An Open Pit of Procedural Violence: Insights From an Indigenous Struggle Against Coal Mining in Jharkhand, India

Abstract

Indigenous communities are at the forefront of many environmental conflicts in India. The involvement of indigenous communities in such conflicts and the subsequent struggles give rise to multiple levels of oppression due to historical and social relations of exclusion and marginalisation. This article traces an in-depth history of a particular struggle for community forest rights and against coal mining in eastern India, involving indigenous people. The analysis is based on fieldwork consisting of in-depth interviews and direct observation, as well as an extensive survey of secondary literature, including grey literature. This paper concludes that applying concepts developed in the Global North, such as procedural justice, without recognising the vastly different socio-political, cultural and historical contexts, leads to a coloniality of knowledge. To counter this, the article introduces the idea of procedural violence instead, emphasising the overwhelming experience of oppression, whereby direct and structural violences sustain procedural injustices. The article also makes the case for a more methodologically diverse, theoretically plural practice of scholarship on environmental justice activism.