Tigers, sea, and politics: the many conflicts of the Sundarbans

The area, characterised by riverine creeks, mangrove forests, and royal Bengal tigers, has a population of 4.5 million people. The human-animal, human-environment and human-to-human conflict across different regions of the delta keeps the area vulnerable to climate change and on edge. The women face the brunt of it all, finds Shiv Sahay Singh

Sarojini Mondal’s mother stopped eating honey when her father was killed by a tiger. Women in the Sundarbans, in West Bengal, whose husbands are killed in tiger attacks sometimes give up honey, believing that it is ‘blood honey’. Its pursuit took their husbands to the forest, which eventually led to their death. Sarojini, now 57, was 12 years old then and her father had gone deep inside the Sundarbans forest to collect honey. He did not return.

Almost 40 years later, Sarojini’s husband Sambhu Mondal was killed by a tiger in 2019, when he was catching fish. She wondered whether to give up fish.

Saraswati Auliya, 58, did give it up. Her husband, Radhakanta Auliya, was killed by the same tiger when he was out with Sambhu.

The women remember that it was about 3.30 p.m. when Sambhu and Radhakanta had ventured into the forest to fish. While Sambhu was laying the nets at the edge of a creek, a tiger pounced on him and began dragging him into the forest. Radhakanta lunged at it with a stick. The tiger attacked him, dragging his body deep into the jungle.

The others in the fishing party looked for Radhakanta’s body, but did not find it. Several days of search did not result in any success. For five years (2019-2024) the State government denied compensation to both the women, who lost the only earning member of the family, on the grounds that Sambu and Radhakanta had entered a prohibited area in the Sundarban Tiger Reserve (STR). It was after an order by the Calcutta High Court this year when compensation of ₹5 lakh was given to both Sarojini and Saraswati.

The Indian part of the Sundarbans, spread across 19 blocks of two districts, South 24 Parganas and North 24 Parganas, has small land holdings and limited economic means. Many men migrate for jobs to other States and the women face the adversities of human-tiger conflict, climate and political turmoil.

The Sundarbans is one of the poorest regions of the State, with people having small and diminishing land holdings mostly because of climate change and erosion. About 44% people in the region live below the poverty line and depend on the forests for their livelihood.

Human-wildlife conflict

Sarojini and Saraswati live in Lahiripur gram panchayat, in the Gosaba block, South 24 Parganas district. Their homes are surrounded by mangrove forests on three sides. Lahiripur can be reached by crossing two rivers in motorised ferries. The two women, who have struck up a friendship over the past five years, cannot remember the date their husbands were killed. “It was a Thursday, five years ago,” Sarojini says. What they do remember is: “We had to put up a long fight to get compensation. The Sundarban Bagro Bidhwa Samity (Sundarban Tiger Widow Committee) helped us to get lawyers so that we could file a petition before the court,” Sarojini says.

Saraswati says that after the incident, none of her children have ventured into the forest. “My daughters are married and my son works as a labourer,” she says. Saraswati and Sarojini discuss adding more rooms to their houses with the compensation money and say they participate in the activities of the samity, a collective of women who help other women whose family members have been killed in tiger attacks.

About 500 metres away from Saraswati’s home, lives Geeta Mridha, the secretary of the samity. Her husband was killed in a tiger attack in 2015 and since then the samity along with the Dakhin Banga Matyasajibi Forum (an organisation of small fishermen) have brought victims of tiger attacks together to amplify their voice.

Geeta is in her 40s and is more vocal than Saroijini and Saraswati. She explains that there are no employment opportunities in the area and since it’s a single-crop land, it leaves people little option but to go deep inside the forest for fishing. “Sometimes the family members of the people who die in tiger attacks do not even inform authorities. They fear harassment as the fishermen do not have the licence to enter the forest,” she says.

Geeta is upset that Lahiripur is referred to as a village of tiger widows. “How can you call Lahiripur which has a population of over 10,000, a village of tiger widows? Yes, there have been a few incidents of tiger attacks, but the entire village is not filled with tiger widows,” she says.

Geeta and Tapan Mondal, an activist of Dakhin Banga Matyasibi Forum, discuss the next meeting of the ‘tiger widows committee’. Geeta points out that the name should not have bidhwa (widow) as it sounds regressive. Tapan agrees, but says the fact that it is an organisation of tiger widows should be reflected.

“I had been a regular to the forests for over 10 years. My cousin was killed in a tiger attack in 2015, and I was among the first people in the area to get government compensation,” Tapan says. He too has not ventured into the forest since his cousin was killed in the core area of the STR.

The STR comprises an area of 1,699 sq. km where there are no human activities, while the 885 sq. km buffer zone allows tourism and fishing in a controlled manner. The buffer area falls under the forested patch of South 24 Parganas and also has a significant number of tigers.

According to the West Bengal Forest Department, the population of tigers has increased in the Sundarbans from 70 in 2010 to 101 in 2022. Between 1985 and 2008, tiger attacks led to 664 deaths and 126 injuries. Experts point out that the number of deaths are five times more than the number of people injured, which indicates the ferocity of the tiger attacks. Fishermen and honey collectors are the most vulnerable.

Geeta’s house is on the edge of the island. Across the river, the creeks and the mangrove forests are visible. A man and a woman are laying fishing nets in the creek, exposed to the danger of a tiger attack. The Sundarbans (both in India and Bangladesh) are the only mangrove forests in the world that sustain a tiger population.

