What is Dispossession

Land is a promising asset that acts as a stimulus for indigenous people to act and respond within their natural limits. The natives enjoy great kinship with the land. They deem the land as one with the humankind: a living, breathing, and thinking being. They believe that they live under the constant protection of the green produce of the land and they ought to protect it in return as it plays a key role in determining the possibility of survival of the tribal community. Any attempt at enforced displacement, tribal eviction, land encroachment, land diversion, or land alienation leads to disintegration of the tribal community. Trespassers trying to dispossess the aboriginals of their land not only impact the indigenous ethnic formations but also affect the ecological balance. The chapter provides an incisive sociological scrutiny to trace the origin of the pressing crisis of tribal land alienation, by adopting Gopinath Mohanty's Paraja as a case study, to understand its catastrophic repercussions on the forest communities and the natural habitat.