New Delhi – An Adivasi activist author from Simdega in Jhrakhand was off loaded from Air India’s London bound flight from New Delhi, on May 9.
Gladson Dungdung author of Mission Saranda: A War for Natural Resources in India is an outspoken activist. His 2015 book addresses the contemporary issues of mining and communities in Eastern India. It also documents the struggles and the human rights violations in Saranda Forest which is one of the most extensive surviving Sal forests in Asia, a centre of bio-diversity and a repository of India’s rich Adivasi cultural heritage. Its destruction by mining companies aided by the government is testimony to the short term thinking of a modernising state blinded by its rhetoric of development.
Speaking to Matters India from New Delhi Dungdung narrated the Air India national carrier incident saying, “This morning, I was offloaded by the Air India Delhi-London Flight AI 115 on my way to attend the Workshop on Environmental History and Politics of South Asia to be held in the University of Sussex, UK on May 10.”
The reason the officials gave, says Dungdung, “is that my passport had been impounded in 2013, therefore, they will send it back to RPO, Ranchi for verification.”
“The fact is that my passport was impounded in 2013 and returned to me after proper verification in 2014. Thereafter, I had attended couple of international conferences in Denmark and London in 2014 and 2015 subsequently but there was no issue at all,” explained Dungdung.
“Therefore, I’m sure that this is a clear impact of my book Mission Saranda: A War for Natural Resources in India.” Dungdung does not hesitate to lament that, “Defaulters of millions of Rupees like Vijay Malaya can’t be offloaded but activists like me are bound to be offloaded.”
Unflinching Dungdung also affirmed his total commitment to the Adivasi rights saying, “However, my fight for the Adivasis; ownership rights over the Natural resources, Adivasi identity, Human Rights, Ecology and against unjust development processes will continue till they take away my right to life forever. Jai Adivasi!”