Nagarahole Tiger Reserve has been declared unlawfully, and no due process has been followed. The Karadikallu Attur Kolli Haadi Gram Sabha has passed a resolution in this regard on 30/06/2023. The adjacent signboard is in violation of Sections 4 (2) and 4
(5) of the Forest Rights Act, 2006 and Section 38 (v) and 38 0 (2) of the Wildlife Protection Act 1972. It is in violation of Articles 14, 19 (1)(g), and 21 of the Fundamental
Rights and 300 A of the Constitution of India. You are now on Jenu Kuruba land. All should intimate the Karadikallu Attur Kolli Gram Sabha before entering the village.”
Spanning nearly a million sq. km of India’s landmass, Tiger Reserves in India are fast expanding in magnitude and might. India’s tiger conservation model is deeply casteist, racist and inherently rooted in the colonial framework of uprooting Indigenous communities who have coexisted with animals and forests for generations, turning their ancestral lands and forests into ‘wild’ tourism destinations for profit. India’s tiger reserves are being emptied of people – nearly 65,000 families are going to be evicted from their forests. Why? – because India’s so-called wildlife “experts” – the “authoritarian biologists” influenced by the conservation cartels (World Wide Fund for Nature, Wildlife Conservation Society, Wildlife Trust of India, International Fund for Animal Welfare, among others)– believe that tigers, humans and forests cannot co-exist. The National Tiger Conservation Authority’s (NTCA) order of 19th June 2024 to expedite evictions of villages from tiger reserves reiterates this colonial dogma. Recently, on 12th May 2025, the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD) raised serious concern on the significant risk of displacement and forced evictions of forest-dwelling Indigenous Peoples in India.
The exoticness of forests and wildlife might appear as consumable commodities, but do we even comprehend the everyday violence that undergirds this Great Indian Tiger Show?. Extractivism around forests and wildlife has a long history in India. Whether it was the colonial model of game- hunting widespread until the 1970s or the continuing violence being inflicted upon Adivasi/Indigenous peoples in the name of tigers and tourists, this trajectory has much to reveal about the dark underbelly of India’s conservation industry.
In this regard, we appeal to journalists from across the globe to listen to Jenu Kuruba community leaders, academics, researchers, lawyers and solidarity activists on the issues of forced eviction and dispossession of indigenous communities in Nagarahole and the reality of fortress conservation across India.
The press conference is scheduled via Zoom on 2nd June,2025 at 1:30 PM IST, 9:00 AM BST, 4:00 AM EST, 4:00 PM PHT. We hope to conclude the press conference with a 20-25 minute question-and-answer session with the journalists joining the meeting.
Please use the following link to join the press conference: https://zoom.us/j/99588955418?pwd=3amFw9L9yL0MIROu7ywrIxBa1kJiRA.1
Meeting ID: 995 8895 5418
Passcode: 311079
Contact:
- Aishwarya, PUCL, Phone/WhatsApp: +91 9900047744 [email protected]
- Pradyumna, CNAPA, Phone/WhatsApp: +91 6370544968 [email protected]
