Every party in India has been hostile to environmental sustainability: Ramachandra Guha

Ahead of the launch of his new book, the historian says the challenges facing environmentalism are significant

Speaking with Nature: The Origins of Indian Environmentalism is a book that historian Ramachandra Guha almost did not write. Having started research on it nearly two decades ago, life had other plans, and Mr. Guha’s path veered towards other monumental works such as India After Gandhi and his celebrated biographies of Mahatma Gandhi, which have defined much of his career. However, thanks to his deep-rooted interest in environmental history, he picked up the threads — or rather, reams of notes — and dived back into the project.

The result is a compelling exploration of 10 early environmental thinkers —  from poet Rabindranath Tagore to the lesser-known scientist couple Albert and Gabrielle Howard and naturalist M. Krishnan — whose ideas have shaped India’s ecological landscape in the pre-climate change era.

In a conversation before the launch of his book in Chennai, Mr. Guha reflects on the diverse figures featured in the book, who lived and wrote across a century of Indian history, and how their contributions often bridged the gap between environmentalism and social justice. Their work, he argues, offers a much-needed counterpoint to the dominant, Western-driven narrative of environmentalism, one that prioritises the protection of nature without considering the inequalities and human struggles intertwined with it. 

With typical clarity and insight, Mr. Guha discusses the enduring relevance of these thinkers’ ideas in the context of today’s environmental challenges, from climate change to the pressures of rapid urbanisation. Edited excerpts:

There are 10 diverse thinkers in your book. How did you choose this particular group, and what do you believe their varied beliefs and perspectives say about the complexity of environmentalism in India?

Any work of history involves inclusion and deliberate or accidental exclusion. In my research over the last few decades into the history of environmentalism in India, I stumbled upon these 10 individuals. Some are well-known like Tagore and Munshi. Others I had known of earlier due to my research on environmental questions. They are extremely diverse, spanning an entire century, from the 1880s to the 1990s. For instance, Krishnan, the naturalist, was the last figure in this book, who was actually a resident of Chennai, writing till the 1990s.

These individuals worked in different parts of India and various landscapes. They wrote about the wild, the forest, the farm, the waters, the soil and the city. Most of them, with the possible exceptions of Munshi and Krishnan, combined a concern for environmental sustainability with a deep concern for social justice. That’s why this book is titled Speaking with Nature, not Speaking for Nature.

In India, there are many who want to protect the tiger or the rhino but have little concern for the underprivileged members of their own species. These thinkers articulate what I call a social ecology: to have a habitable planet, you cannot have a deeply flawed social and political system. However, we must also recognise the natural limits to how much we can grow and the extent of economic development and industrialisation.

Their diverse lives and approaches as writers and thinkers are central. Unlike some other works that focus strongly on individual biographies, my focus is much more on their journeys, anxieties, troubles, friendships, enmities and even their incarcerations. This is a brief biographical introduction to each thinker to provide context, but the emphasis is on their work, writing and thought.

Ultimately, I’ve tried to challenge the dominant narrative of the history of environmentalism, which often comes from America and Europe, speaking only for nature. It tends to focus solely on protecting the wild without addressing human society and the inequalities of access to natural resources within it. The terrible and visible fact is that the burden of environmental degradation disproportionately falls on the poor, whether it’s air pollution in northern India’s cities, the depletion of groundwater aquifers or soil contamination.

My thinkers are important because they connect us to a more recent Indian tradition, post-Chipko, that is strongly rooted in social justice. I refer to this as the environmentalism of the poor. What unites them is that they are all thinkers and writers articulating a social ecology, not a pure ecology. This is not to say that protecting endangered species or rewilding areas is unimportant; however, we must also consider the asymmetry of power—economic, political, and social—when it comes to human relations with nature.

As urbanisation and industrialisation progress, we see the encroachment of the urban industrial sector on rural areas, where communities rapidly lose control of their natural surroundings that have provided them with livelihoods for decades.

One last thing I want to emphasise is that this book argues for an environmentalism that exists before and beyond climate change. These individuals wrote from the late 19th Century onwards, and their ideas remain relevant in the third decade of the 21st Century. Even if climate change didn’t exist, India would still face severe environmental challenges.

Through this book, you have provided an intellectual genealogy for contemporary environmentalism in India. How do you think the ideas or historical perspectives of these 10 thinkers will influence current environmental movements?

The job of a historian is to educate, not to prescribe. My role is to illuminate the past for its own sake and possibly highlight connections to the present, but I do not advise or guide readers to act in a particular way. I provide the ideas, analysis and perspectives, and then the reader can apply them to their lives, communities and beyond.

