"Is environmental history merely the recording of loss and decline, a narrative about the sinking of the Titanic as it were?" asked Richard Grove at the concluding session of the 'conference on the environmental history of Asia', held in the sylvan surroundings of the Jawaharlal Nehru University (
jnu) campus, New Delhi (December 4-7, 2002). The conference, organised by the Zakir Hussain Centre for Educational Studies,
jnu, and the University of Sussex, comprised close to 55 papers, roughly 20 sessions and a dozen different themes. Clearly, the discipline had not only registered a huge growth in the past decade but had also begun to move into new areas of concern. That also explains why sociologists, economists, anthropologists, activists and even forest administrators figured in the list of participants.
Ramachandra Guha's
Unquiet Woods: Ecological Change and Peasant Resistance in the Himalaya (Oxford University Press, India, 1989) had set the tone for a certain kind of environmental history writing in Asia. Since 1989, when the book was published, environmental history writing had beenconcentrated on aspects of colonial forestry. While theconference did centre on colonial history, and there were a number of papers on forests, forestry and related themes, there were an equally impressive number of discussions on health, sanitation, water, wildlife, conservation and environmental activism. Not unexpectedly, these papers threw up new empirical and research material, and challenged notions that have been the keystone of environmental history writing in Asia.
A striking example is Aniket Alam's contentious argument that the colonial ecological footprint in the western Himalayas, though distinct, has not been 'cataclysmic'. He is convinced that Himalayan communities have managed to retain their rights on grazing, foraging and collection of fuelwood in spite of colonial policies.
Archana Prasad disagrees. She asserts that the tribal populations in Jharkhand and Chhattisgarh were impoverished and dispossessed over time of their access to forest resources not only through a slew of colonial revenue policies but also the post-colonial government's 'development programmes'. However, as far as historiography goes, Prasad's strongest assertion is that historians tend to concentrate largely on narratives dealing with timber, ignoring a vast corpus of research possibilities on issues surrounding the access and use of non-timber forest products.
Speaking of neglect, the northeast, despite its large forested terrain and long history of deforestation, has been ignored by a majority of mainstream Asian environmental historians. Bela Malik and Jayeeta Sharma attempted to set this right. Malik's paper covered over a century in Assamese history (1860-1970). She spoke of
Taungya (a system of agro-forestry), where colonial and post-colonial authorities reworked the tradition of shifting cultivation as a mechanism for using local cultivators as labour for the forest department. Sharma's paper took a different tack. She spoke of how colonial rule transformed Assam's wilderness into tea plantations, and thereby incorporated a region that was hitherto sparsely populated and dominated by subsistence economies into the rapidly evolving capitalist world system.
Forest histories in the native states in British India have also remained outside mainstream discourse. S Abdul Thaha argued that these regions, constituting almost one-third of the Indian subcontinent, were heavily influenced by colonial governance. An example: between 1867-1948, forest conservation in Hyderabad followed the British pattern of seizing forests from local communities through various legislations. The state proceeded to institutionalise a professional body of foresters, who in the main sought to commercialise timber extraction, denying local communities access to forests.
While narratives discussing forest departments and their strategies for conservation have been staple material in environmental historiography, the environmental history conference added new dimensions to the debate. Consider, for example, Deborah Sutton's examination of forest policies in the Nilgiri hills between 1837-1880. She argued that conservation agendas privileged plantation forests that consisted of exotic species over natural forests. Natural forests were ultimately divorced from, and even treated as antithetical to, scientific conservation. In effect, forest conservation was implicated in various economic, political and aesthetic imperatives of colonial rule, and not merely a part of the hagiography of 'early environmentalism'.
It is pertinent here to follow Sudha Vasan's discussion on how the creation of reserve forests in Himachal Pradesh in the colonial period provided the basis for their declaration as national parks in the 1990s. This, she argued, led to the further alienation of local communities from forest resources. The institutionalisation of bureaucratic procedures closed the space for negotiation over forest use and access between villagers and forest officials.
The forest department, in particular its propagation of 'scientific forestry', came in for rigorous scrutiny in Dhirendra Dangwal's discussions as well. He traced the procedures and practices that made up 'scientific forestry', and unravelled it as an inadequate and ambiguous concept that was largely geared towards the production of wood.
