Kalakkad-Mundanthurai Tiger Reserve: Dakshinamurthy Kanikaran remembers his grandfather’s stories — tales of the times before independence, of times when the kings and feudal lords held sway. Kanikaran, 70, a member of the forest-dwelling Kani tribe, recalls the days when the Kanis would bolt at the sight of an outsider.
Whose territory? A hutment in one of the four Kani settlements whose residents have refused to relocate. The reserve area needs to be free of human habitation, as it has been declared a critical habitat for tigers. Padmaparna Ghosh / Mint
But now, Kanikaran can’t afford either to be timid, or to dwell in the past. As a member of two local activist committees, he is busy collecting documents to prove he and 200 fellow villagers have been residing on, and cultivating small land holdings in Tamil Nadu’s Kalakkad-Mundanthurai Tiger Reserve (KMTR) for ages.
Those documents could help the Kanis to establish their rights to forest land and resources under the so-called Forest Rights Act, as they seek to fend off the threat of eviction from an area designated a “critical tiger habitat”. But implementation of the Forest Rights Act has got off to an uncertain start and the Kanis have a struggle on their hands.
The area under the reserve needs to be “inviolate”, or free of human habitation, after the ministry of environment and forests declared KMTR and 35 other wildlife parks as critical habitat for the tiger. According to the Tiger Taskforce Report of 2005, there are 15 villages and 1,703 families inside KMTR, which includes the four Kani settlements; these have to be moved out.
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M. Ganeshamurthy of Karaiyar village carries a bulky file folder under his arm, containing documents, forest department records and archival text to back the Kani tribe’s claim. Documents dating back to 1969 show these villages were permitted to settle in the area till 1974, renewable every five years. Residents of Thiruvattamparai village have survey maps dating back to 1912 to show these as lands that belong to the Kani tribe.
In 1977, KMTR was declared a wildlife sanctuary, designated a tiger reserve in 1992 and a critical tiger habitat in December 2007.
Kanikaran says that with every notification, restrictions became tighter and since 1992, even cattle grazing and collecting minor forest produce, such as bark and resin, have been banned. “We used to own cattle before the 1990s, but had to let go of them. But we continue to gather firewood and honey for our own use,” he said.
The Kanis are now waiting to get hold of forms to file their claims to the lands and forest resources they have been using for generations, to prevent their eviction, or secure compensation in return for resettlement elsewhere. This will be a daunting task.
Forest rights law