A senior official of the West Bengal Forest Department says the number of tigers straying into human habitations have come down in the Sundarbans because of the efforts of the department. “For the past several years, we have put nylon fencing around human habitation, which has prevented tigers straying into human settlements. But if people go deep inside the forest there will be attacks,” the official says.

The people of the Sundarbans have lived with tigers for a few centuries now and the conflict and struggle has become part of the folklore, reflected in its customs, songs, and modes of worship. However, human-tiger conflict is not the only challenge in the Sundarbans.

Weather wars leave people battered

Home to about 4.5 million people as per the 2011 population Census, most of the region is facing the impact of climate change through rising sea levels and an increased frequency of cyclones in the Bay of Bengal.

According to World Wildlife Fund, an international non-profit working in the conservation space, the loss of land for 12 of the most vulnerable sea-facing areas has increased from 3% in 2015 to 32% in 2020. About 160 km southwest of Lahiripur, the island of Mousuni is located at the mouth of the Bay of Bengal. Like Lahiripur, this island too is difficult to reach, and it requires crossing a river in a motorised ferry.

With a population of about 22,073 as per the 2011 Census, the island is spread over 27 sq. km and the biggest challenge the inhabitants face here is sea erosion. The island has also faced the wrath of tropical cyclones such as Amphan (2020), Yash (2021), and Remal (2024).

Manasi Bhattacharya, the gram pradhan (village head), is seated on a chair in the middle of an air-conditioned room at the panchayat office at Mousuni. Outside the office, painted blue and white, located in Baghdanga area, stands an old dilapidated collectorate. Built in colonial times it is a reminder that the region was of significance to policy-makers decades ago.

Manasi may be the gram pradhan, but the person sitting next to her takes the lead in explaining the situation of the island. Chayan Bhattacharya, Manasi’s husband, opens her laptop and points to the island on Google maps. “The island resembles a boat,” he says. He explains that the area where the panchayat office is located was once a dense forest and there were tigers here as well. “That’s how the area got its name (bagh is tiger, danga is land, in Bengali),” he says.

Mousuni is a sinking island of the Sundarbans, but it has emerged as a tourism destination, with about 62 camps coming up at the mouth of the Bay of Bengal where the rising sea is fast eating up the land. “The tourist camps were set up by 2018. Earlier, there was sand along the beach which acted as a barrier to erosion. With the recent erosion, the sand and mangrove patches have all been washed away,” Chayan says.

He points out that the panchayat does not have resources to arrest river erosion and since 2021 when the 100 days of work guarantee under MGNREGA stopped, nothing much is being done. There are about 300 families that are directly dependent on the camps for their livelihood and several who reap the economic benefit indirectly.

The tourist camps are built in close proximity to each other with very basic infrastructure at a place called Salt Gheri, the southern tip of the island. Abhishek Roy, who owns and manages a tourism camp called Sand Castle Beach Camp, says out of 62 camps, about 44 are operational. The beach in front of most of the camps has eroded and in place of sand the area is full of mud. The owners are putting up more wooden and concrete barriers to prevent further erosion.

The camp owners and panchayat functionaries are aware that these camps erected right on the beach of the ecologically vulnerable island are in complete violation of Coastal Regulation Zone rules. However, people here say the camps provide employment within the area. Amiya Dolui, employed at Sand Castle Beach Camp, worked as a migrant worker in Kerala. He is happy to be locally employed for the past five years.

Political upheavals

In 2024, the Sundarbans witnessed a human-to-human conflict too. Sandeshkhali, an island in the Sundarbans located in the Basirhat Subdivision of North 24 Parganas, became the epicentre of the conflict. The region has been on the boil over allegations of land grab and abuse made against a local Trinamool Congress leader Sheikh Shahjahan and his aides. Despite the arrest of Shahjahan on February 28, the island remained volatile until June 1, when the Lok Sabha poll was held.

It was in the middle of February that Rekha Patra, a 30 year-year-old woman living on the island became the face of the protests. On a Sunday morning, a group of women gathered outside her house after it was allegedly attacked by goons. With a child in her arms, Rekha appeared distraught, “Had I not gone into hiding last night, they would have killed me”.

By March 2, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) had announced Rekha as the party’s candidate from the Basirhat Lok Sabha seat. At the height of the election campaign, almost every corner of the island had posters and graffiti of Rekha Patra. Prime Minister Narendra Modi spoke to her over the phone and called her Shakti Swaroopa (Symbol of Power).

Allegations between the Trinamool Congress ruling in West Bengal and the BJP ruling at the Centre, flew thick and fast. On June 5, when the counting of votes for Lok Sabha polls was held, Rekha realised by the afternoon that she was trailing. She walked out of the counting centre at Basirhat even before the results were announced. That was the last time she was seen as a public figure. The BJP candidate lost the Basirhat Lok Sabha seat to the Trinamool Congress nominee by a margin of 3.30 lakh votes.

When the dust of the election settled, a 30-year-old youth from the island, Suman Maity, summed up the situation. “We started the movement against land grab, but we did not want it to take a political turn. Politics has divided the people on the island. It is never going to be the same,” Suman, who is also a migrant worker, says.

Published - October 05, 2024 09:40 pm IST