From India's largest newsroom, I'm Arun George, and this is the
Times of India podcast. Environmentalism is often
believed to have its roots in the last 50 years or so and is
often portrayed as originating in the Western nations.
In India, the first prominent environmental movement was the
Chipco movement in the 1970s. The movement against
deforestation was the subject of Professor Ram Guha's first book,
published in 1989, titled The Unquiet Woods.
He then went on to write multiple books on history,
cricket and environmentalism, many of which have been
bestsellers, including India After Gandhi and Gandhi Before
India. Professor Guha's latest book
argues that environmentalism took root in colonial India well
before environmentalism became a subject of debate in the West.
His book, titled Speaking with Nature, is the story of nine
personalities who are arguing against environmental
destruction well before India became independent in 1947.
In the book are stories of personalities like Rabindranath
Tagore, Patrick Geddis, JC Kumarappa, Varrier Elvin and M
Krishnan, among others. Not all of them were Indian, and
each of their stories is unique in terms of the larger message
they attempted to spread. The book deals with how these
personalities attempted to show the world the effects of
industrialization and humankind well before terms like climate
change and pollution became everyday topics of discussion.
In today's episode, when conversation with Ram Guha about
the book and environmentalism, we talk about why lessons from
nearly 100 years ago still have relevance and why most of these
personalities are inspiring and also noble failures.
We also discussed the lessons that are to be taken from these
lives at a time when the environmental problems we
encounter are far bigger than anything they ever did.
We're in a time where, at least as a policy sort of thing, we
claim to have these lessons dating back to our ancient myths
and ancient books in terms of how we should preserve our
ecology. And we even now want to export
it to the world. But in your book, you say that
that's not as far back as we want to go.
We shouldn't be going back to our ancient texts and myths.
Could you talk about why you would argue that?
Let's assume for a minute that our ancient myths, particularly
Hindu myths, because that's what our government is most
interested in and our epics preach a concern for nature.
Then why is the Ganganya Banaras so polluted?
Why is the Himalaya, our most sacred mountain chain, so
ravaged? So the idea that ancient
religious scriptures from 2000 years ago can guide behaviour
today, this is true not just of Hinduism, but of Islam or
Christianity. I mean, you know, you can't
tackle the problems of 21st century America with the with by
taking recourse to the Bible later on, the problems of the
21st century Middle East by blindly following the Quran,
right? So I think that's there's a
conceptual problem there. But more substantively, the
argument to my book is that while an aesthetic love for
nature goes back to the dawn of humanity, while some local
village communities present and tribal cultures, you know,
manage their water and their forests and their pasture lands
with care, environmentalism is a modern phenomenon.
It's a post industrial revolution phenomenon because
it's only with the Industrial Revolution and the technologies
and forms of consumption it unleashed that human beings
first realized that the scale of environmental degradation that
unchecked industrialization could cause would imperil the
prospects of our life on earth, the survival on Earth.
So if environmentalism is a philosophy trying to find ways
in which human beings can live sustainably and only alongside
the earth for the long term, it only becomes possible with the
industrial revolution because before then you didn't have this
extraordinary scale of devastation.
So the awareness that this was the global crisis, an
existential crisis, only comes with large scale
industrialization, urbanization, the use of fossil fuels, the use
of new forms of transportation, Modern Warfare, which is much
more destructive of the environment and of human lives
than older forms of warfare. So that's really the largest
sociological argument I make to suggest that environmentalism
per SE is only possible after the industrial.
Even the Chipco movement you you argue, is the sort of starting
point where we see that environmental damage is being
caused by these large projects that we are taking up.
Could you talk about why these personalities ideas appeal to
you? And you know, why did you go
back to it so many years after actually starting on it?
As a organized social movement with people acting collectively,
either starting organisations and groups of many individuals
or using a ship coded nonviolent forms of protest dharnas in
which hundreds of thousands of people come out as a movement as
an organised collective activity.
Environmentalism is a phenomenon of the 1970s, not just in India
but in Europe and America too. But before environmentalism as a
popular social movement began, you had individual thinkers from
the 19th century who were in a sense anticipating what was to
become a social and collective concern.
