Imam agreed. “Basically, they cannot allow an Obama to be created here at any cost,” he said. “I’ve had forest department officials even say that ‘these Siddis’ have come from outside and are trying to get land here. But we’re as much of an Indian citizen as them or you.”

The anger among the community is palpable and stems from years of being asked to prove their connection to India repeatedly. Juliana Siddi from Haliyal was moved to tears as she spoke of fighting this tag of being an outsider. “When we go to cast our vote, nobody asks us who we are, where we come from or to prove that we have a genuine connection with this land,” she said. “They just want our vote. But when it comes to giving us our rights, suddenly, questions about our identity surface. “Nobody knows the forests better than us. We know which tree is how old, or how to extract honey without disrupting the ecosystem of the forest. We are the ones that are protecting the forest.”