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A presentation by Mahesh Rangarajan, Professor of History at the University of Delhi.Part of the University of Chicago Program on the Global Environment's inaugural conference on the Social Life of Forests, held May 30-31, 2008.A country with a billion people on less than two per cent of the earth’s terrestrial surface area may seem a strange place to consider the survival of forest as intact ecological entities. Mega fauna matter in more than symbolic terms for they are bound up with substantial conflicts on how to govern and keep intact the forest estate. Though a small spectrum of wider conflicts, they serve to highlight the ways in which polity and ecology impact each other. One question is if the forest can or will survive intact as a faunal enclave given the intensity with which the larger landscape is cultivated or industrialised. How and where the enclave if at all it is that interacts with the larger society, its economic pressures and political tugs o war becomes a critical issue.India is clearly at a cross roads with fierce contest over the fate of its forests. Of the multitude of claimants of this space are those who see them as the last redoubt of endangered life forms and others who see access to them as birth right of under privileged peoples. Science and culture, local and regional polities, bureaucracies and forest peoples, industry and agriculture are locked in contest. The roots of the conflicts lie in the distant past. The very term jangala in Sanskrit or kadu in Tamil, two of the most ancient extant languages on earth, conveyed not one but many meanings. Landscapes were graded in terms of the animals, the flowers or the societies that inhered from them. In the absence of any equilibrium, there were constant changes in the land. Till as recently as 1800 much of India was forest, whether secondary or primary, with cultivated arable being only islands in sea of green. Antagonism was not the only relationship, with polities embracing incorporating in complex ways such lands, their resources and peoples. Large animals, both wild and tame ones, were integral to these processes of political, cultural and ecological change. While it is commonplace to see the creation of the colonial Forest Department as a land controller as a watershed in ecological terms, equally critical changes were unleashed by the princes who ruled a third of the land mass. Nature was not only enclosed in government estate, it was also re-natured in significant ways by the princes and aristocrats. In doing so, dominant groups through the late 19th and early 20th centuries anticipated many practices that today go by the label of ‘conservation’. The restraints on usufruct rights and the expansion of cultivation in particular were grounds of contention. The use of coercion of labor for forestry and hunting, bans on trapping and swidden cultivation, were but part of a maze of restrictive practices that lay at he heart of forestry and game conservancy. Fierce contests in the forest were rule rather than exception. At the same time, there was considerable give and take, inevitable given the expanse of the land and the diversity of its ecologies and peoples. These grey areas and ‘zones of anomaly’ are of more than antiquarian interest given the polarizations of the present. What is striking is the ways in which the core agendas of the preservation of nature taken aboard in the 1970s and after drew from earlier precept and practice. As dominance over wild lands and beasts was confirmed, the urge to protect some remnants grew often among the very classes that had led the conquest. The new nationalism and global concerns had distinct elements that were fresh but in terms of administrative practice and tactics on the forest floor they drew on past precedent. Even those who dissented from a model that saw growth as a cure all differed on which shade of green was best. Multiple fault lines divide those who consider the fate of the forest as entity. Preservationists see total protection as the right response, and ground their case in the fragility of life cycles and ecosystems. Populists concur with the aim but pit local rights against the bureaucracy, and often, traditional versus scientific knowledge. Unusual alliances still exist, showing there is space to re-negotiate the survival of the forest as entity. Part of this arises from the logic of representative democracy that allows for debate and compromise. In a range of real life cases, where common ground exists, ideal type solutions can and do give way to more nuanced, workable approaches. But there are huge variations between regions such as parts of southern India where polities have a wider base, and governments a better record of welfare and the more feudal traditions of the north west and centre of the country. Retention, reconciliation and restoration of forest (and allied) ecologies each can have a role. But whether these individual approaches can coalesce to influence the larger trajectory is a challenge and a daunting one. As in the past, the issues of the forest are linked to the larger questions of polity and economy. The shape of the forests, diverse as they are hinges on the outcomes of hard political choices. The idea of equity and the promise of ecological sanity are both equally on trial. And the forest is an arena where the conflicts are among the most stark, the choices the most difficult. Even as global factors loom larger than ever, national and more so regional politics will play a critical role. It is this creative space for rainbow alliances and coalitions of interest that may well hold the key to the endurance of forests in the coming century. Science as well as history may yet have a role to play: to help create new opportunities while transcending the worst of the past.

• Category

  Learning

• Release Date

  May 31, 2008

• Runtime

  26:35