"Homecoming As Resistance: In Karnataka, Adivasis Reclaim A Forest From Which They Were Evicted 40 Years Ago", 11 June 2025

In an act of defiance, 52 families of the Jenu Kuruba Adivasi community marched back into the Nagarhole tiger reserve on 5 May 2025, returning to the forest from which they were evicted—by force and with no compensation—nearly four decades ago. Their return to the heart of a protected area embodies their rejection of a wildlife conservation model that they say is exclusionary, colonial in spirit, and in breach of many Indian laws.

..Forcibly evicted in the mid-1980s, shortly before Nagarhole was declared a designated national park under the Wildlife Protection Act, 1972, the 52 families of Karadikallu said they were asserting their ancestral right over the land as a means to counter what they described as multiple violations of the Forest Rights Act (FRA), 2006, by the state’s forest department and the tiger reserve authorities, to stymie or delay legal processes that would formally recognise their land rights.

..Waves of forced displacement of Jenu Kuruba villages began at least as far back as the 1970s, when by many estimates about 3,400 families were forcibly evicted. At the time, thousands more Adivasis continued to live in dozens of hamlets within Nagarhole tiger reserve, their presence in the region dating back centuries. ..A sizable number of the displaced were Jenu Kurubas, who are counted among 75 Adivasi communities suffering grave disparities in development and amenities, the ‘particularly vulnerable tribal groups’ or PVTGs by official nomenclature..

..In 2021 and again in 2023, the 52 families of Karadikallu applied for recognition of their individual forest rights (IFR) under the FRA, referring to rights over land they used for habitation and cultivation.

..The Jenu Kurubas’ current struggle is set against a wider struggle of an estimated 150 million forest-dwelling Indians, including at least 100 million indigenous people. As many as 170,000 Indian villages are located in proximity to forest areas.