ABSTRACT
This chapter critically analyses the salient features of the Forest Rights Act (FRA) 2006 of India, contextualising it within international human rights and normative frameworks. It reviews the historical injustice of the involuntary displacement of Indigenous Adivasi communities from their ancestral lands in India. It briefly presents the evolution laws related to the use of forest lands from colonial era – enacted primarily to expropriate the forest to the FRA (2006). The FRA, is a rights-based, enlightened piece of social justice legislation, inclusive of the principles of gender equality and self-determination, aimed at providing legal protection of substantive rights for tenurial security for forest peoples, and to empower them to self-governance and self-determination. A key argument presented in the chapter is that postcolonial law in India reinforces the inequities and dominance of past colonial laws in India, resulting in the implementation of economic development schemes displacing Indigenous communities and their human rights. The chapter raises the question of whether international laws or national legislation can truly improve access to justice, and whether they can challenge the displacement of Indigenous communities globally.