Readers will find different thinkers compelling. For instance, those working in cities might find Patrick Geddes’s ideas particularly relevant. I’ve aimed to create a bridge connecting early history in environmentalism, which has been largely forgotten, to the present. What use, or misuse, is made of it is beyond my control, as with any other work of history.

While researching and writing the book, was there anything about a particular figure that surprised you or changed your perspective on their contributions to environmentalism?

Having worked in this field for so long, it’s challenging to say what surprised me. I started this project in the late 80s and early 90s, so I was already aware of many of these figures. I knew that Tagore had a keen aesthetic appreciation of nature, particularly from his poems about trees and his letters from Eastern Bengal. However, it was a revelation to discover that his environmentalism was not merely aesthetic; it was educational, political and prophetic.

With others, like Radhakamal Mukherjee and Patrick Geddes, I had to delve deeper to flesh out how their thoughts encompassed environmental and social components. Tagore and K. Munshi were perhaps late inclusions in the book but are highly pertinent.

In the introductory chapter, you mention that one limitation of the book is that there are only two women included. However, our earliest environmental movement, Chipko, was women-led. While  it is indisputable that women did not have the access or space for formal education at the time, do you think five decades on we still place a higher value on traditional intellect rather than grassroots knowledge?

No. Firstly, Chipko was not women-led. Women played an important part but both men and women participated in it. 

Yes, women played an important role in movements like Chipko. The period I’m writing about is the first half of the 20th Century, when women were not as visible or active. The operations of patriarchy were even more stringent and rigid then than they are now. While our society is still largely patriarchal, some constraints have loosened over time. 

Given this context, it’s inevitable that my book features few women, as well as few thinkers from marginalised backgrounds. For example, J.C. Kumarappa, who wrote about caste inequality, may have had his own privileges; although he addressed the Adivasi community, he was not an Adivasi himself.

My hopes for this book are that it serves as a history of environmentalism prior to the climate change narrative. I believe there is a valuable book to be written about grassroots struggles after Chipko, from 1973 to around 2023. This work should include movements like Chipko and Narmada, as well as civil society activism aimed at reforesting landscapes, restoring water sources and preserving traditional varieties of crops. It should also encompass the contributions of thinkers, scientists, social scientists, journalists and institutions.

During the time these early thinkers operated, there was no formal social movement called environmentalism. They were writers and thinkers, not activists in the traditional sense. It wasn’t until after the 1970s that we began to see a more integrated interpretation of thought and activism. Many of these figures came from prosperous backgrounds and were educated in universities, whereas grassroots environmentalism has enriched Indian social and cultural life since Chipko and is much more diverse in its composition.

I hope my book challenges someone, perhaps a younger scholar, to undertake a complementary work that traces a more diverse history and social composition than this book.

Given the focus of the Centre on industrial and infrastructural development, what challenges do you see facing environmentalism in India today?

The challenges are significant. Historically, every party in Indian politics has been hostile to environmental sustainability and social justice concerns. The Modi regime may be the most anti-environmental government we’ve had, but Manmohan Singh’s government was almost as bad.

If you look at the Western Ghats and the flouting of the Madhav Gadgil report, you’ll see widespread animosity towards it across various political parties. Those who opposed the report include the CPI-M in Kerala, the DMK in Tamil Nadu, the Congress in Karnataka, and the BJP in Goa, Maharashtra, Gujarat. This cuts across party lines because of the deep interconnections between the contractor lobby, the builder lobby, the infrastructure lobby, the mining lobby and our political class. 

Environmentalists are often mischaracterised as anti-development, which is totally false. They advocate for a more inclusive and responsible form of development, mindful of natural constraints. These grassroots movements face numerous obstacles, but they must persist.

One of the arguments I’ve not made in this book, but my esteemed colleague Gadgil made, is that political decentralisation could lead to sustainable development. For example, in Kerala, Gadgil has been in communities who are not opposed to mining, but, say, instead of handing over mining contracts to large corporations, villagers could form cooperatives to mine sustainably, ensuring that economic benefits remain in the community and protecting their resources. 

Considering the challenges posed by climate change and rapid urbanisation, do you think a new wave of environmental thinkers is emerging?

It’s too early to say definitively, but I will say that among the young, there is a much greater awareness of the climate crisis and environmental issues than there was in my generation. This awareness can sometimes lead to despair, but it can also translate into creative and positive action. Young writers and environmentalists today are articulating insights and passions about environmental destruction and the challenges we face. Although the situation is bleak, it is not hopeless.

Published - November 05, 2024 01:41 pm IST