Agenda

Prof.ssa Devleena Ghosh
Director, UTS-IOSARN (Indian Ocean and South Asia Research Network)
University of Technology Sydney

Nell'ambito della rassegna Meeting India Series

Entrata libera fino ad esaurimento posti.

In recent years, adivasis (indigenous people) in Chattisgarh’s Surguja district have been resisting the encroachment of their lands and forests by coal mining corporations. Such developments have subsumed forest dwellers’ rights to the necessities of power generation and caused displacement and loss of land and livelihoods. This presentation examines the historical status of forest dwelling adivasis and the appropriation of their lands, first by colonial rulers in the 19th century and then by postcolonial governments.  It discusses the responses of a community of adivasis in Surguja to the imminent takeover of their land for new mines and analyses their resistance and resilience in an aggressively extractive environment. These responses are mainly local, but tap into a burgeoning environmental activism at the national level. They also contain an increasing awareness of the need to engage with global environmental movements in a context of increasing government surveillance and hostility towards such organisations.