Echoes of the Dispossessed: Silence and Survival in Madhya Pradesh’s Adivasi Heartlands

Summary of this article

State policies have criminalised the Adivasi way of life; from the Wildlife Protection Act of 1972 to establishing the Central Proof Range, statutes are being used to turn ancestral forests into prohibited zones.

There is increasing militarisation in the forests, where land is being cleared for corporations and state ownership.

Women are at the forefront of the Adivasi and Dalit grassroots movements, which are challenging the silent violence of these statutes.

On a late summer afternoon, during a long phone call that drifted between memory and resilience, whether speaking of the Korkus and Rajbhars of Madhya Pradesh or the Adivasis of the Dangs in Gujarat, Irfan Engineer, the director of the Centre for the Study of Society and Secularism and a well-known activis