Hutti gold mines: A journey into the heart of India's golden legacy

HUTTI, KARNATAKA

The triangular tract between the river Krishna and its tributary Tungabhadra near Raichur in north Karnataka was known as the Raichur Doab—“between two waters” in Persian—during the era of the Hyderabad Nizams. Despite being bounded by rivers, this arid land, dotted with sparse neem, babul and pongamia trees, depends on the uncertain monsoon.

The landscape was even harsher a century ago. In 1902, an English geologist, Captain Leonard Munn, landed here during severe drought to find groundwater for Nizam Mir Osman Ali Khan. The same year, the Kingdom of Mysore generated electricity for the first time, harnessing the waters of the Cauvery to boost gold production at the Kolar Gold Fields (KGF). Three years later, the same turbines illuminated the streets of Bangalore.

Promoted as inspector of mines, Munn explored the eastern Dharwar Craton—a geological treasure that hosts both the Hutti-Maski schist belt and the Kolar schist belt. (A schist is a medium-grade metamorphic rock that has mineral grains aligned in layered sheets.) Carrying a carbide lamp, Munn descended into ancient mine shafts beneath Hutti village in search of new gold reserves.

In 1915, another mining engineer, C. Beadon, while tracing ancient gold workings at nearby Maski village, discovered a minor rock edict from the Mauryan era that identified Emperor Ashoka by name for the first time. Until then, known inscriptions referred to him as Devanampriya or Priyadarshi. Across the Hutti-Maski belt, archaeologists have uncovered ancient mine timbers, stone ore grinders and gold beads, confirming the skill of gold mining that predates recorded history. Ashoka’s other edicts south of Maski also mention a place called Suvarnagiri (golden mountain), indicating the long association between the region and gold mining.

Ashoka’s grandfather Chandragupta Maurya’s adviser Chanakya famously argued in the Arthashastra that the state should control its vital economic enterprises, especially mining. Among the minerals he discussed, he devoted special attention to gold and silver. By the time Ashoka ordered the Maski edict to be inscribed 2,300 years ago, gold had already become the metal of kings and gods.

The Incas called it the sweat of the sun god Inti. The Egyptians believed it was the flesh of Ra, the sun god who ruled the heavens, the earth and the underworld. Depicted with the head of a falcon, adorned with a sun disc and a serpent above his head, Ra held a sceptre as the supreme deity.

Gold has long been associated with the cosmos and, in a sense, came from the sky. Science tells us that heavy metals like gold and silver were forged during the collision of neutron stars billions of years ago. As the solar system formed, gold particles became part of earth and were later locked deep within rocks. Nearly all of earth’s gold remains hidden deep in its belly.

The tiny fraction that we find near the surface is either exposed by asteroid impacts or brought closer to the surface through natural weathering processes such as erosion. Floodwaters carry flakes and nuggets into riverbeds as alluvial deposits. The California Gold Rush of the 1850s was a classic example of placer mining—a surface-mining method where prospectors sieve and pan river sediments in search of gold.

I first saw an unusual form of gold harvesting on a goldsmiths’ street in Mysuru. Gold-dust hunters collect microscopic particles that fall from jewellers’ clothes, wash them and swirl the dust in flowing wastewater to recover tiny quantities of gold. I have also seen unconventional gold recovery from riverbeds where cremation ashes are immersed, and at an electronic recycling plant where discarded motherboards and processors are ground to recover gold.

Yet one question stayed with me: as the world’s largest consumer of gold, does India still mine its own gold? Like many Indians, I had believed that India’s golden era ended with closure of KGF in 2001.

I travelled to the former Doab region this June and descended into India’s deepest active underground mine at the Hutti Gold Mines, looking for the glitter of gold in the dark tunnels. I followed ore through mills that churned out golden slurry and finally watched the molten metal become gleaming gold bullion. It was a rare opportunity to witness our own gold being mined and forged in this land of gold.

THE MEN AND THE MACHINE

The open landscape between Lingasugur and Hutti is interrupted by giant windmills harnessing the relentless winds of the Deccan plains. Dark monsoon clouds competed with the black cotton soil below, while neatly furrowed fields waited for the first rains. Though the land appeared barren, there was a subtle beauty to its emptiness.

As I drove on, the barren landscape gave way to a patch of green. Rising above the trees was a towering steel structure resembling a corpulent mobile phone tower, and an arched signboard across the road reads: Hutti Gold Mines—Welcome.

