Geeta Vasave

“Our old village was Nimgavhan … Now we have been rehabilitated at the Vadchil rehabilitation site…And our old village, where I spent my childhood, my birth village was Nimghavan. I was born there. Back then, there was no birth date registration …Because in our remote village, there wasn’t any authentic birth record as government registrations did not take place at all…So the school registered my birth date as estimated by my parent’s memory…That school was at a distance of at least 10 kms…Since it is a mountainous region, one has to walk to school crossing valleys, rivers and creeks. There were no roads…When I was in the ninth standard, I attended a mass meeting for the first time, that was when the Dhule lathi charge happened. When the (government) survey was taking place here in Nimghavan…when the police force arrived, we were in the fields. We were not going to allow the surveys to be conducted. If the surveys had to be conducted properly, they had to consider our opinion properly, sitting across the table, otherwise we would resist the survey. We were within our village boundary but the police entered by force. They started a lathi charge and began firing. In that firing, we lost one of our boys from Surung village, Rehmal Vasave. He was killed in that firing. Because we lost our youth in the firing, we marched in  protest to the district place. There too, there was a brutal lathi charge on us. All of us, the villagers including me and (Medha) Tai were present there. All of us were injured in that lathi charge. I was in the 9th standard. It was for the first time that we were beaten in the lathi charge and we also went to jail. For 5 days we were in the Dhule jail in barrack no 1…”–

Geeta Vasave

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And so goes the extraordinary life journey of the young adivasi girl Geeta Vasave, who grew up to be a courageous woman, a leading light of her community and of the Narmada Bachao Andolan and was elected sarpanch of her village twice. This is just one of the stories of the people of the Narmada valley, of their struggle against destructive development, of the tragedy that has befallen them, as also of their courage and resilience.

Interview Duration: 1:08:00

Language: Marathi, Subtitles in English

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