HTTP://ForestMovement.Org

About Us

The process leading to the inception of the Jharkhand Save the Forest Movement (JJBA: झाडखंड जंगल बचाओ आंदोलन) in 2000 was initiated by Prof. Sanjay Bosu Mullick along with Mr. Alistair Bodra and some activists of the Jharkhand autonomy movement. Dr. Ram Dayal Munda was a great source of inspiration and cooperation.

The immediate goal of the Jharkhand autonomy movement was to fulfill the millenarian dreams of the indigenous peoples of Jharkhand cultural region by curving out a separate administrative province within the Indian state. The long drawn struggle marked by supreme sacrifice and immense suffering of the people finally resulted in the formation of a separate province euphemistically called Jharkhand in 2000. The political power was not transferred to the people but to those who opposed the movement under the leadership of the non-IP moneybags and anti-IP political leaders. The JJBA was formed to carry on the unfinished task of the one and half century old IP movement for regaining ownership and management rights over their ancestral land and forest.

The movement for forest rights that began with five individuals in 2000 now has the following of more than 20,000 steady members. The Central and the State governments both have been forced to make remarkable changes in their policies regarding the rights of the IPs in forests. The JJBA has developed a strong IP leadership to monitor the implementation of these policies. A new dawn of people’s initiative to claim and assert rights over their natural resources has set in Jharkhand under it.
However, the IPs’ struggle will have to go a long way to ultimately achieve their right full place in the sun. The people will have to continue the application of ‘the twelve wisdom and thirteen crafts’, as they call their strategy in the common parlance, in their engagement with the state, since whatever is achieved in the state process is often diluted or even taken away by the state mechanism.

Therefore, JJBA is determined to continue its struggle with further mobilization, capacity building and assertion of rights associated with cultural identity.

Background of the JJBA movement
a. Jharkhand: abode of the Adivasis
Jharkhand is the ancient abode of the IPs, called the adivasis in India. It bears the marks of the presence of the Paleolithic people, transition of the Paleolithic to Neolithic societies and emergence of primary state out of IP matrix. In the colonial and postcolonial periods the IPs have gone through the process of forced peasantisation leaving behind the swidden and the world of magic to their virtual extinction. A tiny class of IP elite and a growing contingent of industrial and construction workers and miners have emerged. But the overwhelming majority of the IPs is still living in the rural and forested areas clinging to their Neolithic traditions albeit with marked sprinkling of Christian and Hindu elements of contradictory cultural traits.

Pages: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9