ORPHANED BY APATHY

Hidden from the outside world, this is the plight of the Van Taungiyas

- RICHARD MAHAPATRA

LEGALLY, PARAS Nath doesn't exist. At the age of 52 he is still clueless about where he hails from. Nath was barely five years old when he began toiling hard to grow sal trees in the forest. "Even my parents were not able to trace their antecedents, but they too spent their life planting trees here," he says resignedly, sitting in front of his thatched house.

Nath's is not an isolated case. About 26,000 people in the forests of Maharajganj and Gorakhpur districts of Uttar Pradesh (UP) are facing a similar identity crisis. They are known as the Van Taungiya-a legacy created by the repressive British forest policy and perpetuated by an even more exploitative Indian forest department (FD). Today, the community is facing eviction from the very forests it has nurtured and regarded as 'home'. Hence the frantic search for its roots.