Abstract
Environmental concerns have attracted the attention of scholars as never before and for right reasons. Interdisciplinary studies have added to the richness and utility of the debate. The book under review is a welcome addition to this significant area of research. It is a collection of eight essays by senior scholars brought together by Professor Arun Bandopadhyay. Two articles have been reproduced from the journal Environment and History and one from Conservation and Society. The remaining five seem to be fresh contributions. The title is top-heavy; it has nature, knowledge and development, all compressed in a single volume.
The introduction raises two pertinent points: one refers to consequences of colonialism and the capitalist interventions on our environment, and the other stresses the importance of comparative interdisciplinary studies. I wish the editor had elaborated upon these two significant points, critically examined the extant literature on these, and, if possible, set an agenda for young researchers. The editor rightly finds colonialism at the root of the problem. But how long one could keep flogging the colonial horse which is presumably dead or can be seen in a new incarnation? In recent years, scholars have talked incessantly about circulation of knowledge, moving centres of calculation, bridgeheads, webs, foot-soldiers, etc. The editor refuses to be drawn into any contested terrain and moves swiftly to provide a summary of the seven contributions.
The first essay is a Luddite critique of modern science. Its author, a noted Gandhian scholar, confuses development with growth, and science with development. This, he agrees, is done in terms of ‘conventional economic reasoning’. He criticises the deification of modern science. Deification per se is unscientific, no doubt. But it seems the author also confuses science with technology. The two may look like two sides of the same coin but the reality is much more complex. It is technology that has overtaken us; scientific temper can rather help us tide over some of its difficulties and dilemmas. The article critiques the ‘enlightenment rationality’, and poor Bacon and Descartes are duly thrashed. After all they talked of ‘matter’ and ‘experiment’ when we were immersed in the Bhakti movement and the Mughal opulence! The article quickly moves from scientific reductionism to its contribution to war, then atom bomb, plant-breeds, biotechnology and what not. Even capitalism is discussed in a few lines! I wish the author had concentrated more upon the relevance of appropriate technology with which he rightly concludes. Acharya Prafulla Chandra Ray was a scientist and a Gandhian too. He also knew that the djinn could not be pushed back into the bottle. To the neo-Luddites and the neo-nationalists, Meghnad Saha, and even Rabindranath Tagore, would appear obsolete and not worth a single mention.
The second article discusses the currently fashionable ‘Deep Ecology’ perspective in the context of some ancient Indian texts. This perspective is significant because it offers ethics and calls for deeper questioning and deeper commitments in contrast to the ‘shallow’ science of ecology. Through an extensive reading of the Upanishads, Smritis, etc., Professor Sarkar tries to illustrate how nature-conscious our forefathers have been. Be it plantation, wilderness preservation or animal sanctuaries, evidence of our culture’s environment consciousness exists in abundance. She critiques the modern protagonists of the so-called deep ecology and provides a balanced conclusion.
From ancient times, we jump straight into the colonial period and find five well-documented papers by senior historians on forest policies, agrarian change, famines and the societal responses. These constitute the real ‘meat’ in the volume. The editor’s paper deals with the evolution of forest policies in Madras and Bengal straddling both the colonial and post-colonial periods. The five tables giving the chronology and the features of the forest policies are useful and instructive. Succinctly Professor Bandopadhyay identifies four broad issues which have not only historical but contemporary relevance. Beginning with the colonial origins of the state management of forests, he evaluates critically the so-called scientific forestry and the joint forest-management schemes. He concludes with raising several valid questions which may help our state ‘to look beyond the looking glass of the Forest Ranger’ and our scholars to opt for ‘a comparative framework, both in terms of time and space’. This is followed by a short but focused paper on Kalahandi, known for its almost perpetual famine-like condition, by Professor Pati. He explains how by the turn of the twentieth-century ‘a highly parasitic system’ had gripped and denuded the region. The tables give an idea of the water and food scarcities. The author should have explained what the mariah sacrifice (probably a human sacrifice) was and how it became ‘a necessary survival strategy’. The question of famine and poverty is handled much more comprehensively by Professor Vinita Damodaran in the context of the late nineteenth-century tribal Chotanagpur. Most of the tribes had a close knowledge of their habitat and its jungle. This symbiotic relationship comes out very well in this article. The subsequent land alienation, debt bondage and the erosion of forest rights gradually pauperised the tribals. Intense deforestation and demographic pressure added to their woes and a series of famines ensued.
Almost similar arguments are offered by Dr Sanjukta Dasgupta in the context of the Ho tribe in Singhbhum district. She rightly points out that the commercial timber concerns were ‘masked by public pronouncements of ecological concerns’. Thanks to the ‘civilising’ influence of the British waste lands serving as grazing grounds disappeared and became arable while the forests became timber-fodders for the expanding railways. Many tribals had to migrate to the new coal-mines and far-off tea estates as coolies. Sad tales from the Raj, but after independence did the situation improve? This region saw famine even as late as 1967! There is only one paper in this volume that deals with post-colonial India with a historian’s sensibility. Dr Raj Sekhar Basu presents a case study of united Andhra Pradesh under Chandra Babu Naidu. Even though the Telangana region has separated now, Dr Basu’s diagnosis should hold water. The watershed programme was definitely unique and launched on a grand scale. It was and remains people-centric but was it inclusive? If so, then to what extent? Dr Basu attempts valid explanations with the help of contemporary sources.
The volume itself could have been much more ‘inclusive’ but one understands, given the enormous range of the subject and its sub-themes, that this was not possible. The editor and his colleagues may like to think of a series of four or five volumes in view of the ever-growing relevance of environmental history.