In l987 a coal mining project in the upper Damodar threatened over 2500 sq. km. of forests and agriculture, 203 tribal villages, hundreds of sacred groves, thousands of indigenous fruiting trees such as the mohwa (Bassia latifolia) which has not been mentioned in the sacred trees of India, but which is the most sacred of all trees for the tribals after the saal. Rich forests which are still home and transit corridors between the forests of Palamau, Ranchi and Hazaribagh are filled with tigers, elephants, leopards, bears, bison (Bos gaurus) moving through and living in over a dozen ranges of hills divided into three major groups, Sati Range in the east, Mahudi Range in the middle, Satpahar Range in the west. Seventy-five opencast mines are planned throughout this pristine, peaceful area. Thousands of Adivasi families and their agriculture, livestock, and sacred sites will be wiped out of existence without a word in their defence. The process started in l986 with the declaration of the North Karanpura Coalfields Project which I have contested from April l987 to date. Initially Australian turnkey mining technology began the first mine Piperwar Opencast Project right along the north bank of the Damodar, destroying one of the last remaining elephant corridors, since much of the south bank had been turned into a nightmare of three hundred feet deep mines covering thousands of square kilometers of once forested regions. The only transit habitat remained on the north bank of the river known to history as the North Karanpura valley, named for a small village named Karanpura. Already hundreds of villages had been displaced, their Adivasis extinct by common definition - i.e. "disappeared". This is a common phenomenon in developing nations in the Third World. The North Karanpura mines is the most disastrous project ever devised for extincting Adivasis and their sacred sites. Both sit on the palaeo-archaeological relicts of an earlier civilizational level out of which today's culture has been evolved and stands before us.

Hazaribagh
Map & Location
Background