The Dongria Kondh
Victory over British mining company

The Dongria Kondh have won a historic battle to save their lands and forests from an open-pit bauxite mine.

Vedanta Resources, a British company, intended to dig a bauxite mine on Niyamgiri mountain in India.

The mine would have destroyed the forests on which the Dongria Kondh depend and wreck the lives of thousands of other Kondh tribal people living in the area.

Message for Vedanta from yugabrata kar (bubu):


I , being an eco tour operator visit frequently to Dunguria Kondh tribe villages at NIYAMAGIRI.It is really a wonderful world of its own and the Dunguria Kondh people live very original as per their thoughts.It will be a criminal offence to destroy this hill and its people for shake of industrial development.I thank all who stood by these DUNGURIA TRIBES to save Niyamagiri.My special thanks to Mr RAJIV GANDHI who also understood that MONEY CAN NOT BUY ALL.Now it is time for us to learn from the tribes how to live with out all these materials and can still be happy . at least
Message for Vedanta from :

Message for Vedanta from Sehu Khepera Ankh:


Greetings Vedanta,

I just saw a documentary called Mine which details your plans for mining a sacred mountain, at least its sacred to the indigenous people who live there. For them, as is explained in the documentary, the mountain is their God; this is what they believe. Also, there belief and way of life has attuned them to their surroundings and nature in such a way that they Divinize all aspects of their lives. For these reasons, which would touch the hearts of any person who is aware of the right of dignity and religious freedom, and the purity of their world view, it seems to me that your idea of breaking apart their mountain is illogical from the standpoint of human fairness and dignity. That is on a religious level. But also, your company is from a free country where human rights are respected. Therefore, if you do not support these people in their right to live the way they choose, then how will your conscience survive as you are taking the very freedom from others that you enjoy?; that makes it possible for you to have a company. While these people don’t want a company, they merely want to live according to a way of life that sustains them and their environment, it seems that good nature d and warm loving human beings would allow them to live as they are required by their love of nature, their culture and their religious beliefs. From a scientific perspective, what will become of western society when you destroy the lungs of your planet? All the wealth that is amassed will be useless if you can’t breath. But perhaps you are not thinking about the future of the earth and the people who will live here; including your children and grandchildren. You will leave for them a great disaster and they may, in time, rebuke you instead of praise you for your time on earth because you are leaving the earth worse than how you met it, thereby bringing hardship on your own children and their children. It is not hard to see that climate change is real, even if people and other scientists disagree, for whatever reason, it is a very real phenomenon that is occurring. Your business and perhaps leisure activities contribute to this, not to mention the heart ache you cause to the indigenous peoples of the land. In the documentary, there was a gentleman there who said that he knows everything about the forest; maybe instead of reviling these people, you should actually learn from them the secrets of how to have a real healthy life. It seems to me, that all of the indigenous people are more than willing to share their knowledge with others. In that case there can be a meeting of two world views and not the dominanace of one over the other. The very survival of the human species is predicated on how well we can assimilate our divergent ways of exploring the human experience. When one dominates the other, they both are destroyed. the dominat group gain in wealth, but they lose their inherent innocence, kindness and faculty of love and affection; in a true way those are diminished, so a moral decadence is created within the psyche of one who dominates others. While for the group who has been dominated, they may suffer greatly due to loss, which is mostly material, but they remain intact where it most significant, in the heart and mind; they leave intact their souls and their survivors develop suspicion; which is a downfall of the dominant group; they have lost the trust of their fellow human brother and sister, like losing the trust of your husband or wife; a deep and pervasive divide that leaves you empty and feeling like a failure. How can they trust you if you kill them, destroy their way of life and decimate their culture? So no wonder they hide and don’t want contact with "outsiders". This is a great tragedy because no one is really an outsider; we are all one human family, interconnected through biology at the tissue, cellular and DNA levels as well as interconnected at the level of the spirit; we are all one and the same, this is not only substantiated by mystic spiritual traditions from all people, but Quantum Physics has come to the very same conclusion. So if people are referring to others as "outsiders", then that means that the "outsiders" are doing things that are not in tuned with the greater will of the one family. What is being done is a very great mistake, this is not hard to see, from the point of view of our common humanity; You should learn to live with others, and learn from them to truly improve your situation and way of life. It is sad to see indigenous people say such things as "the white people" but in a form that separates them from the good, the cosmic order of the universe and not as s term of endearment. They refer to "white people" as sort of an anomaly. This should not be so, but, it should make you wonder especially since in their deepest beliefs they see all people as one, which is the reality. I would simply ask you, kindly and with due respect for your scientific knowledge of the use of bauxite, to please do not take away their mountain; it will be good for you and them because you can actually go to them, in honor and respect and ask them to teach you about the forest, instead of killing it. And also, your moral merit will increase, if not in the sight of your contemporaneity, certainly within the sight of God and most assuredly, within your own sight, you will see yourself as a moral and righteous human being; you would actually respect yourself and your wives and children will truly respect you and in the end, really, that is all that matters, as we all must die. Would that not be more fruitful for your life and those that you know? I mean really, how much more bauxite do you need? There are already more cars on the earth, that everyone can have one, if we recycle the old ones and not make anymore for a very long while, perhaps 50-100 years. This may seem outrageous, but when another Hurricane Katrina arrives, or when another Tsunami arrives, or when the forest in Russia and Australia are burnt to nothing, when there is no more ice in the arctic but in the oceans as water as the ocean levels rise, when another flood hits Pakistan or China or another mass earthquake in Tibet, when there is no more water in California or Las Vegas or when the Jordan and Colorado rivers dry up when there is no more oil to make gasoline and we have billions of cars and nothing to do with then,only then, it seems will people realize the absurdity and shortsightedness of over consumption especially at the expense of the people who revere nature and hold what is truly sacred, to be just that, sacred. Please allow the people to live as they choose, on their mountain, for your own benefit and for others for many years to come. Within you is the moral strength to exercise the will of righteousness. What is needed is the effort and patience to discover that goodness within yourself. May you succeed.

Peace