Michael Palin talks about his travels to the Niyamgiri Hills in Orissa, India, on behalf of Survival Worldwide: Tuesday 22 February 2010
‘The concept that the Niyamgiri hills needs to be destroyed, particularly for animist folks such because the Dongria Kondh, is unfathomable,’ stated actor, presenter and explorer Michael Palin, talking at The Soho Lodge in London final evening at a chat he gave in support of Survival. ‘It might be like razing Westminster Abbey.’
Michael Palin was referring to the Dongria Kondh tribe’s non secular connections to their ancestral lands, the Niyamgiri Hills close to Lanjigarh, within the Japanese Indian state of Orissa. To the Dongria, the hill is the seat of their god, Niyam Raja. However to British firm Vedanta Sources it’s a profitable supply of minerals: a $2billion deposit of bauxite (aluminium ore) lies underneath the mountain-top.
The open pit mine that Vedanta deliberate would have destroyed the forests, disrupted the rivers and spelled the tip of the Dongria Kondh as a definite folks. In October 2010, nevertheless – and in a triumph not just for the Dongria, who’ve spent years resisting Vedanta, however for oppressed tribal peoples worldwide – the Indian authorities refused to grant remaining clearance for Vedanta’s mine.
Michael Palin determined to go to Orissa when researching a novel final yr, for which he wanted to go to part of the world wherein, as he stated, ‘there may be battle between massive business and Indigenous peoples; the place the forces of cash and energy are arrayed towards a individuals who have occupied their land for 1000’s of years.’
Having discovered concerning the Dongria’s wrestle with Vedanta, Michael started his journey in Orissa’s historical capital Bhubaneshwar. He travelled south-west previous Chikka Lake, the most important seawater lake in India, then up via the inside to the Japanese Ghats. Lastly, he arrived in Lanjigarh, the place Vedanta Sources’s refinery relies.
Throughout the speak, he described the numerous sights en route from Bhubaneshwar: mud and thatch huts adorned with rice-powder motifs, sculptures depicting Buddhist elephants submitting to Hindu lions, vans adorned with multi-coloured tassels and monuments to native Naxalite heroes.
As he journeyed via tribal areas, so the panorama of Orissa turned more and more rural. Arriving in Lanjigarh, nevertheless, we noticed in his pictures Vedanta’s blot on it: rice fields dotted with pylons, massive autos carrying generators wanted for Vedanta’s refinery and the chimneys, concrete, smoke and heavy fencing of the bauxite refinery itself, an industrial aberration towards a backdrop of forested hills.
Michael defined that the identify Vedanta refers to a Hindu philosophical system, which holds that to do hurt to a different is to hurt oneself. ‘Though how they’ll justify the hurt they’ve performed right here, I’m undecided,’ he informed the viewers, as he described ‘pink mud’ ponds of poisonous slurry, the waste results of aluminium processing. (Latest experiences have urged that the ponds leach poisonous chemical compounds into the underlying water desk, and that locals have reported sores growing on their our bodies after washing in rivers near the refinery.)
As soon as within the Dongria Kondh’s village he noticed how their sensible and non secular lives are fully interwoven with their atmosphere (the identify Dongria Kondh means ‘protector of the streams,’ because the Niyamgiri Hills are criss-crossed by rivers.) Stripping the hills of bauxite would additionally destroy the realm’s irrigation system, as a result of ‘their complete sample of agriculture relies on the way in which the water programs off these hills.’
As Michael was about to depart, he noticed a lady and her grandson strolling into the woods to select fruit. ‘What I discovered significantly transferring was the realisation that if Vedanta bought their approach, this younger boy’s livelihood can be destroyed inside a yr,’ he stated.
Later that yr, after he returned to the UK, he found that plans for the mine had been refused. ‘Within the Dongria’s case, the large boys didn’t win,’ stated Michael. ‘It provides a lot hope to different tribal peoples in related conditions.’
On the finish of the speak, a member of the viewers requested Michael what he had discovered throughout his Indian analysis. ‘The Dongria’s lifestyle has labored for two,000 years with out harming anybody else,’ he replied, ‘So it taught me that if folks don’t wish to depart their lands, you can’t kick them out.’
‘Yet one more factor,’ he added. ‘It additionally taught me that no-one is powerless.’