Who through their own personal experience, through their
writings, through their scholarship, through their
travels, were warning Indians that if you go down the path of
blindly and imitating Western models of industrialisation,
which are any intensive, capital intensive, resource intensive,
you will face all these problems.
So as a movement, as a collective activity, as a
collective social activity, environmentalism is born with in
India, is born with Chipco in the 1970s, that you have other
movements afterwards. But as a way of thinking, as a
way of anticipating the damage that these new technologies
cause, as a philosophy, I argue that there is a prehistory of
environmentalism not as a movement, but of ideas and
thought and reflection. Its also that all these people
are writing more in terms of ideas and in letters.
There's no science to it like we do these days.
Does that also make those arguments harder to accept in
some ways? That they seem very in the air
and not very direct in some ways.
I mean, you're right, and most of them are acting as
individuals. Some of them are doing
collective work somewhere like JC Kumarapa is trying to
organize villages to use their resources more sustainably to,
you know, recycle their manure to be more to practice from the
water conservation and, you know, to be more prudent in the
use of forest resources and grazing resources.
But by and large, they are operating as individuals.
They are also, more importantly, going against the grain of the
times. So there you could think of them
as intellectual dissidents because they tried a different
lesson from our colonization by the British.
So the lesson drawn by most intellectuals and almost even
political thinkers, say by Jawaharlal Nehru or by Subhash
Chandra Bose, so by scientists like CV Ramen or the great
engineer M Vishesh Arya, the lesson they draw is that the
British colonized us because they were more powerful, they
were more industrialized. And once they go, we have to
meet them, not just equal, but excel them at their own term.
We have to be larger factories, more gigantic cities, more use,
more fossil fuel energy to power our economic growth.
So these people are intellectual dissidents because they're going
against the grain, they say, no, actually we have to be.
We have to follow a slightly different path of development.
Yes, poverty is a problem. Yes, unemployment is a problem.
Yes, we have to meet the basic needs of people for food,
housing, education, help, but because unlike the British and
unlike the Americans, we don't have colonies to conquer.
I mean American industrialization and economic
growth was made possible because they went and conquered this
vast and scarcely populated continent and extinguished and
exterminated the indigenous population and built their
economy. British and and French
industrialization was possible because they had colonies in
Asia and Africa which provided them resources and and money.
Now India had none of that. These people are arguing against
the grain, and I think that's what makes make their ideas less
influential in their own time. But today, when we are
confronted by these multiple forms of environmental crises,
maybe their ideas need a fresh herring and a closer and careful
and critical look, which is what I have tried to do in my book.
I want to start with the Rabindranath Tagore chapter,
which is also the 1st chapter of the book.
You know you talk about him and you given him one more title
like he didn't have enough already.
You add to him the title of being the Indian heading the
first environmental movement in India.
Given you know, he didn't really like you said have a
environmental movement in the sense where he went to the
villages and told people to do things.
But then why would you argue that he is this?
Actually, I don't say he started an environmental movement.
I say he was the first important environmentalist.
So the distinction I made in my answer to your first question
between environmentalism as thought and environmentalism as
action, you know, which only really starts with the typical
movement. Tagore is really an
environmental thinker, though of course he integrates it in his
educational philosophy. So today, you know, every school
and college is taught the importance of environmental
education. But in Shantiniketan, and also
in the school, the Tagore and the high school part of Bhavan
that people like Amarthasan studied, you know, interactions
in nature very much part of it. First of all, you know, if a
person like Tagore is neglected because it's in this field,
because people haven't very clearly seen him as an early or
precocious environmentalist, it's because there were so many
other things to celebrate. I mean, there was his poetry,
there were his plays, there were his novels, there was art, there
was a building of Shantiniketan, there were his travels, there
was his influence on Nehru and Subash Bose and Mahatma Gandhi
and his rewriting, his reshaping of the Bengali language.
So this elevated his work. People missed.
And if at all they saw Tagore as an environmentalist, they saw
him only as a nature lover. Who are His poems talks about
the beauty of forests, the beauty of mountains.
But what I've argued, and I think I've shown, I hope
reasonably convincingly, that there are many different
dimensions to Tagore's environmentalism.
First is the pure aesthetic dimension.
