Oral Histories of the Narmada Struggle

Unfortunately, like the dominant development paradigm, there is also a dominant history narrative of a Nation State wherein people’s histories, voices and resistance are largely absent. What is written and promoted is mostly the dominant history narrative of a nation and its development. People’s struggles like the Narmada Bachao Andolan (NBA) that have challenged mainstream notions of development, find space, if at all they do,  in cursory references and footnotes within the dominant, mainstream narrative. 

This absence from the pages of history is especially true for the voices of the people displaced by development projects across the country, because displacement due to ‘development’ projects, unlike other forms of displacement, is considered an inevitable component of national growth and hence it is considered to be in the national interest. 

India has been a witness to several types of man-made forcible displacements. Some examples are the displacement that took place during partition at the time of independence or displacements due to disputes over ethnicity, religion, etc. In these kinds of forcible displacement, the displacement is recognised as an avoidable tragedy and it is acknowledged that the aggrieved people have been wronged. Development induced displacement on the other hand, is considered inevitable and legitimate. Moreover, while in other forms of displacement, people may often nurture a hope of being able to return to their homes and lands someday, development induced displacement is permanent and there is no scope for the displaced to return to their homes and lands ever. This is because lands, villages, towns, forests, rivers, streams, hills, waterfalls, historical and religious sites are permanently destroyed with the coming of dams, mines, and other types of projects. And sadly, the plight of the victims of development goes unnoticed and their voices remain unheard since their displacement  is considered inevitable and thereby essential for the nation’s growth rate. 

Lately, however, there is a growing interest in knowing more about and studying the impact ‘development’ has on people and environment and people’s resistance to development induced forced displacement. But even where there are some attempts to study people’s struggles which have challenged dominant development paradigms, it is often found that the affected people are mostly treated as passive respondents, objects and or study samples. The people who have actively created history have very little place in this writing of history. Even when a movement writes its own history, even though the struggle has been a mass movement, the focus is often on the issues, important actions, programs, and a few well known faces of the movement. 

The Narmada struggle as a mass movement has involved thousands, if not lakhs of people, and even the number of those who were/are active and in the forefront may run into hundreds. That has been the strength of the struggle. However, even in the studies and narratives of the movement, people’s roles and their own voices  have not come to the fore adequately. The extraordinary contributions of ordinary people, their lives and the collective struggles of  communities have not found a significant place in these histories. 

With all this in mind, I interviewed eighty key participants and digitally recorded over 400 hours of their oral histories of the Narmada struggle around Sardar Sarovar Project (SSP). These recordings help us understand how powerful was the people’s resistance to the SSP, the reasons behind it, and the role played by common people and their contribution to the movement and its history. They offer many insights into issues like challenging dams as development models, the environmental impacts of large dams, the life of victims of displacement, the flaws in rehabilitation plans and their execution and developing sustainable alternatives for water and power generation.

These oral histories also help us understand the multiple conflicts that define the struggle: the conflict between two development ideologies GDP and profits centred vs. sustainable development based on equity and justice; between two world views;  between two life styles, cultures, traditions within a Nation; between development planners and technocrats and people’s traditional wisdom and knowledge. They also give us an insight into how development planners have a very narrow view of the displacement and rehabilitation of victims of development. The voices of the people help us understand that for those uprooted in the name of development, it is not just a question merely of compensation and rehabilitation but it is about people’s participation in development planning, their Right to know, and the right to obtain their consent. These oral histories, make it  possible to understand the relationship that people have with the Narmada River, their cultural ethos, their traditions, their socio-economic practices, their natural resource based sustainable livelihood and its challenges, their languages, festivals, beliefs and what the forests and common property resources mean to the people living on the banks of the Narmada. They bring out sharply that the Narmada valley is one of the oldest and one of the richest river valley civilisations of great historical and archaeological significance.

Most importantly, these oral histories of the Narmada struggle help us understand how the people of the Narmada valley fought to preserve their way of life, their world view, their lands, homes, forests and the River Narmada herself from the onslaught of “development” and the many challenges they had to face in doing this. These oral histories are records of one the most important social and environmental movements of Independent India. They record the experiences and insights of the struggle as seen from within by its most active members. These are voices which are rarely heard. 

An important feature of these oral histories is that the interviewer and most of the interviewees had worked together in the NBA for several years in very challenging circumstances, so there existed a bond and a trust between them. This was crucial for the interviewees who have therefore been able to share freely their lives, the roles they have played, the many details of the struggle including the highs and the lows of the movement. As the personal views and thoughts of those directly involved in the struggle have been shared in these oral history recordings, they are of immense significance.