Human Rights and Indigenous Struggles in Arunachal Pradesh

Arunachal Pradesh sits at the meeting point of fragile Himalayan ecology, contested international borders, and a mosaic of indigenous tribes whose lives are tightly bound to their land. This combination makes human rights here unusually complex. The question is rarely whether rights exist on paper, but whether communities can actually exercise them when faced with large dams, demographic anxieties, statelessness, and the slow neglect of remote border villages. Understanding these struggles tells us a great deal about how democracy and development collide in one of the country’s most ecologically and strategically significant frontiers.

Why human rights look different in Arunachal Pradesh
Mega dams and the rights of indigenous communities
The question of consent
A history of resistance
Biodiversity and the rights tied to it
Community-led conservation as a rights model
The NHRC and the rights of border villages
The Chakma and Hajong refugees: a question of citizenship
From refugees to a demographic flashpoint
The landmark NHRC case
An unresolved standoff
The common thread

Why human rights look different in Arunachal Pradesh

Arunachal Pradesh is home to 26 major tribes and around 110 ethnic groups spread across one of the planet’s richest ecological zones. Most of these communities depend directly on forests and rivers for food, medicine, livelihood, and cultural identity. When the land changes, their way of life changes with it.

This dependence is why human rights debates here cannot be separated from questions of land, ecology, and identity. The same forces that threaten the environment-displacement, loss of resources, demographic pressure-also threaten basic dignity and survival. Three issues dominate this landscape: displacement caused by mega dams, the protection of indigenous communities and biodiversity, and the unresolved status of the Chakma and Hajong refugees.

Mega dams and the rights of indigenous communities

Arunachal Pradesh has been described as a future “powerhouse” because of its river systems, and successive governments have promoted large hydropower projects. The most contested today is the Siang Upper Multipurpose Project (SUMP), planned on the Siang River with a proposed capacity exceeding 11,000 MW, which would make it one of India’s largest hydroelectric projects.

The human cost is enormous. The Siang Indigenous Farmers’ Forum (SIFF) has led sustained protests against the project. According to community estimates, the dam could displace over 1.5 lakh people and submerge 27 villages, most of them belonging to the Adi tribe, while also destroying agricultural land and cultural heritage sites.

A central human rights concern is the absence of genuine consent. Indigenous groups argue that pre-construction surveys and outreach activities are being pushed forward without the free, prior, and informed consent of affected communities-a standard India has accepted under international human rights commitments. Activists point out that the deployment of Central Armed Police Forces to facilitate surveys, recorded in a December 2024 state notification, turns a development project into a confrontation between the state and its own citizens.

The pattern of pressure has been stark. Reports describe offers of cash for consent, legal action against activists, and the suspension of village heads who opposed the project. The 2022 arrest of lawyer Ebo Mili for painting an anti-dam slogan became a symbol of how dissent is treated. For communities who say they do not want their children “to grow up as refugees,” the dam is not progress but the threat of losing everything.

A history of resistance

The Siang protests are not isolated. Arunachal Pradesh has a long record of anti-dam resistance, from the Subansiri to the Dibang projects. These movements echo older struggles elsewhere in the country, such as the Narmada valley, where the World Commission on Dams noted that tribal people are frequently the most vulnerable to displacement and loss of resources. The lesson activists draw is that large dams have repeatedly imposed their heaviest costs on the communities least able to absorb them.

Biodiversity and the rights tied to it

Protecting biodiversity in Arunachal Pradesh is not a separate issue from human rights-it is deeply linked to them. The state lies within the Eastern Himalayan biodiversity hotspot, one of the 200 most significant ecoregions globally, supporting rare species like the red panda, clouded leopard, and the critically endangered white-bellied heron.

For indigenous communities, this ecological wealth is inseparable from daily life. As the state’s own biodiversity strategy acknowledges, biodiversity is a way of life for tribes such as the Nyishi, Apatani, Monpa, and Mishmi, who have relied on forests for food, medicine, and cultural tradition for generations. When a dam floods a valley or deforestation strips a hillside, the loss is simultaneously ecological and cultural.

Community-led conservation as a rights model

Some of the most promising responses have come from communities themselves. The Idu Mishmi have developed community-conserved areas built on customary practices to protect their ancestral land while preserving biodiversity. In western Arunachal Pradesh, the Monpa tribe has worked with conservation groups on community-conserved areas that secure their traditional custodianship and user rights over natural resources. These models treat indigenous people not as obstacles to conservation but as its rightful custodians-an approach that respects both the environment and the right to self-determination.

