New Delhi: Right beside a river, about 15 women lie in a line on a long wooden platform, its frames wrought of bamboo and wood. The image has a certain morbidity to it: it looks like they are lying on funeral pyres, waiting to be burnt. There are several such ‘pyres’ around, with living, breathing people laying on them. Many other women and men sit, stand, even lie down in the shallow water; others stand close by, their arms tied to wooden crosses over five feet tall. Everyone gathered around raises a hard-hitting slogan together:

“Give us justice or kill us,” they shout, in the video published by Down To Earth on July 16. “We will not put up with the destruction of our Ken river.”

Several such videos of a chita andolan or ‘pyre protest’ and a ‘noose satyagraha’ in northern Madhya Pradesh have drawn attention on social media over the past few months. Some protesters are also on a hunger strike.

Who are they, and what are these people protesting about? And why does a river figure in this? The Wire breaks it down for you.

People – men and women from indigenous communities, and farmers – living along the Ken river in northern Madhya Pradesh have turned to unusual means of protests.

This video by Down To Earth from Chhattarpur’s Palkoha village on the banks of the Ken river shows villagers lying down on a wooden platform made from small logs, fashioned in the likeness of funeral pyres. Some have their wrists tied to a makeshift wooden cross erected in the water near the banks of the river. Another image shows women standing in a line under a wooden frame that supports cloth nooses – nooses that the women have worn loosely around their necks.

Some like Divya Ahirwar are smearing mud on their faces, reported PeekTV. “Tribals here are entirely dependent on jal jangal jameen [water, forests, land] for their survival,” she told PeekTV. “But they are being taken away from this, torn away from their villages.”

The first of these protests began a few months ago, in early April. Villagers discontinued protests on April 16 after authorities promised that their demands would be looked into. But villagers, including the residents of Kupi in Chhattarpur district, restarted their protests on July 3 because of lack of action.

People at the protest site are also on hunger strikes. Social activist Amit Bhatnagar, who has been spearheading the protest along the river Ken, has completed 12 days of his indefinite hunger........

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