As I approached, a deep mechanical roar grew louder. It was the giant ventilation fan exhaling warm air from the depths below—the sound of an underground mine breathing. Above the bulky shafts, the winding wheels turned silently without indicating any major industrial activity below. That is the nature of underground mining—the most important work happens out of sight.

The Hutti-Maski greenstone belt has yielded gold for more than two millennia. Today, Hutti remains India’s primary gold mine. Hutti Gold Mines Company Limited (HGML) of the Karnataka government has been running it since 1956.

In the evening, I went to the top of the 38-metre-tall Mallappa Shaft. From a distance, the shafts looked mundane; up close, they were marvels of engineering. Steel stairways led to giant sheave wheels that help carry men and machines from the ground to a hidden world nearly a kilometre below and back. Opposite to it stood the 52-metre-tall New Circular Shaft, commissioned in 2023 and now the mine’s most advanced gateway to the underground. Its manager, Jagadeesh T., accompanied me on an aerial tour.

As the sun dipped behind the horizon, Jagadeesh pointed to the trees around the mine. “Generations of mine workers nurtured them. Earlier, this was arid land,” he said.

The evening sky turned golden, revealing the contours of the New Circular Shaft. Gold seemed to be everywhere—in the light bathing the landscape and in my mind.

The following morning, the siren summoned miners for the first shift. Kumar Mohan Singh, the senior manager accompanying me underground, handed me the essentials every miner carries: boots, helmet, headlamp and safety mask. Fully geared up, I looked less like a reporter than a conscript preparing for a mission.

At the shaft entrance, a banksman checked permits before allowing us into the cage. In a matter of seconds, the perforated metal doors shut while series of bells echoed between the banksman and the cage operator. Daylight disappeared as the cage dipped underground.

Standing shoulder to shoulder with the miners, I felt slightly anxious. Last year, I was scaling the peaks in Himalayas looking for snow leopards. Now, I was descending below the earth in search of gold.

Mohan Singh squeezed through the crowd towards a young man standing in a dark corner. It was his son, Rohit Singh, a rookie geologist in the exploration department. As the cage plunged into darkness, the stillness was broken by the hum of steel cables lowering the lift. Five minutes later, dim lights appeared and the cage came to a halt at the 20th level, 636 metres below the surface. It was the first stop on my 871-metre journey down.

Warm air rushed through the tunnel, driven by the mine’s powerful ventilation system. Mobile phones were useless here; communication depended on landlines and bell signals linking the underground with the surface. Before moving ahead, Mohan Singh paused and prayed at a small shrine of the goddess Chamundeshwari. Many miners did the same. There are small shrines on all the levels.

Even though there are hundreds of workers on every shift, the tunnels felt strangely empty. The miners—mostly machine operators, mechanics, engineers and exploration teams—were scattered across a vast underground network. Occasionally, dark stopes—the large, open voids left by extracted ores—were illuminated by the headlights of a low-profile dump truck. The rumble of drilling machines could be heard faintly in the distance. Modern mining runs on specialised equipment, far removed from the days when ore was hacked out by hand under the light of carbide lamps.

I asked Mohan Singh what gold actually looked like. Instead of answering, he pointed his headlamp at a white band of quartz running through the rock. Most of the precious metal remained invisible, occasionally glittering.

In the beam of his lamp, the rock formed the outline of a mythical figure created naturally by a shining band of quartz. The white auriferous quartz resembled the face of a bird-headed figure holding a staff. It looked fierce. The beam shone above it like the sun. For a brief moment, it resembled the sun god Ra in his raw form—the god of gold showing me the metal in its primordial form.

As we descended further, the labyrinth of tunnels grew warmer. In underground mines, temperature rises by about one degree for every 32 metres. I reached the 27th level, nearly 871 metres below the surface. Fresh air from the surface is pumped in to reduce the heat. The mine’s maximum depth is currently 960 metres, although that section is still under development.

At 833 metres, machines break large ore rocks and drop them through an “ore pass” (an excavation resembling a circular well) to the lower level, where they are crushed and hoisted to the surface. Every day, almost 1,500 men work in three shifts to lift about 2,200 tonnes of ore using four shafts from nine gold-bearing reefs. Mohan Singh said HGML operated two more mines 20 kilometres away—at Uti and Hirabuddinni. Every day, the plant at Hutti processes 2,500 tonnes of ore from the three mines.

