In the Line of Fire:
A Community Confronts a Powerful Military-Industrial Complex 

By Sharanya Nayak

 

Illustration by Gerimara Manuel

Indigenous Peoples and other communities settled on and among the foothills of the Tijmali peak in the Eastern Ghats of India are fighting the mining company Vedanta for their rights to their land and traditional ways of life. Vedanta, with the support of the state, has stopped at nothing, using intimidation, fraud, coercion and brute force to take over the area for bauxite mining.  The company is not new to the use of fraud and militarisation to gain control of Indigenous Peoples’ land. It used similar tactics between 2001 and 2013 to loot the forested habitat of the Dongria Kondh Adivasis in the Niyamgiri hills for its first bauxite mining project in Odisha. But Vedanta lost to the courageous Dongrias who defeated its plans in a historic Supreme Court ruling that upheld the rights of Dongria village councils in deciding the future of their habitats, thus cancelling Vedanta’s mining lease for Niyamgiri.

The story of the people of Tijmali is the story of the everyday face of the neoliberal military-industrial complex—often rolled out with the collusion of the state—and the power of peoples’ resistance against it.  

Introducing Tijmali and its people 

Tijmali is one of the hills in the long winding Gandhamardan mountain range in Odisha state in the Eastern Ghats of India. While there are two villages on the Tijmali hilltop inhabited by the Indigenous Kandha Adivasi, there are 45 villages around its foothills across a radius of about 30 kms in Rayagada and Kalahandi districts. The Tijmali land and ecosystem is also co-habited by communities like Dalits and other non-Adivasi communities who depend completely on the forests, mountains and rich fertile farmlands with nearly 100 perennial hill streams that irrigate the lowlands through the year. For Adivasi and non-Adivasi communities, Tijmali is not just a mountain with bauxite reserves, but an abode of their reigning deity Tij Raja (King of Tijmali). Twice a year, thousands of Adivasi and non-Adivasi forest dwellers, farmers, traders and agricultural workers gather at the hilltop on Tijmali to celebrate the start and end of their agricultural season and offer prayers to Tij Raja. 

For the Indigenous communities, Tijmali represents a sacred living space, and is reflective of their history, spiritual practices and traditional knowledge, while for Vedanta it represents a mineral deposit to be extracted and sold for profit. And this is at the heart of the conflict between the people of Tijmali and the Vedanta-Odisha lobby. The communities fear that mining would not just sever their spiritual relationship with Tijmali, but that it would also dry up the sources of their perennial hill streams; result in the uprooting of hundreds of ancient and sacred trees; poison their farmlands with dangerous chemicals used to wash the bauxite mineral to produce alumina powder; endanger their homes and schools through the constant blasting of the mountain for extraction; and increase the risks of sexual violence, especially of women and girls in the community, by non-Adivasi settlers and soldiers hired by the Odisha state and Vedanta to work at its mines and guard the infrastructure. These are not idle fears. The people of Tijmali have witnessed this type of destruction firsthand in Baphlimali, another bauxite mine operating since 2010 and situated just 20 kilometres from Tijmali. 

Vedanta’s entry into Tijmali: unpacking the military-industrial complex

In February 2023, Vedanta Limited was awarded a 30-year lease to mine bauxite (aluminium ore) on Tijmali at the rate of nine million tonnes per annum (MTPA) over an area of 1,549 hectares. The mining project is critical to keeping its Lanjigarh-based aluminium refinery running. Anthropologist Felix Padel, studying the effects of bauxite mining on communities, says, ‘We live in an ‘aluminium age’ and aluminium affects our lives in more ways than we realise. Aerospace, bomb technology, satellites, electric cars, high speed trains, construction, semi-conductors, computers and smart phones consume large quantities, with little thought for the mining of bauxite deposits that give exceptional fertility to some of the world’s most biodiverse ecosystems’.  The deep links between the traditional weapons industry and extractive industries such as metals and minerals mining that form the primary raw material for weapons manufacturing, is well known. 

In March 2023, officials of Vedanta and its mines development agency, Mythri Infratech, began their visits to Tijmali. This was also when the people of Tijmali realised their hill had been sold to Vedanta. Their visits were met with opposition from the people of Tijmali, but the company then made clandestine attempts to access Tijmali and the villages to survey the land and convince people of the supposed benefits of mining. The company representatives were chaperoned by Odisha police, paramilitary and other officials.     

