Muthamma lived with her husband in the forested and hilly tribal areas surrounding Coimbatore. About 20 years ago, she and her husband started working for a yoga ashram in the area as a daily labourer. Subsequently, she had three children – two sons, now 24 and 19 years old, and a daughter who is 20. They have also been working in the ashram since their childhood and continue to do so today, as does her husband. Muthamma says that those that get work sporadically earn between Rs 250 and Rs 300 daily, while those doing regular work earn about Rs 130-150 a day. Muthamma herself stopped working at the ashram when she joined one of 18 self-help groups (SHGs) set up by a local NGO about ten years ago. She remembers that when she left, she was earning Rs 15 a day.
As a member of the SHG, she along with her partners would go into the forests to collect medicinal and edible herbs and fruits like amla, shikakai, vadamanga (small mangoes used in pickle) and also different kinds of grass used to feed animals, thatch roofs and for medicine-production. The SHG collapsed after a few years when its members were told that they would have to ask for tenders to have access to the forest produce and this was beyond their means.
During this period, the ashram started fencing off the area and blocked their path into the forest. They went to the ashram authorities and begged them to leave a three-foot gap in the fence, but their request was curtly turned down, Muthamma said. As a result, they had to take a much longer route into the forest. This route continued to be used after the collapse of the SHGs, but even this came to an end when the authorities started preventing them from doing this ‘illegal’ work. The ashram stepped in and started using Muthamma and others like her to accompany its members into the forest to share their inherited knowledge of medicinal plants. Once this knowledge was transferred, they were abandoned and, since they were ‘illegal trespassers, it was the ashram members, armed with the traditional tribal knowledge that they had accessed in an underhand way, who were given access to the forest and its bounty.
Muthamma then had to resort to daily work on land and orchards in the area. She had a vague memory that during the Bhoodan movement, a big landlord of the area, Muthuswamy Gownder, had donated 44 acres of his land to 13 tribal families who worked for him. They had received ‘pattas’ for this land in 1988 but had never actually been given physical possession. Muthamma’s husband’s grandfather was one of the 13 to receive the patta. Illiteracy and grinding poverty not only prevented the tribals from physically taking possession of the land, it even erased the knowledge of having been given these pattas. The pieces of frayed paper in their possession became feeble reminders of old promises that had failed to translate into tangible realities.
In 2012, a fellow tribal took her to attend the Tamil Nadu State Conference of the Adivasi Rights Organisation in Tiruvanamalai. For Muthamma, the conference was a new and stirring experience. The slogans that were shouted enthusiastically and the stories of struggles that were shared made her feel that perhaps the frayed pieces of paper could be of some use. She asked a sympathetic delegate to write a letter to the presidium in her name in which she mentioned some of her problems and asked for help. The presidium members, in turn, introduced her to AIDWA members in Coimbatore and the district unit of the CPI(M).
Then started her struggle for the land that rightfully belonged to about 200 tribal families like her own. This struggle, however, exacted a heavy toll. Muthamma’s husband and children were still working for the ashram that was claiming this land as its own, that had already taken over hundreds of acres of land in the area. Fear of losing their jobs and fear of a very powerful enemy made them throw her out of her own home. She was forced to take shelter with the headman of her tribe and his family.
Along with the nearly 200 tribal families, Muthamma and their newly-found allies put in an RTI application and gained copies of the documents connected with the 44 acres of land. They then approached the district administration to allot the land to them for house sites, which they needed desperately.
Earlier this year, Muthamma along with other tribals and activists of AIDWA, Dalit organisations, CPI(M) and also environmentalists, staged a protest on the 44 acres of land. They carried flags of different colours in their hands and planted them on the land in a symbolic assertion of their rights. Meanwhile, the ashram administration had also started fencing this plot of land. The district administration then put a board in front of the land proclaiming that it was government land and that trespassers should keep away. The ashram in turn went to court and obtained a stay which prevents anyone from occupying the land.
The tribals are not alone in the struggle against the activities of the ashram. The Vellingiri Hill Tribal Protection Society filed a PIL in the Madras high court in March against the unauthorised structures that have been constructed on the wetlands at Ikkarai Poluvampatti by the ashram.
But the ashram has powerful friends. It is owned by the Isha Foundation headed by Jaggi Vasudev, who is now as much in the news as any of his fellow celebrity ‘holy men’. Just a few days before the March PIL was filed, the prime minister himself unveiled a 112-foot-high bust of the ‘Adi Yogi’ Shiva at the ashram – despite being requested by environmental activists not to be present at an occasion when a new violation of building norms was added to a long list of earlier violations. These include a violation of norms governing man-animal conflict areas. The Isha Foundation has been accused in an application pending before the southern bench of the National Green Tribunal of having disturbed the elephant corridor in the area. This has not only affected the elephants but has threatened the lives and property of poor villagers whose villages are now used as pathways by the elephants. The foundation has also received notices in the past from the administration about various structures that it has built without requisite permissions.
Meet the Tribal Woman in Coimbatore Who Is Standing Up to Isha Foundation
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