: How to cheat forest dwellers of their rights (and enable mining) #IndiaNEWS Every year, come October, Gokul Ekka celebrates Karma Puja, a festival of the Oram tribe, during which the community worships

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How to cheat forest dwellers of their rights (and enable mining) #IndiaNEWS
Every year, come October, Gokul Ekka celebrates Karma Puja, a festival of the Oram tribe, during which the community worships the Karma tree. Then, through the year, whenever any tree in the forest bears flowers, he collects the first flowers to bloom and offers them in prayer to his ancestors. In May, he and fellow Orams gather Mahua flowers to make wine, which they sell. After this, they celebrate Sarhul Yatra, a night of music and dance and Mahua wine.Ekka is an Adivasi resident of the village of Ghoghar, in Balishankara tehsil of Sundargarh, one of the districts of Odisha where the most mining is carried out. His religious and cultural practices clearly indicate that he is a member of a tribal community. If that did not suffice, he also has a certificate to prove it. Called a “Form of Caste Certificate� and issued by Balishankara’s tehsildar in 1985, it states that Ekka “belongs to the Oram sub tribe, which is recorded as Schedule Tribe under the Constitution Schedule Tribe Order, 1950�.This gives Ekka some rights over forest land, as laid down in the Schedule Tribe and Other Traditional Forest Dwellers (Recognition of Forest Rights) Act of 2006, also known as the...Read more

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