He glories in the beauty and diversity of nature in his
poetry. Then there is the educational
dimension, because he integrates it in how he conceives of school
and college education. Then there is the political
dimension, because he is the first person or one of the first
people to recognize that colonialism, Western
colonialism, was a system not just of economic exploitation
and political domination, but of ecological devastation.
I mean, there are quotes in my books that, you know, the West
is cannibalistic. Europe, Europe is cannibalistic,
it feels on the people and resources of the rest of the
world psychically shows that imperialism has an ecological
dimension. You know, it ravages the
ecologies and landscapes, not just of of other countries, not
just dominates and subjugates their people.
And finally, it is a prophetic dimension.
You know, he talks about how the whole earth will be goused up
and they will only be craters and no water.
I mean, in 1922, a hundred years ago, maybe you should not be
saying this, but it could be that someone like me was able to
document Tagos, environmentalism in all these different
dimensions because I'm not myself a Bengali, you know, I
come from a slightly adjacent perspective.
So maybe I saw things that others had not seen so clear.
You also write about JC Kumar Appam, who is, at least for me,
the most interesting character in this book in terms of his
whole story. What explains this sort of
staunch holding on to his beliefs?
You know, and at every turn that he's offered an opportunity to
do something. There is a man who says, no, I
will not do this, and instead I will stick to my beliefs.
And why wouldn't he sort of choose instead to be with the
government and infect the change from within?
Well, he, it could be better of personality, was a difficult man
and angular man, but he was, I mean, he again, I think his, his
work is really important because he's taken up much later.
I mean, people today see him as someone who integrated ecology
with economics. I talk about how EF Schumacher,
for example, was influenced by him.
By the way, I, you know, its, its nice to see that you thought
him the most interesting because other readers have found others.
Someone I talked to recently thought that the the couple who
did agricultural science, Howard Albert and Gabriel Howard was
the most interesting. A wildlife scholar I who
interviewed me found M Krishnan the most interesting.
And urban planner might find Patrick Eddies.
I think delighted when different readers find, you know, because
I think each of them is interesting and timely and
relevant in their own way. But Kumar, the answer to your
question was Kumar Appa was a difficult man.
You know, some people are not team players.
Some people are not compromising.
You know, it may. The question you posed is quite
interesting. Would he, if he had worked
within the government, if he had not abandoned of the Planning
Commission committee he was asked to join, would he have
moderated economic development in a way that would have been
more sensitive to village concerns and environmental
concerns? Yeah.
But you know, I think it was it he was a stubbornly independent
minded man and I think that was both his strength and his
weakness because it made it gave his work a certain integrity and
wholeness. If you had been compromising or
cut corners wouldn't happen. The other hand, possibly what
you suggest may have been the case that in terms of concrete
policy implementation and he couldn't have any kind of
tangible influence. We're back in conversation with
author and historian Ramachandra Guha about his latest book
titled Speaking with Nature, which is about 9 personalities
who attempted to raise awareness about environmental degradation
well before it was a topic of debate in homes.
In this segment, we're in conversation about cities,
forest rights for tribals, and whether it is the curse of an
environmentalist to always be portrayed as an enemy of
progress. With a Patrick Geddes, we get an
insight into the sort of town planning that is almost against
the grain of what we consider town planning.
Now. You add more greenery, you kind
of make touch ups to things rather than making these massive
changes. But then for you, why does
someone like a Geddes fail? And is it that we always wanted
our cities to be these big grand places which now we are again
suffering for? Actually, I must say that I have
often been attracted by failure, by heroic and noble failure in a
lot of my work. I've written about people who
are extraordinary individuals who didn't really reach the
pinnacle, the Dalit cricketer Palwankar Balu, who was never
appointed captain of the Hindu team, you know, very rarely it
was done support margin. So maybe there's something
heroic and noble failure, you know, attracts me because this
again, I assist the integrity of their work and their vision,
which appeals to me. Now again, Geddies, the colonial
urban town planners, didn't find him easy to work with Noddy, the
Princess, but he left. Again, like Kumarapa, he left
behind his legacy. And in some ways he's the odd
man out in that in my book, because all the other nine are
dealing with rural landscapes, dealing with farms, with
forests, with water, with agriculture, with the
wilderness. And Geddes, he's saying, look,
hey, India is also an urban civilization.
