Writer Amitav Ghosh had posted a tweet on Gladson Dungdung’s new book.

In 1980, one-year-old Gladson Dungdung and his family were displaced from their agricultural land for the construction of Kelaghat dam in Jharkhand and pushed into the forests of Simdega, where Dungdung’s father was arrested on allegations of felling trees. Ten years later, Dungdung’s parents, during another land struggle, were murdered.

In his book, ‘Whose country is it anyway?’ Dungdung writes, “The Kelaghat dam was constructed with the aim of irrigating land in Simdega block. Three villages, Bernibera, Bara Barpani, and Budhratoli, were submerged and it affected 3,500 people. Currently, the water reaches only one village — Meromdega.”

The book published by Adivaani and launched on Thursday at the Delhi World Book Fair by Himanshu Kumar, Swami Agnivesh and Felix Padel, is Gladson Dungdung’s attempt to tell the story of his people and their struggle.

Read the entire piece by the Indian Express

Ministers who need to raise issues of tribals in Parliament “become slaves” of senior ministers and forget about the “rights of Adivasis”, Swami Agnivesh on Thursday claimed.

“All those who are elected as ministers to represent tribals in the Parliament to fight for their rights and atrocities committed upon them, themselves become slaves of big ministers and forget about the rights of Adivasis,” he said after releasing a book titled ‘Whose Country is it Anyway?’ written by Gladson Dungdung, a human rights activist of Jharkhand, at the World Book Fair here.

Read the entire wire by PTI