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Jungle Book: Rudyard Kipling:Disney Movie :Baiga and Gond Tribes. This morning, my eldest grand had phoned me to accompany her to watch the new Jungle Book Movie now showing in a theater complex! I told her that my conscience does not permit me to watch the movie as the tribes known as Baiga and Gond who lived in the particular forest since time immemorial that inspired Rudyard Kipling to write the original book, were illegally evicted from this area in 2014, while fee- paying tourists are now being welcomed in! I have since shared with my grand some details of what happened to the tribal people lived there in the jungles, specially the brutal treatment they have reportedly received at the hands of park guards when the eviction process was going on. Those who do not know where and how the evicted people of these two particular tribes live now , I take this opportunity to append the text of a mail sent to me by the “Survival International” for information and also sharing the text with others! Quote….Kanha markets itself as the “inspiration” for The Jungle Book, and encourages large-scale tourism on the grounds that “nowhere can you see [tigers] as often.” But few visitors or viewers of the Disney film will be aware of the violence and intimidation inflicted on tribal peoples in the home of The Jungle Book in the name of tiger conservation. The Forest Department claims that tribes accept “voluntary relocation”, but in reality they are coerced into “accepting” eviction with bribes and the threat of violence. Some are moved to government resettlement camps, but others are simply pushed out and forced to live in abject poverty on the edges of their territory. Following the Kanha forced evictions in 2014, one Baiga man said: “We were one of the last families to resist. But the people from the reserve forced us to leave. They told us they’d take care of us for three years, but they didn’t do a thing. Even when my brother was killed, no one came to help us.” Another Baiga tribesperson said: “We are lost – wandering in search of land. Here there is only sadness. We need the jungle. The big conservation organizations are guilty of supporting this. They never speak out against evictions. But many Indian tribes actually revere the tiger, and have lived peacefully alongside them for generations. There is no evidence that evictions protect tigers; in fact they’re more likely to harm them by alienating local people from conservation efforts. Tribal peoples are the best conservationists and guardians of the natural world. They should be at the forefront of tiger conservation, but instead, they are being excluded. There is even evidence of more tigers living in areas where the people have not been thrown out. Survival’s director Stephen Corry said: “We hope that this film helps bring some attention to the suffering currently being inflicted on tribal people across India in the name of tiger conservation. When India’s tiger population crashed in the last century it had nothing to do with tribes. It happened thanks to rapid industrialization and the wholesale slaughter carried out by colonial hunters and Indian elites. Yet all over India, tribes are paying the price for this: They’re kicked off their ancestral land to be replaced by tourists in their thousands.” Share this news story…….Unquote.        |
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Perhaps reading the original book would be time better spent than contributing to the poachers' fortune
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Perhaps reading the original book would be time better spent than contributing to the poachers' fortune
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Thank you for this post. It's very interesting, and just one in an endless series of examples of man's inhumanity towards our fellow man.... sighhhhh.
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Thank you for this post. It's very interesting, and just one in an endless series of examples of man's inhumanity towards our fellow man.... sighhhhh.
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