A trivial pursuits question. Just when did the present
concerns about the environment begin? It is common-place to date
such anxieties as global warming and species extinction to the
United Nations conference of Rio, 1992, or Stockholm, 1972. Some
of us might even point to early 20th century, writers who were
worried about runaway industrialism destroying the human bond
with nature.
In the ex-colonial world, many writers have shown that
before the coming of alien ruled empires, the land and the people
were linked to each other in ways very different from what was to
follow with colonialism. In a sense, each of these views is
valid, but only up to a point.
Grove's spellbinding look challenges us to widen our
horizons in both space and time. He trudges through over two
dozen archives in 10 countries, delves through letters in private
collections and also reproduces several illustrations of the
persons that occur in the text. His conclusion is as startling
to many specialists as it is to lay persons: anxieties about the
impact of unbridled growth on the ecology were present at a time
colonial expansion was at its peak.
The present day fears of global warming had their mid-19th
century counterpart. A group of scientists, many drawn from
British surgeons in service in India, wrote up their findings in
a report for the British Association for the Advancement of
Science in 1851. Their message was simple: unless government
regulated the use of forests, not only would the land be denuded,
but wider climatic changes would follow. Such warnings were not
heeded then. And they are being ignored even now.
The question is, just who were these experts and what
prompted them to foresee such problems? The idea of the conquest
of nature was implicit in Renaissance thought. Shakespeare in The
Tempest made his colonists reject Caliban's holistic vision: "I
loved thee/ And showed thee all the qualities of this isle/. The
fresh springs, the brine pits, barren place and fertile." As in
the play, Europe's colonists hoped to use their technologies of
rule to override any problems of this nature.
The catch lay in the fact tropical ecologies, especially
those of the islands, were much more vulnerable than those in
temperate Europe. The glimmer of change, in the form of
autonomous scientists, critical of laissez faire, often on
ecological grounds, first emerged in the colonial world. ln
botanical gardens in places as far flung as Mauritius and Poona,
Calcutta and Bangalore, the men of science sounded alarm bells.
Efforts began in the West Indies and Mauritius, and on the
little island of St Helena. India was where such trends reached
their culmination in the mid-1850s. The guardians of the Raj
were worried that any changes in rainfall regimes would have a
debilitating effect on agriculture and lead to disorder. Grove
rejects what he calls a "Merrie India" view that places all the
negative trends in human-nature relations at the door of
colonialism. In particular, he points to the efforts of
pre-British rulers to police forests for hunting and timber
removal.
Demands for timber for the Royal Navy and merchant shipping
led to the first British attempts at controlling tree cutting.
But these soon broke down and the revival of such measures was
largely due to the ability of the scientists in the East India
Company in lobbying the viceroy.
Unlike in independent India, however, there was no certainty
that departments, once created, would endure forever. The forest
department had to fight a decades long "internal war" against
revenue officers who tried their best to get it abolished. Echoes
of this contest continue into the present day. The picture that
emerges from the book is of a rich and varied tapestry of ideas
that contributed to the intellectual revolution in the colonial
world.
Grove pays special attention to the myriad ways, in which
indigenous perceptions of nature influenced the early scientists.
The dialogue between cultures had more to it than colonial self
aggrandizement. The land was compared to the human body, and
policies were praised or condemned for making it "sick." Concerns
about forest conservation went beyond a search for timber. Some
thinkers even write of the need to preserve rare plant species
for their possible medical value.
Such "green languages" anticipated many of the ideas that we
are aware of in our own ecology conscious age. In many ways,
there was more scope for executive action in the colonies than in
Europe, where private interests could resist such intervention.
The problem, of course, was the fact that for all the
searing criticisms of the impact of European planters and
companies on the environment they advanced, the scientists Grove
writes about were unable to achieve much. The emerging
bureaucracy did what state officials are best at: they took over
these ideas and expanded their powers, but instead focussed their
ire on forest and tribal peoples, blaming them for ecological
disruption.
In the process, they ended up making the government owner of
a fifth of the total area of British India by the turn of the
century, virtually all of which is still under foresters today.
This continues to be the dilemma of many middle class
environmentalists the world over. For all their criticism of
social order that rewards profligacy and penalises prudence, they
often end up simply expanding the boundaries of state power.
The clue to a different future is hinted at by Grove, but
is not central to his work. It is to try to understand how the
"losers" in the fight for the forest related to the land. This
need not be in a simplistic and romantic way as portrayed in the
Hollywood blockbuster, Dances with Wolves. But it has to ask why
the colonial stereotype of peasant peoples at war with nature was
taken over in an unreconstructed way by the makers of modern
India. It is here that the work is at its weakest for it misses
out the new ways in which colonial rule displaced older systems
of resource use and renewal.
No Indian or African ruler had the sort of apparatus for
information or intervention, that was created by colonial
rulers. The unwillingness to learn from peasant peoples was
surely much more significant than the limited if heroic bid by
a few experts to acknowledge their significance.
South Asia was critical to the emergence of the green
alternative thought as well as of the new and more intrusive
methods of control. It is only logical that much of the debate
that takes place here will be of enduring relevance in much of
the former colonial world: Grove's work is a major step in the
direction of a wider debate. The characters, for once in an
academic work, are rivetting. At times if you remove the dates,
this could be the text of a contemporary discussion. The past
comes alive in the hands of a good storyteller, making the book a
must for anyone interested in our common past or the future.
It should also encourage historians and scientists alike to
stray off the beaten track and tell us more about the
alternatives debated by people of yesteryear. Many of their
experiences may be replete with lessons for choosing between the
alternatives that confront us today.
Mahesh Rangarajan