The Supreme Court hearing on the Forest Rights Act (FRA) may have been postponed, but it has re-ignited the debate on ‘exclusionary conservation’ and ‘historical injustice’. Hard-line conservationists, who are the petitioners, have tried to portray FRA as a law that encourages ‘forest encroachments.’ Affidavits filed by most state governments, however, admit to having been careless in rejecting the claims filed under the FRA and have requested time to review them thoroughly. But do we and the state machinery really understand the ‘historical injustice’ that the FRA seeks to correct? The first historic injustice is rooted in the fact that right from colonial times, the Adivasis’ way of life and itinerant mode of cultivation was never legally acknowledged. For example, the Imperial Forest Service, while notifying Doddasampige State Forest, recognized the rights of “wild jungle tribes” only to their habitation; burial ground; their shrine; and, access to a water resource. The notification is silent on how these communities, situated in the middle of dense forest, are to pursue a livelihood. Meticulous descriptions of the paths to access a shrine, or those to use for grazing, hide the fact that the rights to hunt, to gather forest produce, and to practice shifting cultivation—the three main modes of survival of these communities—were not recognized at all! Denied the right to livelihood, Adivasis became criminals in the eyes of the Forest Department and were subjected to their ruthless policing for decades.