Mapusa, Goa: “Ye pitai khayi hui auratein hain (These are the women who’ve got beaten up).” That is how we are introduced to Nandaben Nayak, Navliben Nayak and Kamlaben Nayak, all in their 50s, in Devalikuan village in Gujarat’s Dahod district. The dramatic description elicits peels of laughter from the women standing around.
The Nayak women are all from the Bhil Adivasi community in southern Gujarat and they were allegedly beaten up by forest officials for shielding their husbands, accused of claiming ownership of land in the village without any documentary evidence. This tussle has been at the heart of a long-standing conflict between the state’s forest department and its tribal forest-dwellers: the department sees them as encroachers while they claim traditional rights to till the land and gather its produce.
The three women are married into the same Nayak family whose homes are among the last before the dense forest begins. They had just finished their lunch of makai roti (corn bread), cabbage and chilli pickles when they sat down to tell their stories.
“Our ancestors have been here since the time of kings,” says Nandaben referring to the practice of veth, which allowed the royalty to seek voluntary labour from villagers in return for the right to live and work on forest lands. The free labour was used for construction, collecting forest produce, agriculture, tending to the royal retinue and animals.
Today, these families are allowed to live and farm on these lands as per the Forest Rights Act, 2006. But in our investigations across 16 villages in eight districts of the state, we heard many women complain about persistent harassment by forest officials despite official orders establishing their family’s land ownership.
Forest officials, however, have denied these allegations. Jaipal Singh, the state’s Additional Principal Chief Conservator of Forests (Land), maintained that officials intervene only when there is inadequate evidence to back an applicant’s land ownership claim or when the claims have been rejected.
“Even after eviction, a lot of people have tried to encroach on forest land. Even after regularisation [introduction of the FRA], encroachment has increased 3-4 times. When satellite imagery etc show that there was no cultivation on a piece of land and no occupation, they have to be evicted. Nothing can be done about that,” says Singh.