He's telling the Gandhians, he's telling indirectly telling
people like Kumarapa that and Gandhi himself, that you don't
like city life, but other people do.
And you know, the whole logic of urbanization will shift a larger
number of Indians to the city. And that the question is not I
want to dispense to city life, but how do I make it more
inclusive, more habitable, more environmentally friendly, where
there's democratic accountability, which the, you
know, the mayors and the politicians have, the citizens
have some say. And how do we build cities that
reduce that? What the term that is now used
ecological footprint on the countryside that try and use
their own resources for their water, for their energy, for
their housing, for their consultation.
Indian cities and cities everywhere have this ecological
footprint where it's the countryside that provides them
all the resources for their growth.
And of course, they create jobs, they create money.
So all that's also true. But are they sustainable?
I mean, I'm speaking to you from Bangalore, right?
Later this week, I'll be in conversation at the Bangalore
International Center with a very fine ecologist, Harini Nagendra,
who's written a very good book on Bangalore.
You know, on how we destroyed our lakes and our parks and our
water sources. Now, Bangalore is in many ways
the most economically dynamic city in India.
It's a city that is replaced Bombay as a city of dreams or
young people. You young people, all of India.
But how sustainable is this? Our lakes are gone.
We used to get our water from a reservoir close by.
Then we went to the Kaveri. Then we have Kaveri, second
stage, fourth stage, fifth stage with water pumped up 1000 feet
to the plateau where Bangalore is, you know using cross whole
amount of energy. Now we are saying Bangalore
needs to go to the Saravati which is in the Western guards
now. I mean, the idea of ecological
town planning to reduce the dependence of the city on the
resources of the countryside, town planning that is more
egalitarian, more democratic, more participative town planning
that finds a way of conserving great ancient buildings too.
You know, I mean, Bangalore had some beautiful buildings that
are all gone, right? I mean, I think some other
place, cities like maybe Mumbai and Delhi have done a slightly
better job of conserving their architectural and aesthetic
heritage. So I think guide is as an
ecological town planner, as a democratic town planner.
I think again, he speaks to us today.
I'll again say one thing, that my book is a work of historical
scholarship. Its not a work of policy and
advocacy. I mean, that's there.
That's obviously there indirectly, indirectly, and
readers will draw their own lessons about the present from
what I say about the past. They will draw their own
conclusions about what ideas among all these 10 individuals,
which of their ideas may have some resonance or relevance with
our situation today. But I think Gary's is one of the
most interesting figures in the book.
I mean, he's a very interesting man.
I mean, if you look at his story, I mean, for a biographer,
he was a celebrated urban town planner in Europe.
He was invited to show his exhibition on town planning in
Europe. Here the exhibition is sunk by a
German destroyer and he had nothing to show.
So he says, I'll study Indian, Indian cities and talk about
them, talk about their past, their present and their future.
So I think each of these individuals has a very
interesting and to be a poignant individual trajectory.
You know, the ideas are of course, the main emphasis of the
book. I mean, the main emphasis of the
book is not in the lives and not the biography, but on their
ideas. But I think they're already very
unusual people. You also write about Vernier
Elvin, who is actively working towards letting tribals.
Stay the way they would like to stay, rather than the central
government telling them how to live, imposing lots of rules on
them. You also write about how that
sort of imposition of rules and a sort of lack of freedom for
tribals is what resulted in something like the Maoist
movement. We are now at a stage where we
are talking of ending the Maoist movement.
What then does that mean for Indias future forest planning
and even the present forest planning in that sense?
That's a very good question. I should say straight away that
I've never been a fan of the Maoists.
And I think they were a savage and nihilistic group of radicals
who actually worsened the tribal predicament because they, the
tribals, became caught in a crossfire between the Indian
states, paramilitary and the Maoists.
But you know, how do you envisage the future for the
Adivasis who live close to or within the forest now in right,
in the end of the book in the Epidogue, I talk about what is
happening in the Gachiroli district of Maharashtra, which
was a Maoist infested area, but which is also an area in which
the Forest Rights Act was properly and honestly
implemented and where community forest rights were given to
dozens of villages once they got back control the forest.
