Indias Environmental Past

Meena Bhargava

nterest in matters related to environment and ecology has generated

critical debate and investigation for
over three decades leading to a rapidly
expanding discourse. There has been a
sharp increase in environmental concerns and activism leading to research
interests in the twin stories of the
human impact on natural environment
and environments manifold influences
on humans.
The discussion, though providing
major insights, has often been in segments that focus on one aspect or theme
at a time such as land, forests, wildlife,
people, biodiversity or simply the environment, often invoking stereotyped,
rigid periodisation of history. Such ideas
presuppose that there is a natural environment which is separate from the
people who live in it. In such an understanding culture can appear as an
epiphenomenon or commentary on that
environment. Moreover, the understanding within the conventional scheme of
periodising history as ancient/medieval/
modern/contemporary creates artificial
and pervasive divides between natural
and humanistic disciplines and prevents
connections that are significant and
necessary to be established.
Artificial and Pervasive Divide
Shifting Ground: People, Animals, and
Mobility in Indias Environmental History
demonstrates the limitations of these
sharp divides. It brings together a host of
essays that ask critical questions about
Indias environmental past and the way
it has been approached by scholars. Debunking the idea of a primeval, pristine
forest cover, analysing the dynamics
that shape humananimal relations and
examining the conflicts created by postindependence projects of rural development and conservation, it investigates
various aspects of environmental studies
and juxtaposes them with social history,

30

book reviews
Shifting Ground: People, Animals, and Mobility
in Indias Environmental History edited by Mahesh
Rangarajan and K Sivaramakrishnan, New Delhi: Oxford
University Press, 2014; pp 418, Rs 875.

history of science and technology, and

history of trade and culture.
Providing social contexts of environmental history, the volume ventures into
new analysis of historical processes by
which people, animals and social or
physical mobility affect the environment, ideas of nature, its conservation
and protection. Acknowledging the contribution of Guhas (1989) pioneering
work and the scholarly tradition of environmental history in India, the editors
comment on the epochal changes and
the upheavals in the ecological landscape as well as on its scientific analysis
and the trajectory of Indias environmental history.
Environmental History
Scholars of Indian environmental history
have engaged in significant debates, yet
many have been inclined to view the
past as tabula rasa. For instance, works
such as that of Beinart and Hughes
(2007), Kumar et al (2010) eruditely
trace the complex connections of British
imperialism and ecological processes.
But as the editors of the volume under
review observe, they trace these connections without engaging with the longer
range histories of the lands or peoples. It
is not only desirable, but also imperative, they argue, to develop a dialogue
that cuts across different periods of
history. The objective should be not
merely to historicise environment, but
also to contextualise it in longue duree
and emphasise a wider perspective, a
dialogue, perhaps a synthesis and a
smoother understanding of developments
and transition of knowledge. This will

help appreciate the millennia-long history

of Indias ecosystems and their interface
with human desires and ambitions,
triumphs and failures.
There is enough textual and archaeological evidence that suggests that the
premodern was not idyllic, harmonious,
and benevolent. It was not static either,
but a stochastic process of environmental
and related social changes. It is necessary, say the editors, to stress that India
should not be viewed in isolation from
the larger Asian landmass or the world
of the Indian Ocean in ecological or historical terms. There were often zones of
continuity and transition, with Central
and West Asia in the West and Southeast Asia in the East. Historians of late
have pointed out that substantive shifts
were the result of connected ecologies
and histories. This has served as a corrective to an ahistorical back projection
of the present frontier. Andre Wink
(1996), for instance, has observed that
the transition from one form of livelihood to another was not unilinear or
completeways of eking livelihoods did
not exist in pure form.
Much of Indias environmental history,
at least till the year 2000 or so, focused
on forests. In environmental social
sciences, forests have held precedence
over other ecosystems. This is partly
because forests are significant natural
resources. But the precedence accorded
to forests also owes to another reason.
Forests are also contested spaces with
a number of humans crowding it. It is
replete with people urged by the desire
to leave their imprint on the landscape
in different and mutually contradictory
ways. The forest, as the authors observe,
could be re-natured in a variety of ways.
Romila Thapar (2001), for example,
studies different versions of Sakuntalam
to trace the ways in which perceptions of
the forestwhere they were projected
to remote placeschanged over time.
She also shows how powers of kings
over forests changed over time. Nonetheless, the editors argue, there is a need
to critically understand the notion of
primeval forest. It is necessary to reintegrate the agrarian environments in a

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BOOK REVIEW

more holistic manner and see the forest

and cultivated arable land in conjunction with each other.
Narratives of Degradation
Kathleen Morrisons paper, Conceiving
Ecology and Stopping the Clock: Narratives of Balance, Loss and Degradation
in the volume is a corrective to the idea
of a primeval, pristine, untouched forest
as the common starting point for all
human history in India. She provides
evidence from the Ganga and Indus river
basins to counter such perceptions. She
also argues for discarding the notion of a
harmonious relationship between residents and the forest expanse in the
Vijayanagara region during the 12th to
the 16th centuries. Suggesting caution in
accepting the idea of a universal colonial
watershed, she urges that environmental
transformations in several parts of India
in precolonial times were as significant
as those in colonial times.
Shibani Boses article From Eminence
to Near Extinction: The Journey of the
Great One-Horned Rhino studies the
distribution of the animal across the premodern landscape of India and provides
valuable insight into broader environmental and social processes. She demonstrates the interconnectedness of the fate
of the rhinoceros with changing human
cultures and settlement patterns till the
first millennium of the Christian Era.
With the greater utility of elephants and
horses in the war in the second millennium, the rhinoceros lost its importance
though it was found in Central and North
India, even if in somewhat diminished
numbers. The value of the rhinoceros
declined with the introduction of modern
weaponry in the 19th century. Its horn
was no longer fancied for its medicinal
properties. Rhinoceros parts ceased to
be valued as food. Sport using lethal
weapons confined the rhinoceros to its
limited habitat in the 20th century.
ManAnimal Interaction
The holistic view of the environment and
its issues entail the understanding of the
relationship not only between the people
and the lands, but also complex encounters of humans with the animals. This
may help explore attitudes towards
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SEPTEMBER 19, 2015

