Submerged Landscapes and Displaced Lives: Ethnographic Renderings on Dams, Tiger Reserves, and Monumental Erasure in Vidarbha, Maharashtra, India

Abstract (English)

This ethnographic study examines the cultural impacts of state-led displacement resulting from the construction of large dams and the expansion of tiger reserves in Maharashtra and neighbouring areas of Central India. Although these interventions are frequently presented as essential for national development or wildlife conservation, they have resulted in the submergence of ancestral landscapes and the forced relocation of Indigenous communities—most notably the Gond, Korku, Baiga, Bhil, Madia, Kolam, and Halba peoples. The displacements involve not just the loss of land and livelihood, but also the erasure of sacred geographies, ritual sites, burial grounds, and mnemonic landscapes that are intricately woven into local cosmologies.

This research utilises multi-sited ethnographic fieldwork to document the ways in which communities remember, mourn, and engage ritually with submerged shrines, spirit groves (devrai), clan deity sites (gramme devata), and ancestral monuments. In the Melghat and Tadoba–Andhari Tiger Reserves, traditional festivals like harya jatra and ancestor propitiation rituals have faced disruption or displacement. In the floodplains of the Gosikhurd Dam and the Kanha–Pench corridor, villagers remember submerged temples, megalithic mounds, and ritual wells that are not recorded in official documents. The seasonal returns to submerged sites, oral cartographies of sacred landscapes, and symbolic re-enactments of loss in new settlements highlight the enduring strength of Indigenous memory amidst efforts of erasure.

This paper thoughtfully explores the gap in understanding between state-led conservation efforts and the conservation practices embraced by Indigenous land stewards. The study also integrates ethnography with oral history, ritual performance, and community-based memory mapping, providing a decolonial perspective on heritage that challenges prevailing paradigms which separate nature from culture or wilderness from worship.

This work ultimately presents submerged landscapes as locations of material loss and cultural resistance, advocating for a broader comprehension of heritage that encompasses the submerged, the sacred, and the silenced. It anticipates to play a significant role in wider global discussions regarding ecological justice, heritage politics, and the rights of Indigenous communities concerning memory, land, and spiritual continuity.