Since 2023, Vedanta has been using multiple intimidation strategies to manipulate regulatory laws that mandate free, prior and informed consent of 18 village councils in order to proceed with its mining project. In August 2023, Vedanta officials filed false cases against hundreds of community leaders accusing them of kidnapping company officials. Based on these false cases, 24 leaders spent seven months in jail, while in reality the local villagers had blocked the company’s officials from going to the Tijmali hilltop without permission of their village councils. In October 2023, reportedly at the behest of Vedanta, hundreds of paramilitary personnel barricaded the roads leading to a public hearing on the environmental impacts of Vedanta’s mining project. They attempted to prevent community leaders from testifying at the hearing about the damages mining would cause to their lands, forests, mountains, streams and sacred places.

In December 2023, district officials, accompanied by police and paramilitary personnel, tried to hold 10 village council meetings in an unlawful manner, to force approvals from villagers for diversion of forestlands for mining purposes, as mandated by Section 3 (2) of the Forest Rights Act of 2006, which lays conditions for approvals under Forest Conservation Act of 1980. When people opposed this and did not allow the district officials to conduct these meetings, these officials reportedly forged signatures and submitted fake village council resolutions supposedly approving diversion of the forest for mining purposes, to the central government’s Forest Advisory Committee. As per the Forest Rights Act of 2006, recognition of individual and community forest rights has not been completed in these villages and hence the proposals for diversion of forests for mining are illegal and a violation of the laws protecting the rights of forest dwellers. Similarly, district officials have been coercing people of the two hilltop villages to consent to private land acquisitions for Vedanta’s mining project. Such subversions of legal provisions that protect people’s land rights have become the norm to enable Vedanta’s Tijmali mining project in Odisha.

The people of Tijmali, steadfast in their defence of their ancestral lands, face not just false cases and arrests, but every time they want to organise any mass meeting, the district officials come up with overnight prohibitory orders against leaders and their mass organisations citing ‘threats to the law-and-order situation’. Rina Majhi, a community leader of Tijmali, shares, ‘A simple celebration of Indigenous People’s Day (on 9th August) ruffled so many feathers that on the afternoon of 8th August, the Rayagada District Collector issued prohibitory orders and imposed curfew in the region. They did the same for our 5 June World Environment Day celebration. They issued “breach of peace” summons to 30 leaders four times in the last six months giving fabricated reasons of being social delinquents.’ 

This is the everyday face of the military-industrial complex that needs brute power to ensure its mining interests are protected. Frontline environmental defender Naring Dei Majh said, ‘Anyone putting up a challenge against any of the illegalities committed by Vedanta or the district officials is slapped with false cases by the local police and arrested. As of now, 11 key leaders are in jail under fabricated cases. Previously, on two occasions, 24 leaders were arrested and released on bail after each spent seven months in jail. All cases in which our 35 leaders were in jail are false cases filed by the police or company agents.’

The story of the people of Tijmali reminds us that the euphemism called ‘development’ is nothing but brute power of the military-industrial complex operating through governments and pandering to the greed of a few. When Vedanta got its mining lease for Tijmali, the first thing people faced was police presence in their villages. Muni Dei Majhi, a leader from Tijmali, asks, ‘In August 2023, the Vedanta officials tried to reach Tijmali hilltop accompanied by about 100 police and paramilitary personnel. We ask: why does a company that says it is working for the benefits of local people, need so many armed police and paramilitary troops to come to our village?’.      

The rise of peoples’ power against mining

Using the Right to Information Act of 2005, community leaders of Tijmali have been able to access the fake village council resolutions and challenge the forgery and manipulation of their consent. They have done this through media exposés, by filing criminal cases against the officials of Vedanta and the Odisha government who forged village council resolutions and faked signatures of villagers to falsely show that a majority consented to forest diversion for mining. Every attempt by Vedanta and Odisha government officials to coerce people’s consent for bauxite mining has been resolutely met with a counter challenge by the people of Tijmali who have educated themselves on protective land and forest laws applicable to Adivasi communities, the Indian penal code provisions and relevant jurisprudence, to fight back against the false criminal cases slapped on them by Vedanta, police and government personnel alike. Their demands are clear: no to any mining on their lands; cancellation of all mining leases given to companies without their consent; and a stop to  the criminalisation of their right to dissent by withdrawing all false cases against their leaders and removing military forces from their region. 

On every celebratory occasion, be it sacred rituals for Tij Raja or universally celebrated days in memory of Indigenous Heroes and Sheroes, the people of Tijmali gather in hundreds at mass meetings to raise their voice against the destructive mining project of Vedanta. They reiterate their commitment to fight for their rights guaranteed in the Constitution, which have been violated time and again by successive governments. They have been resolutely petitioning the authorities for recognition of their forest rights, sending evidence-based objections to the ministerial committees overlooking approval processes for mining projects and challenging false resolutions in court with the firm belief that when people are united, they cannot be defeated and people’s power can turn corporate greed on its head. 

