Tigers, sea, and politics: the many conflicts of the Sundarbans

Women in Sundarbans give up honey after husbands are killed by tigers, facing poverty, climate change, and human-tiger conflict.

Sarojini Mondal’s mother stopped eating honey when her father was killed by a tiger. Women in the Sundarbans, in West Bengal, whose husbands are killed in tiger attacks sometimes give up honey, believing that it is ‘blood honey’. Its pursuit took their husbands to the forest, which eventually led to their death. Sarojini, now 57, was 12 years old then and her father had gone deep inside the Sundarbans forest to collect honey. He did not return.

Almost 40 years later, Sarojini’s husband Sambhu Mondal was killed by a tiger in 2019, when he was catching fish. She wondered whether to give up fish.

Saraswati Auliya, 58, did give it up. Her husband, Radhakanta Auliya, was killed by the same tiger when he was out with Sambhu.

The women remember that it was about 3.30 p.m. when Sambhu and Radhakanta had ventured into the forest to fish. While Sambhu was laying the nets at the edge of a creek, a tiger pounced on him and began dragging him into the forest. Radhakanta lunged at it with a stick. The tiger attacked him, dragging his body deep into the jungle.

The others in the fishing party looked for Radhakanta’s body, but did not find it. Several days of search did not result in any success. For five years (2019-2024) the State government denied compensation to both the women, who lost the only earning member of the family, on the grounds that Sambu and Radhakanta had entered a prohibited area in the Sundarban Tiger Reserve (STR). It was after an order by the Calcutta High Court this year when compensation of ₹5 lakh was given to both Sarojini and Saraswati.

The Indian part of the Sundarbans, spread across 19 blocks of two districts, South 24 Parganas and North 24 Parganas, has small land holdings and limited economic means. Many men migrate for jobs to other States and the women face the adversities of human-tiger conflict, climate and political turmoil.

The Sundarbans is one of the poorest regions of the State, with people having small and diminishing land holdings mostly because of climate change and erosion. About 44% people in the region live below the poverty line and depend on the forests for their livelihood.