Save our mountain, Indian tribe urges banks

For centuries, life has remained unchanged for India's Dongria Kondh tribe. Living on the remote Niyamgiri mountain, they keep to a daily routine of tilling crops, picking wild fruits and worshipping the hill god Niyam Raja.

The existence is a simple one, but, because of a British FTSE 100 mining company, their way of life, their mountain and, indeed, their very survival, is under threat.

Vedanta, a mining company owned by the London-based Indian billionaire Anil Agarwal, is planning to mine at the mountain, deep in the state of Orissa in eastern India. Its subsidiary, Sterlite, is hoping to receive permission from India's Supreme Court to begin mining bauxite, the most important aluminum ore, on land considered sacred by the tribe. The open mine would destroy the habitat that has been their home for centuries, destroying the forest and drying up water sources.

Norway has already excluded Vedanta from its national pension fund investments on the grounds that such investment would carry "unacceptable risk of complicity in present and future severe environmental damage and systemic human rights violations".

Members of the Dongria Kondh are now calling on British shareholders to follow suit and take their money elsewhere. The human rights group Survival International has launched a campaign to raise awareness of Vedanta's intentions and back the boycott.

Vedanta shareholders include some of Britain's best-known companies, such as Barclays, Standard Life, Abbey National and Coutts, the Queen's bank.

Speaking for his tribespeople, Rapna Majhi, a 20-year-old living in Bundel village, made a plea for help from Britain. "We don't know how to take forward our struggle in London. We cannot do this struggle – but we will fight here till we die," he said.

Majhi's legs are covered in calluses as a result of the hot ash carried through the air by Vedanta's refinery that is already operational. "Ash from the factory burns you – it is like chilli powder," he said. "We were never told that the company planned to destroy Niyamgiri – just set up the factory in Lanjigarh," he explained. "We didn't know that everywhere would be so polluted or that they would steal our God."

Survival International's director Stephen Corry appealed yesterday to Britons to boycott the offending shareholders. "People who care about human rights should boycott British companies which dispossess tribal peoples," he said. "That means not buying their shares.

"The days of companies successfully sheltering behind local legislation and carrying on violating international law are gone. Vedanta, the reaching for the divine beyond knowledge, is one of Hinduism's core religious principles – what a paradox that a company using the name might destroy one of India's most spiritual tribes."

The land where Vedanta propose to build the mine is also protected under India's 1980 Forests Conservation Act. The company has already been accused by India's Supreme Court of a "blatant violation" of the country's environmental and planning guidelines. But last week, in a compromise that would still spell disaster for the Dongria Kondh, it was proposed that a new not-for-profit company be set up to run the mining, where Vedanta's stake would be no more than 24.5 per cent. The surplus generated from the company would supposedly be reinvested back into the local community.

Julian Oram, policy officer at Action Aid UK, said that proposals to give some of the profit back to the tribespeople meant very little if the Supreme Court still allowed mining to continue. "They can't eat money, and they can't survive on a bare lump of rock, which is all that would be left of the mountain if it was mined," he said.

To show your support for the Dongria Kondh tribe, goo to: www.petitiononline.com/niyam/petition.html

Interesting? Click here to explore further