An environmental lawyer studies in this new book how Dalits are excluded from India’s forest laws

The privileging of claims operates with a filter of those who “deserve” forest rights and those who do not. The bureaucratic perception of OTFD communities is one of opportunists who are using the law to obtain land rights. For instance, in its petition before the Supreme Court challenging the constitutionality of the FRA, Wildlife First identified OTFD as a nebulous category that had been used to claim rights over land by communities that are mostly landless due to the failure of land reforms.

Dalit forest-dwelling communities belong to the category of OTFDs and thus suffer from exclusion from the protective aspects of the Act. As a Dalit forest dweller in Kandhamal described to me in July 2015: “Historically, by virtue of our caste, we have been denied access to land. In forest areas too we are denied rights over land despite laws recognising such claims. The experience of untouchability continues and is at times worse as we must battle exclusion within our communities and by the Forest Department too.”

Discrimination in the forests

Shobha, a Dalit forest dweller, was leading a sit-in in a district collector’s office in July 2015 to protest the Kanhar Dam development in Sonbhadra, which would submerge forest land in the area,...

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