Prime Minister Narendra Modi is on a two-day visit to Assam with his arrival at Kaziranga National Park scheduled for March 8.
Dear Mr. Prime Minister,
Hope you are doing fine.
We, the people living near Kaziranga National Park and Tiger Reserve, would like to send you our respect and greetings. We take great pride in our role as the wardens of this land since time immemorial – long before kingdoms, empires, states, and governments were formed – and we still continue to take utmost care of our space.
Your coming has ushered in a sense of great festivity as we see hundreds of armed police personnel moving around the area. It feels like we are in an Orwellian act. Would that be the norm for our future? They are frisking people and putting up roadblocks and barricades in many places. It seems like it is becoming a norm as we see different flag marches by police and commandos in different parts of the country and the television channels air them with much pride and pomp as if it is something good.
We wonder why not much of the camera goes to the other side where people could express their anguish of forceful displacement and human rights violations that also take place in Kaziranga. However, we keep hearing that in ‘Amrit Kaal’ everything is rosy and bright. Perhaps we have no idea of what it is as we rarely see much of what the developed and rich world looks like. We are happy that if you take a keen look, you will see what rich land with poor people looks like due to lopsided development for a few.
Our chief minister, Dr. Himanta Biswa Sarma, seemed exuberant about your visit. He has taken the onus of saying out loud that his government has brought a prime minister to Kaziranga National Park for the first time to spend time with the biodiversity. Hopefully, the golden tiger, that our chief minister has been boasting about, will give a sighting to our royal guest.
There was also a rumour that you would be staying at Vaani Greens, a place specially curated by our honourable chief minister’s family. We are often enticed by the beautiful pictures that come out of the sprawling tea garden and the cottages that look like igloos, set against the backdrop of an animal corridor. The media also keeps saying that it’s a part of the Kanchanjuri Animal Corridor, but it’s for the powerful to decide, who are we? Oh, the irony of our times, people are gossip-mongers and we know that you would be staying in a government property in Kohora – the epicentre of tourism in Kaziranga.
Respected prime minister, we wish you could stay in the Grand Hyatt hotel, which is being built on Adivasi/tea tribe land without any form of consultation or compensation. We are also confused about how a five-star hotel with 120 rooms can be built on farmlands which were also used by elephants as their corridor. We are concerned about what is happening behind your back.
The chief minister and his accomplice, the health minister of Assam, share boundaries of their huge gated and fenced properties in Kaziranga, but we, the poor and unwanted, are finding it difficult to protect our legal rights to the little lands that we cultivate to feed ourselves and the wild animals of Kaziranga National Park and Tiger Reserve. This is not fair, what they are doing to you – who claims with such pride that there will be zero tolerance against illegalities and also the famous phrases of “Na khaunga, na khaane doonga” and “Sab ka saath sab ka vikas”.
Our tourism minister, Jayanta Malla Baruah, has talked about the importance of your visit which would help Kaziranga in its promotion. We wonder what more could come up into the UNESCO site. Kaziranga has seen every inch of farm and fallow land being gradually swallowed by big hotel chains like the Grand Hyatt, Taj Hotels, Vaani Greens, IORA, Borgos, Mandu, Royal de Casa, etc. There are so many people complaining about how the farmlands are being changed into commercial plots overnight, though there is a strict forest department and revenue office which are supposed to safeguard the land. And how hills have been flattened and walls built, that have killed perennial streams and lakes.
Oh dear prime minister, we would want you to come and sit in a mud or a bamboo stilt house in some village like Hatikhuli Borbil. Its residents have been living there for generations and suddenly, one fine day, the forest department claims that it is their land. Now they are facing eviction without any form of rehabilitation. Does that sound fair to you? You, as a universal leader, surely know that indigenous communities are the best wardens of the land and forest.
Pardon us, apart from our uncertain future, we would want to feed you with the best foraged vegetables, Namsing (fermented fish), Apong/Hariya (used for rituals), fermented drinks that keep our ancestors and us happy and connected, and show you our ecologically sensible and frugal living. We would be happy to have you, the way you have done before every election, visiting some Dalit households in mainland India. Our poor evicted villagers of Kaziranga would also take great pride if you would come to sit in our humble dwellings squatting over roads and embankments.
We hope your security is tight enough as we see barricades and flag marches too. We are well-surveilled, too, with the patrolling commandos and special task forces who spend all their time in the civilian areas rather than the forest areas. Don’t ask how our villagers are scared to even venture out of their homes as there have been so many incidents where they have been thrashed by those gun-wielding forest guards under mere suspicion.
Oh, did you know, the forest guards here enjoy great powers to use their guns which they say can shoot at the sight of anyone inside the park boundaries?
Only if we poor people knew the boundaries, as Kaziranga started with around 300 sq km area and today it boasts of more than 1,100 km territory, so tell us whose mathematics is going wrong.
We understand the presence of so many police and military when you are here, but why does Kaziranga have such high security in civilian areas throughout the year, and it is only increasing. Some people say it is a colonial hangover as the forest department is one institution that has not changed much since.
There’s so much that we would like to share but only if there was time for you to listen to our elders about the unbroken history of broken promises.
We bid you farewell, let history judge itself, while we work tirelessly to survive, maintain sanity and dignity, and bring in justice.
Warm regards,
Pranab Doley,
Pranab Doley is a youth leader and a member of the community of Bokakhat displaced by Kaziranga National Park.