The villagers residing in the Pottipuram Village Panchayat surrounding the Hills expressed their opposition citing their belief and their worship of the hills as a deity
In the ongoing agitation against neutrino project, the people living in the Pottipuram village panchayat surrounding Ambarappar Hills in Tamil Nadu's Theni district where the India based Neutrino Observatory is proposed to be set up, for the first time invoked the Sethu Samudram Shipping Channel Project to voice their opposition to the INO in an open letter to the renowned scientist who voiced their support for the research project.
"The government… stopped the Sethu Samudram Shipping Canal Project, citing the traditional structure, supposedly built by "Lord Rama". Our deity Ambarappar is to us to what Lord Rama is to them," the villagers wrote in the open letter after the scientists including Nobel laureates extended support to the project claiming that it would neither affect the environment nor water resources.
The villagers residing in the Pottipuram Village Panchayat surrounding the Hills expressed their opposition citing their belief and their worship of the hills as a deity. "The Amparappar hills is our deity, it is our God and we have an enduring mystical connection with thousands and thousands of forest deities who we believe are still protecting us from various natural disasters. This is our cultural and traditional rights that we have inherited from our forefathers. We cannot compromise our right to whomsoever it may be to whichever may be the purpose," they wrote.
"Unlike scientists like you, whose vision is to explore the unexplored areas of science, all we hope to do is to save our Western Ghats. We believe the ordinary people who consider the mountains, rivers, forests, streams as sacred and holy are also allowed to live peacefully in this democracy," they wrote.
One of the signatories of the letter, P Muthilikamu of T Pudukottai village said that every year during the Tamil month of Chithirai (mid-April to mid-May), the people of five villages in the panchayat would jointly hold festivals at the hilltop where they erected a wooden pole as the Ambarappar deity and offer prayer to it. "We fear construction of 2.5-km-long tunnel would collapse the hilltop and destruct our Ambarappar. We will not allow that to happen," he said.
In the letter, the villagers said their pastoral land had been handed over for the project without their consent. "You would by now be aware that the project has acquired some forest land and quite a chunk of poromboke pastoral lands. These are the lands that were used by us since time immemorial, fulfilling the pastoral needs of the cattle that we depend on for our livelihood. As forest-dwelling communities, we have all the rights over this piece of land," he said.
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