A miner hurried towards me as I returned to the shaft entrance drenched in sweat. He introduced himself as Mahendra Kurdi, a crusher operator and a songwriter. Sensing my discomfort, he took my phone number before rushing back to work.

Back on the surface, his message arrived: a song about mine workers, inspired by his father and grandfather, who had mined here manually with carbide lamps and hand tools. A few lines stood out:

“Carrying a faint light upon your head/ O mine worker, you descend into the womb of Mother Earth/ gambling with your life.”

Things have changed since his grandfather’s days. Modern machines now power Hutti’s mines, just as AI tools helped create his music. “These advancements,” said HGML chairman J.T. Patil, “are helping us increase our production targets year after year.”

As we boarded the cage to return to the surface, Mohan Singh found his son Rohit waiting at one of the levels. I asked him if he ever worried about sending his son into the depths of the earth every day. Like a soldier’s father, he replied without hesitation: “I have complete faith in our safety systems and the way we work.”

After several stops to pick up miners finishing their shift, the cage emerged into the blinding afternoon sun. The fresh air was a luxury after spending hours underground.

Nearby, the rumble of conveyor belts carrying freshly mined ore reminded that the miners’ work was only half done.

Waiting for me were Mehboob Abdul and Mallikarjun Gowda from the metallurgy department. If miners search for gold underground, these men above liberate it from the rock.

Escorted by a security officer, we entered the processing plant, which houses a semi-autogenous grinding (SAG) mill, crushers and various other equipment. Ore from Hutti and the neighbouring mines disappeared into the giant rotating SAG mill, where steel balls crushed the rock into powder. Mehboob picked up a stone from a conveyor belt and showed me tiny specks glittering in the quartz.

Every stage of processing was watched closely. Samples were constantly tested, ensuring that only the right ore reached the plant. Before chemicals took over the job, nearly 60 per cent of the ‘free gold’ was recovered through a gravity-based, mechanical separation process involving a ‘shaking table’, continuous flow of wash water and rapid, side-to-side shaking motion to separate gold particles from lighter materials. In a tightly guarded room, I watched heavy gold concentrate slowly collect on shaking tables while the lighter waste washed away.

Kogal Kannappan, one of the workers here, is a third-generation employee. He said his grandfather had migrated from KGF decades ago and made Hutti his home.

The gold concentrate passed through a series of tanks in multiple stages of chemical processing, where the ore looked like a toxin-filled porridge. Before it finally reached the smelting room, carbon-in-pulp and electrowinning processes were used to collect the gold particles. At the foundry, workers dressed in heat-resistant suits poured molten metal into moulds. Within minutes, the fiery liquid cooled into rough gold buttons. Many such buttons would later become doré bars.

One of the finished bars was placed in my hands under the watchful eyes of a mill officer and two security guards. It weighed nearly 12kg. Holding the heavy bar, I felt light and proud because I was holding our own gold, produced from tonnes of ore mined by our own workers.

Vidhathri U., who heads the metallurgy department, has spent more than three decades overseeing this final transformation. Under her watch, ordinary-looking rock completes its remarkable journey into gold. She is one of the few people who have access to the strongroom where many such bars are placed before being sold to eligible buyers.

Outside these processing plants, the village has grown into a self-sufficient township, with homes, a hospital, a rescue station and a training centre. In the distance, even the hills were slowly turning green.

Hutti has endured changing governments, fluctuating gold prices and the suffocating Gold Control Act, which was repealed in 1990. Today, machines perform much of the hard work, but the mine still belongs to its people. Revenue from the gold produced here provides livelihoods to thousands of workers and adds to the coffers of the Karnataka government. “Hutti stands as a shining example of how a government enterprise can produce gold with excellence while serving and empowering the people who make it possible,” said S.S. Mallikarjun, minister of mines and geology and horticulture.

Despite its long history of mining, Hutti’s gold story is only beginning again with modern mining technology. According to Arunava Ghosh, deputy general manager (mining), HGML, mining can continue for another century with continued exploration and sustainable development of the deposit.

The state government expects Hutti to one day surpass KGF as India’s deepest and longest-operating gold mine. “Karnataka is not just the land of sandalwood, but also the land of gold,” said Chief Minister D.K. Shivakumar. “The reserves at Hutti will continue to place Karnataka among the leading gold-producing states in the country.”

The night I left Hutti, thunder rolled across the sky and lightning flashed over the drought-prone plateau. Rains soaked the barren earth, beneath which India’s golden legacy in its richest form continues to sparkle.