The NHRC and the rights of border villages

Some of the gravest deprivation is also the quietest. Hundreds of villages along the India-China border live without basic amenities, an issue that drew the attention of the National Human Rights Commission. Acting on a petition by a human rights lawyer, the NHRC directed the state and central governments to ensure basic rights for around 600 border villages.

The petition described villages cut off from all-weather roads, potable drinking water, Anganwadi centres, schools, and health care, with few opportunities for livelihood or skill development. This neglect carries strategic weight too: when border villages remain underdeveloped, residents migrate away, leaving the frontier emptier at a time when China has been building villages in disputed areas. Here, ensuring human rights and securing the border become two sides of the same coin.

The NHRC has continued to act as a watchdog. In 2025, it took suo motu cognisance of the Siang dam protests and the deployment of armed forces, asking for a detailed report and warning of serious human rights violations if the allegations proved accurate.

The Chakma and Hajong refugees: a question of citizenship

No human rights issue in Arunachal Pradesh is as long-running or as emotionally charged as the status of the Chakma and Hajong communities. Their story begins outside India. The Chakmas, who are Buddhist, and the Hajongs, who are Hindu, were displaced when the Kaptai dam in erstwhile East Pakistan submerged their homeland in the 1960s. The Indian government resettled several thousand of them in what was then the North East Frontier Agency, now Arunachal Pradesh.

From refugees to a demographic flashpoint

Over the decades, this population grew, and so did resentment among indigenous communities. After Arunachal Pradesh gained statehood in 1987, a strong movement against the settlers gathered momentum, spearheaded by the All Arunachal Pradesh Students Union (AAPSU), which argued that the refugees had been settled without the consent of the local people. Indigenous groups fear that granting citizenship would alter the demographic balance and erode the protections that tribal communities enjoy.

The landmark NHRC case

The turning point in rights jurisprudence came in the mid-1990s. When the NHRC found that the state government was acting alongside the AAPSU to issue “quit notices” intended to intimidate and expel the Chakmas and Hajongs, it approached the Supreme Court. In the 1996 judgment in National Human Rights Commission v. State of Arunachal Pradesh, the Court held that the State is bound to protect the life and liberty of every human being, citizen or not, grounding the ruling in Articles 14 and 21 of the Constitution.

This case is a cornerstone of refugee rights in India. It established that constitutional protection of life and personal liberty extends to non-citizens, and it directed the state to ensure the safety of every Chakma and Hajong resident. Yet implementation lagged. A later petition led to a 2015 Supreme Court directive ordering the Centre to process citizenship applications, which the state government unsuccessfully sought to review.

An unresolved standoff

The tension persists to this day. The state government has resisted full citizenship, and the Centre has explored a compromise under which the refugees would receive citizenship but not the land ownership rights enjoyed by Scheduled Tribes, perhaps through Inner Line Permits. Meanwhile, the NHRC again intervened in 2022, directing authorities to protect the Chakmas and Hajongs against racial profiling and proposed relocation after a complaint alleged that most of the community were already citizens by birth. The result is a community caught in limbo: recognised by the courts, resisted by the state, and still waiting for rights to be realised after five generations.

The common thread

Across dams, biodiversity, border villages, and refugees, one pattern repeats itself. Rights in Arunachal Pradesh are frequently affirmed by courts and commissions but obstructed in practice by competing pressures-development ambitions, strategic anxieties, and demographic fears. The indigenous Adi resisting displacement and the stateless Chakma seeking citizenship are, in different ways, both asking the same question: who counts as a rights-bearing member of this land, and on whose terms? How a democracy answers that question at its most contested frontier reveals a great deal about its commitment to rights everywhere.

What do you think? Should large hydropower projects be allowed to proceed in fragile ecological zones if the affected indigenous communities have not given their free, prior, and informed consent? And how should a democracy balance the demographic anxieties of indigenous tribes against the constitutional rights of long-settled refugee communities like the Chakmas and Hajongs?

How useful was this post?

Click on a star to rate it!

Average rating 0 / 5. Vote count: 0

No votes so far! Be the first to rate this post.

References

PDF 📄

Table of Contents

Why human rights look different in Arunachal Pradesh 🔗

Mega dams and the rights of indigenous communities 🔗

The question of consent 🔗

A history of resistance 🔗

Biodiversity and the rights tied to it 🔗

Community-led conservation as a rights model 🔗

The NHRC and the rights of border villages 🔗

The Chakma and Hajong refugees: a question of citizenship 🔗

From refugees to a demographic flashpoint 🔗

The landmark NHRC case 🔗

An unresolved standoff 🔗

The common thread 🔗