Between Forests and Courts: Legitimacy Dilemmas and Strategic Advocacy in Khasi Indigenous Activism

Abstract

This article examines how Khasi Indigenous activists in Bangladesh navigate land dispossession under contested environmental governance. Their struggles against commercial tourism, tea estates, rubber plantations and state-sanctioned deforestation often remain marginal to public debate, as media and state agencies tend to align with elite development agendas. In such settings, Indigenous communities without formal land entitlement are required to rely on strategic alliances to gain visibility, representation and legal expertise. Drawing on in-person and digital ethnography, this article argues that legitimacy is not a fixed status but a situational and continuously negotiated practice shaped by shifting political and institutional conditions. The analysis develops a framework of four recurring legitimacy dilemmas that structure this process: the risks and necessity of becoming visible in public and legal arenas; tensions in translating cultural claims into state- and media-legible frames; uneven access to legal, organizational and representational resources; and strains on autonomy when external support threatens to overshadow community authority. This framework illuminates broader dynamics of grassroots advocacy in postcolonial contexts where visibility can empower claims yet heighten exposure, dependency and contestation. The article, thus, contributes to debates on legitimacy and Indigenous activism by demonstrating how legitimacy is processual and temporally reconfigured through four recurring dilemmas across evolving advocacy trajectories under contested environmental governance.