I mean, instead to extraordinary resurgence of the ecology,
particularly species like bamboo and those associated with
bamboo, which is led to a thriving artisanal economy,
which is replenished the springs, that is enhanced
biodiversity. So it is renewed the ecology and
also provided opportunities for economic livelihood so that
tribals who are migrating cities have come back.
And now this is only a Model 1 can follow that you use tribal
culture, which is based on a deep understanding of nature,
which is egalitarian, which is participative to generate
economic growth in livelihoods. Now there was talk recently, I
don't know what will happen to it, about taking a steel mill to
Gadchiroli. Now what is that going to do,
you know? So you know, a wild steel mill
with a kind of massive fortification, you know, a few
100 people employed, most of the engineers will come from
outside. And we know tribals are going to
get skilled work, community forest rights in Adivasi areas
that you can think of new models of economic development that
enhance the livelihood security of the Adivasi communities that
provide them dignified employment and at the same time
don't ravish the environment. So its not free.
You know, sometimes there's a there's a caricature.
You want to keep the tribals in a zoo, you want to keep them as
a museum piece. So people who argue in that way,
I would ask them to go to Gachiroli and look at what is
happening there. And what is happening in
Gachiroli can also should be emulated in, you know,
Chhattisgarh and in Orissa and in, you know, other places where
you can actually revive, I mean use and often using science.
So the Gadchiroli experiment, I used modern ecologist.
So it's not as if it's only tribal knowledge.
You know, modern ecologist like Madhav Gadgil and his colleagues
have gone there and said these are the species you can grow,
these are the methods you can follow and and so on and so
forth. So I think there is a, you know,
this caricature that environmentalists are against
development, that tribal rights activists want to keep tribals
in a kind of museum. This is utterly fallacious.
One thing that kind of runs through the book is also this
sort of opposition to the centralization of management of
natural resources. Was it just colonialism and like
you said, the British and French colonialism we having spread?
Was it that which made all these personalities so clear eyed
about the centralization of resources?
Yeah, because the British, you know, took over 20% of Indias
land area and said this is state forest and this is owned by the
government and local communities have very marginal rights.
And we will police the forest from the local community with
guns and the Indian Forest Service because it is called
heritage where khaki like policeman.
So centralization is anti democratic and it also goes
against the grain of sustainable management.
You know, I mean, I think so, you know, so for example, in
many parts of India you had local communities managing the
water resources but the state irrigation department took it
over. So there was number
responsibility, no incentive for the local community.
Likewise with other forms of planning.
I have talked about town planning and how one needs a
much more participatory, you know, involvement of citizens in
how to use a city's financial and other resources.
So yes, absolutely. I think a responsible
environmental management requires political
decentralization now. It requires a reactivation of
the 73rd and 74th amendment. Right now the 73rd and 74th
amendments which allow for panchayats and municipalities to
have the elected bodies, you know they have those bodies have
no teeth, they have no policy making powers.
They have no money generating powers, they have no finances.
All they have is you have an election and but is the MLA and
the minister in the state secretariat or in in Delhi who
decides everything? Other people who understand
these things better than I may use some of the arguments of
these thinkers to make a more substantive case of political
decentralization as being good not just for democracy but for
environmental sustainability. But I think all these thinkers
saw that the damage that sent the colonial system of resource
management, which was based on excessive centralization, which
was based on according enormous powers to the state bureaucracy,
which was based on arrogance that ordinary people don't know,
that peasants and tribals know nothing about how to manage
forests or water or anything else.
I think that is in a in a democracy like ours, to still
have this coronary system of resource management, I think is
is a huge problem. But, you know, in the current
age, with the problems that we're facing, especially with
climate change and things, a lot of that sort of pressure is now
again, back on that sort of centralization because we feel
that, you know, without a sort of large effort that's concerted
from the top, you can't manage something as big as climate
change. So how do you view that
argument? It's true that you need some
amount of centralization, you need some amount of macro
thinking, but it is more a balance.
And I think, again, this is something I only allude to
towards the end of the book, because the bulk of the problem
that India faces are not connected to climate change.
