The River that Refuses to be Silent

In the far reaches of Arunachal Pradesh, where the Siang descends from the Tibetan plateau into the deep, breathing green of the eastern Himalaya, it arrives not as a resource but as a presence. It bends through valleys like memory—ancient, patient, quietly authoritative. Villages do not gather around it; they emerge from it. Life here is not arranged beside the river—it is shaped by it.

By Suresh Nautiyal Greenananda

The river does not speak in words, yet those who live by it understand its language.

In the far reaches of Arunachal Pradesh, where the Siang descends from the Tibetan plateau into the deep, breathing green of the eastern Himalaya, it arrives not as a resource but as a presence. It bends through valleys like memory—ancient, patient, quietly authoritative. Villages do not gather around it; they emerge from it. Life here is not arranged beside the river—it is shaped by it.

And yet, something disturbs its rhythm.

It does not begin with machines. It begins with an idea—distant, measured, drawn into neat lines and ambitious numbers. The Upper Siang Multipurpose Project: 11,200 megawatts of promise. A figure that gleams in reports and meetings, in the careful language of progress.

But numbers do not flow like rivers.

When a fact-finding team consisting of activists and researchers like Sandeep Pandey, Gunjan Singh, Niya Tapo, Biju Borbaruah and Ramuni Burhagohain arrived in the Siang valley from 20 to 24 February this year, carrying questions and the discipline of listening, they encountered not confusion, but clarity—an unease so deeply shared that it no longer required explanation.

“For us, this is not a project—it is a question of survival,” said Dubit Siram, an office bearer of the Siang Indigenous Farmers’ Forum, Arunachal Pradesh.

“If it is altered beyond recognition, what remains of us,” he questioned.

There was no rhetoric in his voice—only facts.

Beside him, Likeng Libang of the same organisation spoke with quiet resolve: “The Siang is not just a river. It is Mother Siang. Everything flows from it—our fields, our rituals, our identity. Without it, we are not what we are. We are not against development, but it cannot come at the cost of our existence.”

The words were recorded, but recording is not the same as understanding.

Moving from village to village, the team encountered a pattern—not of sudden resistance, but of continuity. Opposition here had not erupted; it had endured. Since the 1980s, when early proposals surfaced under the Brahmaputra Board, the question had never disappeared. It had travelled quietly across generations.

“This is not a momentary agitation,” said a young member of the Siang Indigenous Farmers’ Forum. “Our elders resisted. Now it is our responsibility.”

Responsibility here does not feel like a burden. It feels like belonging.

Across villages, the slogans—No Dam, No Survey, Save Siang—are not mere protest. They are declarations of refusal: a refusal to be spoken for, a refusal to be decided for. In the Kebang, the traditional village councils, the matter is already settled. Nothing that transforms the land can proceed without consent. What policy names Free, Prior, and Informed Consent is here simply lived knowledge.

And yet, the project moves—quietly.

There are whispers of development packages, of Corporate Social Responsibility initiatives, of funds arriving through unclear channels. “Development must be transparent,” Siram insists. “If it comes through other routes, it creates division. It makes consent unclear.” Consent, in this landscape, is not a signature. It is a collective condition.

Then come the signs that do not enter official records.

From late 2024, paramilitary presence increases. Roads that once carried footsteps now carry boots. Conversations lower as uniforms pass. Cases are filed—hundreds, villagers say—against those who speak, organise, resist. Some village heads are suspended; others removed.

“When people are criminalised for defending their land,” a legal observer notes, “it tells you something about the nature of the development being pursued.”

Social activist Sandeep Pandey at the Siang river site

The land itself offers its own warning. This is Seismic Zone V—restless earth, fragile balance. The eastern Himalaya does not absorb such interventions easily. Here, consequences do not always arrive immediately; they gather, and then unfold.

Yet even these risks—geological, ecological—seem secondary beside a simpler question.

In Geku, a man stands by the river and asks, almost to himself: “When our village is submerged, our culture will end. How will we live and survive?”

There is no answer.

The fact-finding team wrote its report—calling for reconsideration, for consent, for dialogue, for independent assessment. Necessary words. Rational words. But something remains beyond their reach.

What is the alternative to belonging?

What replaces a river that is also memory?

The Siang flows on—carrying silt, stories, continuity. It does not protest. It does not argue. It simply moves. And within that movement, a question gathers: What is development if it requires the unmaking of those who have learned to live without unmaking the world around them? What is progress if it silences a river that has never asked to be heard, only to be allowed to flow?

Beyond the valley, a few voices attempt to break the wider silence.

Ravi Chopra Of PSI Dehradun observes that much of this discontent remains unseen, unfolding far from the national gaze. What happens in these remote valleys rarely enters the country’s central conversation.

From Haridwar Matri Sadan, Gurudev offers a deeper warning: for centuries, rivers and mountains have sustained life, yet massive projects now rise over them without fully reckoning with their ecological, social, and spiritual consequences. The submergence of villages, he cautions, will not merely displace people—it will fragment and eventually dissolve cultures rooted in a delicate harmony between river, forest, and land. In fragile Himalayan regions, such interventions carry irreversible effects: disturbed seismic balance, disrupted river systems, threatened biodiversity, and an increased risk of disasters.

And Sandeep Pandey returns the question to its simplest democratic core: “Even after knowing the dangers of climate change, if we are ready to play havoc with nature on such a scale, we are to blame. We are a democracy—how can such a dam be built without the approval of affected people? If the people do not want it, the river must be allowed to flow freely.”

The debate does not end. It moves—through villages, through courts, through reports, through the uneasy conscience of a nation still defining what it means to grow.

Between power and people.

Between ambition and belonging.

Between megawatts and memory.

And beneath it all, the river remains—refusing, in its own way, to be silent.

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Suresh Nautiyal is Contributing Editor, independentink.in

Photos courtesy: Siang Indigenous Farmers’ Forum, Arunachal Pradesh