animals and also help understand fauna

in their own spaces. Such an investigation will help us understand if historical
processes had any impact on the spatial
distribution of the animals and if they
contributed to the extinction of certain
species. In this context, one may mention
the works of Divyabhanusinh Chavda.
These have made a valuable contribution
towards understanding the history of
humananimal interaction, fauna in their
own worlds, the gradual erosion of their
spaces and the extinction of some species.
In the chapter Lions, Cheetahs and Others
in the Mughal Landscape, Chavda studies
art and historical information to describe
how the distribution of the Asiatic lion was
distinct from that of its African cousins.
Such information can be gleaned from
the art produced when Mughal imperial
entourages travelled, hunted and camped.
Like Chavda, Julie Hughes in her
essay, Environmental Status and Wild
Boars in Princely India, uses visual
sources like paintings and drawings to
reach conclusions on the relationship
between the Western princely Indian
states and land and animals during the
colonial period. Focusing on wild boar,
instead of charismatic mega fauna that
interests conservationists and historians,
Hughes observes that the animal was
amongst the top emblems of regional pride
and local Rajput identity. The pursuit of
the boar was more than mere leisure for
Rajput princes. It was also the affirmation of their martial prowess, power and

authority over their people. It was also

an emblem of local patriotism. Focusing
on horse craft, Brian Caton studies animal breeding and animal care and its
relationship with the changing forms of
knowledge in 19th century Punjab.
Radhika Govindarajans article How
to Be Hindu in the Himalayas: Conflicts
over Animal Sacrifice in Uttarakhand, is
an unflagging ethnographic study of hill
people in Uttarakhand. She studies animal
sacrifice to understand how human
animal relations were influenced by
religion and theologians. Govindarajan
shows how emotional, religious and legal
relations are debated and contested in
India and how debates over animal
sacrifice can be read as debates over
how to be a Hindu!
Arupjyoti Saikia investigates the nature
of social space of grazing in the first half
of the 20th century and maps the social
history of agrarian relations and conflicts
over land in colonial Assam in his article
Making Room Inside Forests: Grazing
and Agrarian Conflicts in Colonial Assam.
Daniel Klingensmiths article, Nature and
Politics at the End of the Raj: Environmental Management and Political Legitimacy in Late Colonial India, 191947 discusses nature and politics at the end of the
colonial period. Studying environmental
management and political legitimacy in
late colonial India, Klingensmith does
not identify the period as unique or unprecedented in terms of environmental
crisis. Nor does he trace a history of loss,

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vol l no 38

31

BOOK REVIEW

degradation and decay. Instead, he focuses on the political implications of

narratives of loss, degradation, and decay among some of the major constituencies of imperial rule.
Providing a new approach to comprehending the fate of the forests and those
who inhabit it, or its surroundings,
Vikramaditya Thakur, in his essay,
Logjam: Peasantization Caused Deforestation in Narmada Valley understands
the transition, over the last century, in
the livelihoods of the Bhils in the proximity of Narmada Valley. Thakur tries
to understand the transition from sustenance form of livelihood based primarily on hunting and gathering, complemented by subsistence farming, to one
based on settled agriculture. Ghazala
Shahabuddin explores the debate on
science and conservation and probes
the connections between nature, scientific knowledge and power and their

32

interactions that go into the making of

conservation policy in India. She does so
analysing conservation practices in Sariska Tiger Reserve in Rajasthan.

pasts. Lucidly and cogently written,

engaging and interesting, the volume is
a valuable addition to the corpus on
environmental history.

Conclusions

Meena Bhargava (meena.bhargava@gmail.com)

teaches History at Indraprastha College for
Women, New Delhi.

The essays in this volume are wellresearched and empirically strong. In

their Introduction the editors remark
that they decided to call the collection
Shifting Ground, to convey the sense
that the volume as a whole seeks to convey. Earlier approaches were marked by
sharp distinctions between geographical spaces (forest, river and farm) or
peoples (herders, farmers, townspeople)
or eras and epochs (prehistoric and historic and the triad of ancient, medieval
and modern or the colonial era and
the postcolonial). None of this is invalid
but each has limitations that become
apparent when one studies the multiple
dimensions of Indias environmental

References
Beinart, William and Lotte Hughes (2007): Environment and Empire, Oxford: Oxford University
Press.
Guha, Ramachandra (1989): The Unquiet Woods:
Ecological Change and Peasant Resistance, New
Delhi: Oxford University Press.
Kumar, Deepak, Vinita Damodaran and Rohan
D Souza (2010): The British Empire and the
Natural World, New Delhi: Oxford University
Press.
Thapar, Romila (2001): Perceiving the Forest in
Early India, Studies in History, Volume 17,
No 1, pp 116.
Wink, Andre (1996): Al Hind: The Making of the
Indo-Islamic World, Early Medieval India and
the Expansion of Islam, 7th11th Centuries, New
York: EJ Brill.

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