Methodology

Since then, I have recorded eighty interviews in digital format of senior members of the NBA in seven different languages and dialects (English, Hindi, Gujarati, Marathi, Nimadi, Pawari and Bhilali). The interviewees were selected collectively [in consultation] with other activists and members of NBA support groups. The selection had the twin objectives of ensuring that key players in the struggle are interviewed, but also ensuring at the same time that those who are less known and less likely to write their own accounts were also heard.

Since the interviews were conducted over a long span of 20 years (I continue recording select oral histories of key leaders of the struggle even now in 2024), some of the interviewees have been interviewed twice or even thrice in order to capture the longer span of events and history. The interviews are anywhere between one to ten hours long, occasionally even longer. Some local adivasi leaders of the NBA have been interviewed soon after their displacement and then after many years have passed. This was done to get a better idea of  how the lives of the people have been changing over time as a result of development-induced forced displacement. For example, the senior adivasi woman leader of NBA, Champaben Tadvi was interviewed in 2009,13 years after her  displacement  from her village Vadgam on the banks of the River Narmada in 1994, and again in 2023,  by which time she had spent 28 years at the rehabilitation site. Similarly, Ushaben Tadvi, also displaced in the year 1994, was interviewed first in 2009 and then again in 2023. Both these interviews are available on the website. 

Having been an activist of the NBA, I have had an added advantage of having the trust and faith of the people I interviewed for an oral history collection and documentation. Since the key figures of the Narmada struggle felt as strongly that such an archive was urgently needed, the interviewees came forward and laid bare whatever they wanted to say. More importantly, since the interviewees could talk in the comforts of their own homes, in their mother tongue or in any language they were comfortable with, and they were sharing it with a person they had known and worked with, the people have shared information frankly and without constraints, and boundaries. Moreover, since the interviewees came from three different states, performed different roles in the struggle and came from varied cultural, political and social backgrounds and experiences, the collected history is diverse and multidimensional. That makes them very special. The oral history that has emerged is therefore in the nature of free conversations and a heartfelt in-depth sharing of people’s work, views and thoughts. It presents a record of the history of the Narmada struggle spanning over several decades in the voices of the very people who participated in it and were the movement’s backbone. 

I also recognise that oral history has its limitations. Some limitations are inherent to the methodology of oral history itself. Others are more due to the specific circumstances in which I have carried out these recordings. 

Some limitations intrinsic to the oral history methodology are the fading of memory of individuals over the years and personal biases of the interviewer and interviewee.

Some limitations are specific to this particular work. For example, even in these changing times where flaunting one’s wares is the norm, adivasi people believe that talking of their own role and contribution to the struggle, however significant, is like blowing one’s own trumpet. So, they were happy to talk about events, issues and the role played by others but were reluctant to talk about themselves unless pursued and persuaded. Also, while people freely shared many sensitive issues, critical assessments and shortcomings of the struggle and its strategies, and were ready for it to go  on record, some very sensitive information was narrated off the record. So, some significant issues of the Narmada struggle remain today only in my memory and in my private notes.

Then of course there are my personal limitations, expertise or lack of it. Although  Indian society is steeped in oral tradition, oral history is a new discipline in India, not yet fully accepted as “legitimate history”. The Oral History Association of India is still in its nascent stage and very few courses in India teach oral history. Although things are changing and there is increasing acceptance of the discipline, there were no courses or training in oral history in the country when I started out. Therefore, much of it is an outcome of self-education  based on material and books that were available on the subject back then and learning on the job.

Another issue I faced was the constraint of time and resources. NBA being a political movement, I was careful of the source of funds for this work and did not want it to be a large funded project. I have therefore not been able to record all the important players of the struggle. Some interviews could not be carried out due to other unavoidable circumstances. For example, some of the people I wished to interview, including Medha Patkar, Anil Patel and Pratibha Shinde, did not give me an appointment in spite of repeated reminders. However interviews of the prominent faces of the Narmada struggle are easily available at multiple places including books and magazines. That is why in the oral history recorded here, care has been taken to interview  as many as possible contributors to the struggle, who have not been written about in detail and have not been able to share their views themselves or are unlikely to have the opportunity to do so.  Some of the interviews are incomplete, but I shall be completing them soon.

While my own long involvement in the struggle, and my personal relationships with those interviewed, were an immense advantage in many ways for these recordings, they may also be a limitation in some ways. Such proximity to the subject of discussion and with the persons interviewed may not be considered sufficiently dispassionate.

Having outlined these limitations, I also wish to say that every form of recording and documenting history has its own problems. Such limitations by themselves do not detract from the importance and significance of any particular approach and the history so recorded, so long as we recognize and acknowledge them. I have tried to be conscious of these limitations while doing these recordings, and have attempted to minimize them wherever and to the extent possible.