Although papers on forestry sought to challenge prevailing ideas on forest management practices in Asia, many also grappled with contemporary dilemmas of deforestation and conservation. This dilemma centres on the question of evolving an understanding of the historical origins of current equations between forests, peoples and the state in Asia.
The conference was not, however, entirely centred on forestry and related themes. Water was the big idea this year. Not unexpectedly, irrigation issues hogged discussions on water. However, the regional focus has changed. The history of irrigation in south and southeastern deltas in India were the focus in this conference.
The agrarian landscape changed dramatically following the introduction of irrigation. B Eswara Rao followed the history of the Godavari anicut, built between 1847 and 1852. Dry crops, he found, were rapidly replaced by wet crops, and the subsistence economy was transformed into a market-oriented cropping pattern. The social landscape also underwent a radical change with the rise of a new cultivating class, the Kammas. However, amidst an economic boom, the cultivators were confronted with ecological problems like salinity, crop diseases, loss of fish and an increase in malarial fever.
Cropping patterns and the social landscape were not all that changed. Peter Schmitthenner argued that the Cauvery and Godavari anicuts, built by colonial engineers, altered the region's hydraulic environments. Both projects reversed the declining economic fortunes of the region's cultivators.
Christopher Hill examined the history of the Royal Engineering College at Coopers Hill, the
uk, which trained irrigation engineers sent to India between 1872 and 1906. The college fostered a specific kind of hubris borne outof 'enlightenment' and the 'industrial revolution', in whichit was assumed that nature could be dominated and alteredat will.
Although water and forestry dominated the conference, there were two complete sessions devoted to health issues. These sessions stressed on the intimate connection between ecological contexts and disease. This was strongly illustrated in Arabindra Samanta's example of riparian Bengal, which was topographically predisposed to a cycle of 'flood, famine and fever'. He argued that building roads and railways changed cropping patterns. The influx of migrant labour intensified 'environmental decay' and caused malaria.
Staying on the theme of impact of colonial policies, Mridula Ramanna spoke of the low priority accorded to expenditure on public health. The colonial government justified their lethargy by suggesting that the ritual, beliefs and religious habits of the native populace prevented them from adopting modern practices for urban hygiene.
The Rockefeller campaign for hookworm control (1920-1928) in the Madras Presidency offers a valuable insight into a comprehensive non-governmental initiative for disease control. Shirish Kavadi explained that the campaign ran into a fair amount of 'community suspicion'. There was also confusion regarding the focus. While local government bodies were keen on preventive measures, the Rockefeller Foundation wanted focus on treatment.
Dhrub Kumar Singh pitched his discussion at an entirely different level. He skilfully documented the contrasts between allopathic and homeopathic approaches towards cholera in 19th century India. He traced the trials and tribulations of Mahendra Lal Sarkar, who argued that homeopathic medicines had credible responses to cholera. Dhrub subtly reviewed the tensions within the field of science itself and its procedures for addressing objects of study.
The most visibly contentious sessions, though, were those related to common property resources (
cpr) and community conservation efforts, as they are directly concerned with governance. Discussing
cpr, Arun Bandhopadhyay argued that a 'triple perspective' approach -- in which ecological, technological and participatory dimensions are fully explored -- is required. Only if the inter-relationships of these elements are factored in can the patterns in the history of
cpr use or abuse emerge clearly. Harini Nagendra also stressed on the need for the reading of several indicators (field data, social and institutional analysis and remote sensing techniques at multiple scales) in any evaluation of forest management practices.
These discussions clearly signalled a fresh phase in environmental history writing. Mahesh Rangarajan commented that the overemphasis on state-centric approaches was giving way to more complex engagements, which could be grouped under broad themes such as 'nature', 'culture' and 'science'. This shift would, he said, undoubtedly lead to more rigorous scrutiny of conceptual equipment that has hitherto informed a great deal of environmental history writing in Asia. This could compel a more rigorous dialogue between environmental activists, policymakers and ecologists.
Thus Neeladri Bhattacharya stressed on creative interaction between academics and environmental campaigners. While good environmental history writing hinges on its ability to feed into and gain from activism, it also must reflect objectively on issues. To translate the narratives of decline into strategies for conservation and preservation, environmental history writing must strike a balance between analysis and prescription, politics and policy, the particularities of society and the patterns in nature.
