Learning from the past of India’s forests | Dinesh C Sharma

BOOK REVIEW

India’s Forests: Revisiting Nature and History
Arupjyoti Saikia & Mahesh Rangarajan (Editors)
Vintage
343 pages
Price 999

Forests have been at the centre of human life since ancient times. They are part of history, archaeology, myths, culture, livelihoods, politics, commerce, and much more. Forests are closely inter-linked with all activities in the modern era – food, fuel, water, energy, development, transportation, human health, recreation and so on. Their extent, quality and vitality are also intertwined with the future of humanity. Forests are massive carbon sinks and represent humanity’s last hope in the face of dangers posed by climate change. India’s Forests: Revisiting Nature and History is an anthology of scholarly essays that examines the vital aspects of forests through the lens of history, looking at them not just from the colonial or pre-colonial periods but from ancient times to the modern era.

Edited by Arupjyoti Saikia and Mahesh Rangarajan, the book represents a significant milestone in environmental historiography. Both are distinguished scholars of environmental history in South Asia. Saikia is a Professor of History at the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Guwahati, while Rangarajan is a Professor of History and Environmental Studies at Ashoka University. Their research has focused on bridging the gap between historical archival research and contemporary ecological policy.

The ten essays contained in the present volume seek to redefine forests as a deeply historical, contested, and human landscape by linking ecology with statecraft and communities. The strength of this volume lies in its scholarly pluralism. The editors have put together a diverse set of scholars who draw upon an array of source materials to back their arguments. The essays broadly cover the deep history of human-ecological interactions, the colonial period and state monopolisation of nature and community questions and contemporary challenges.

The book opens with essays on three essays on the deep history of India’s forests – perspectives from archaeology by Shibani Bose, an examination of forests through the Arthashastra by Kumkum Roy and varied landscapes in ancient India by Aloka Parasher Sen.

The effort is clearly to shift the traditional starting point for the study of the history of forests from the colonial period to ancient times. By analysing prehistoric megafauna and ancient land-clearance practices, the essays demonstrate that Indian forests, over different eras, were reshaped by human labour, fire, and evolving agricultural practices. Ancient states, from the Mauryan Empire to the medieval period, regulated forest resources for military logistics and revenue, much before the advent of modern scientific forestry. Such a longer history of forests is critical because, as the editors say, ‘even as we re-examine the present and ponder the future, the past too requires introspection.

The term vana used in the Rigveda and the Arthashastra denotes not only forests but also forest-like spaces in borderlands. The domestication of forests on the boundaries was a slow and continuous process which benefitted the state and societies. It is argued that vana may be understood as a transitory category between the deep forests and agrarian lands. The essay on the deep history of forests in Travancore points out that the colonial era was not the only transition point or ecological watershed, as often portrayed.

Human actions, apart from natural causes, led to deforestation over the ages. Cultivation to meet the requirement of food was perhaps the common factor. For instance, Akbar issued a firman asking subedars to promote agriculture and give loans to peasants so that the number of hamlets, villages and towns could be increased. In the Vijayanagar empire, state help was extended to increase the area under cultivation. In Awadh, nawabs encouraged the clearing and settling of lands under forests. The most glaring example in the modern period is the clearing of hill forests and other areas to grow paddy in Travancore following the cessation of rice imports from Bengal and Burma in the Second World War period. Communist leader E M S Namboodiripad called for a pledge from Travancoreans not to leave even an inch of land uncultivated.

The book revisits the institutional shocks of colonial rule, expanding the narrative of resource depletion to include structural mechanics of colonial forestry such as the creation of the Imperial Forest Department. It was not just an economic endeavour to harvest timber for railways and navies, but also a political project. This project categorised forest-dwelling communities as ‘encroachers’ while criminalising traditional and sustainable practices like shifting cultivation (jhum). The final chapters bridge the historical narrative with modern conservation crises. The volume highlights the agency of marginalised communities who viewed the forest not as a commercial commodity, but as a sacred, livelihood-sustaining space. Through re-examination of movements like Chipko and modern conflicts over the Forest Rights Act (FRA), the book illustrates how contemporary environmentalism remains haunted by colonial-era legal frameworks.

Forests are not just about commerce, forest produce and community livelihoods but also flora and fauna diversity. The book has a lone essay on wildlife in the modern context. Divyabhanusinh tells the interesting story of two mega species – the Asian lion and the greater one-horned rhinoceros. Both species have had almost similar trajectories of conservation history and contemporary challenges.

The Asian or Asiatic lion once roamed in a large area, from Palestine to Bihar, but over the centuries it got confined to Saurashtra and eventually to the Gir forests. The region is prone to natural calamities like floods and famines, besides the fear of outbreak of zoonotic diseases, which could endanger the lion populations in Gir. Therefore, conservationists, for long, have advocated a second home for Gir lions through translocation, but all such attempts in the hundred years have failed for various reasons, mainly political. The tale of the one-horned rhino, confined to Kaziranga in Assam, is similar. Both species need a second home for long-term survival.

A highlight of the book is its historiographical engagement with Ramachandra Guha’s seminal work, The Unquiet Woods, published in 1989. It was a landmark work linking the Chipko Movement in Uttarakhand to the century-old peasant resistance against colonial and post-colonial commercial forestry. Guha’s work, notes Vasudha Pande in her essay, emphasised the role of forests for hill peasants, while focusing on afforestation and equitable access to resources like fodder and timber. However, it ignored the vertical and spatial diversity as well as the differentiation within the Himalayan economy. By focusing on forests, Guha ignored the larger disarticulation of the agrarian structure. Post-Chipko, the failure of the Tehri dam agitation made it clear to the mountain communities that the nationalisation of their forests, glaciers and rivers was a crude reality.

Saikia and Rangarajan have framed the forest as an active arena of power rather than a passive ecological backdrop. The subjects covered are located in vast geographical areas, though some regions receive little or no mention. While the integration of historical and political analysis is great, a volume like this should have explored current concerns relating to forests, land use and climate change. Overall, the book is a work of deep research and scholarship, and adds a new dimension to environment history studies in India and the region.

(Review author: Dr Dinesh C Sharma, is a columnist and author based in New Delhi.)