I mean, air pollution in Delhi is not connected to climate
change. The depletion of groundwater
aquifers is not connected to climate change.
The chemical contamination of the soil is not connected to
climate change. The invasion of our forests by
exotic weeds like Lantana is not connected to climate change.
So I think in some ways the obsession with climate change
now climate change is real, it is visible, it is affecting the
whole world. I mean, look at the floods in
the cyclones in Florida very recently.
Of course, what happened in Kerala a few months ago is real,
it is visible, it is it can be extremely damaging.
But the environmental crisis that India faces today, much of
it has nothing to or little to do with climate change.
And unfortunately our whole way of thinking, regardless of which
political parties in power. I mean, I would, this is
something I don't take up in my book, but I would take it up in
a, in a conversation like this, I would hold economists
accountable because economists have become a priesthood.
And this is regardless of left wing or right wing.
You know, India has produced great left wing economies and
great right wing economies or celebrated left wing economists
who have got the Nobel Prize. Right wing economists have got
many great awards. What is common to them?
Ecological illiteracy. They believe that either the
state or the market can solve everything and there is no
environmental problems are ephemeral.
That is actually they affect the bulk of the Indian society.
You know, environmental degradation has enormous
negative impacts in the livelihood and health of
ordinary Indians. So I think economics has become
a kind of priesthood, esoteric priesthood priesthood.
And they are the people who, you know, advise governments.
You know, it is not urban planners or community ecologists
or, you know, people working on democratic decentralization
advise government. So I mean, this is this is in my
book. It is a work of scholarship.
I kept out this polemic. But my personal belief is that
economists, regardless of whether they are left wing or
right wing, free market or welfarist, Indian economists,
are a esoteric peace stood that has blinded us to the the the
massive scale of the environmental crisis that India
faces. Another theme that again runs
through the book is this sort of opposition to a sort of top down
model of governance and also an acceptance of slow growth rather
than, you know, 15% GDP growth. Does such views also make, say,
even these personalities and even the modern day
environmentalists much less acceptable to the general
public? That may be so, but that will be
to our cost. I would say, notwithstanding
what I've said about the economic profession, that the
younger Indian economists are much more alert to this.
You know, there's a network of environmental economists, mostly
composed of people in their 30s and 40s who do much more field
work, who are aware of the condition of the soil, the
water, the air, and what economic costs it exacts and why
they need to, you know, be much more ecologically responsible.
But yes, it is at the moment. It's kind of going against the
grain. But as the problems deepen
10/15/20 years from now, I mean, I talked about who knows if
Bangalore will be habitable, you know, in the next 15 or 20
years, who knows? I mean, look at the Punjab, once
a grain, the bread basket of India.
Look at, you know, the condition of the soils in the groundwater
aquifers. So these are real issues that
are coming up and this is where it may be.
You know, some of the thinkers in my book, they can't tell you
exactly what to do because they were working a long time ago.
But they can provide you clues, they can provide you a
framework, they can provide you a, you could say, a moral and
ecological philosophy which will help us get a clearer
understanding of where India is today.
Is it the curse of an environmentalist to always be
seen as the enemy of the people? As in you will always be branded
one not. Enemy the people, because I
would argue that environmentalists are the real
people are speaking on behalf of the majority of the people.
They see this enemies of a very conventional, narrow minded,
outdated version of what is progress and development. 10%
growth is not long term progress.
I mean, of course you need growth, you need innovation, you
need entrepreneurship, you need the product, you know, greater
efficiency. But I think they are really
they're posing very large fundamental questions about what
kind of growth we need, how to make it environmentally
sustainable, how to make it more participative.
Early in the book, I quote Anil Agarwal, who is one of our
pioneering environmentalists, who said environmentalism in
India is not about pretty trees and tigers.
It's about the livelihoods of the majority of Indians, of slum
dwellers or workers or artisans or peasants or tribals or
pestilists. It's about, I think that's what
many other thinkers in this book really also argue.
It's a livelihood concern more than much more than it's a
merely aesthetic concern. Today's episode was produced by.
Jayaraj Singh and Sahil. Gupta for a daily.
Spotlight on people, ideas, and stories that matter.
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