The fight to save Tijmali is also a fight to keep bauxite in the ground and stop devastating conflicts, genocidal wars and the collapse of life-giving, resilient and biodiverse ecosystems. 

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About the Author

Sharanya Nayak lives in a farming commune called Rangmatipadar and has worked with Adivasi communities of southern Odisha since 1999 and as a solidarity worker with Adivasi communities across the central Indian region of Rayagada, Malkangiri, Bastar and Koraput on issues of land, forest, language, inter-generational learning, mining resistance, militarisation and culture. She is a Programme Adviser with RITES FORUM (a member of APWLD) and a founding member of grassroots advocacy networks Indigenous Peoples’ Land Life and Knowledge Collective (IPLLK) and Community Network Against Protected Areas (CNAPA).  

She has been part of fact-finding missions, peoples’ tribunals and research on militarisation of Adivasi territories and sexual violence as a tool of state repression, fighting against forced evictions in the name of conservation, dam construction and mining. 

Notes

  1. Scribd. (2013). The Judgment of The Supreme Court of India On Bauxite Mining in The Niyamgiri Hills of Odisha. https://www.scribd.com/document/137699129/The-Judgment-of-the-Supreme-Court-of-India-on-Bauxite-Mining-in-the-Niyamgiri-Hills-of-Odisha 
  2. Amnesty International Press Release. (2018, April 13). India: Landmark Supreme Court ruling a great victory for indigenous rights. https://www.amnesty.org/en/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/pre011862013en.pdf
  3. Tijmali is the name by which the local people refer to the hill. But in Odisha government’s official records it is known as Sijimali.  This article uses Tijmali, which is preferred by local communities.
  4. Jaiswar, P.S. (2023, Feb 15). Vedanta becomes preferred bidder for Sijimali Bauxite Block in Odisha. Livemint. https://www.livemint.com/companies/news/vedanta-becomes-preferred-bidder-for-sijimali-bauxite-block-in-odisha-11676466122551.html
  5. Vedanta Limited. (2023, February 15). Declaration as Preferred Bidder for Sijimali Bauxite Block in Odisha (Vedanta statutory declaration to the National Stock Exchange of India Limited). www.vedantalimited.com/public/uploads/6906/VEDLSEPreferredBidderforSijimaliBauxiteBlock150223.pdf
  6. Lanjigarh hosts Vedanta’s aluminium refinery and is located about 40 kms from Tijmali.
  7. Padel,F. & Das, S. (2010). Out of This Earth: East Indian Adivasis and the Aluminium Cartel. Hyderabad: Orient BlackSwan. ISBN: 978 81 250 3867 2.
  8. Forest Rights Act. (2013, April 18). In the Supreme Court of India Civil Original Jurisdiction, Writ Petition (Civil) No.180 of 2011. https://fra.org.in/upload/courtCasesFile/21979c9ce765e968e2f62dbf19368bb8.pdf 
  9. India Code. (n.d.). The Scheduled Tribes and Other Traditional Forest Dwellers (Recognition of Forest Rights) Act, 2006. https://www.indiacode.nic.in/bitstream/123456789/8311/1/a2007-02.pdf 
  10. Assistant Inspector General of Forests, Ministry of Environment, Forests and Climate Change, Government of India. (2013). Letters from the Assistant Inspector General of Forests, Ministry of Environment, Forests and Climate Change, Government of India to the Principal Secretary (Forests) regarding the diversion of forest land for non-forest purposes. PARIVESH. https://forestsclearance.nic.in/DownloadPdfFile.aspx?FileName=0_0_8116121112181LetterofMinistryfornonrequirementofNOCfromvillages.pdf&FilePath=../writereaddata/Addinfo/
  11. Section 163 of the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita (BNSS) deals with the power of a magistrate to issue urgent orders to prevent danger, nuisance or public disturbance. This includes situations like riots, fights or actions that endanger public life, health or safety. The orders, which can be for a specific person or the general public, are effective for a maximum of two months and can be extended under certain conditions.
  12. Naring Dei Majhi was arrested on 2 August 2025 from Rayagada district hospital where she had gone with her daughter-in-law for the delivery of her grandson. She was charged with six false cases and continues to be in jail as bail applications are still pending in three of these cases. 
  13. GroundXero. (2023, November 1). An Update on Sijimali Struggle Against Bauxite Mining by Vedanta. https://www.groundxero.in/2023/11/01/an-update-on-sijimali-struggle-against-bauxite-mining-by-vedanta/
  14. Mohanty, D., (2023, October 16). Public hearing for Vedanta’s mining ends abruptly amid opposition by villagers. Hindustan Times. https://www.hindustantimes.com/cities/others/public-hearing-for-vedanta-s-mining-ends-abruptly-amid-opposition-by-villagers-101697471759822.html