Analysis Of Forest Dwellers And Tribal Rights In India - The Lalgarh Movement (2008)

Akshita Rai, B.A. LLB. (Hons.) National Law University Delhi

ABSTRACT

The Lalgarh Movement was a tribal-led movement against Police atrocities that sparked in Lalgarh district of West Bengal in 2008. In 2008, a vehicle carrying the CM of Bengal along with other important ministers, while returning from the Jindal Steel Plant at Shalboni, came under attack by landmines. The CPI (Maoist) claimed responsibility for the attack and thus Operation Lalgarh began. What followed was a string of police atrocities upon the tribal and indigenous people of West Bengal who were called in for questioning, harassed and sometimes even molested without any solid grounds. While it is still unclear whether the attack was planned by actual Maoists, the poor hapless tribals were the ones that came into scrutiny. This is just one of the many instances of oppression against the indigenous peoples since India. This paper seeks to analyse, the rights of the indigenous people including the right to gather their sustenance and to live off the forests as granted to them by the current Indian legal regime. It also seeks to analyse the historical treatment of tribes and indigenous peoples in pre-independence times and the current attitude of the Indian state towards the indigenous people in the country. Lastly, it seeks to provide a need for balance between conservationism and traditionalism vis-à-vis development and modernism