A deep-rooted movement

A quarter century ago, Ramachandra Guha wrote Environmentalism: A Global History (Penguin Random House, 1999). Though brief, the book attempted something exceptional at the time: a truly global history that brought the former colonised world and newly independent countries into the ambit of the story of environmental awareness and action.

The critique of modern industrial civilisation predates Rachel Carson's admittedly landmark book Silent Spring (1962: Rachel Carson broke the silence on a 'killer') or, for that matter, the movements for aesthetic planning in Europe and national parks in America. Guha's new book, Speaking with Nature, takes us to the origins of environmental thought and action in India by looking at 10 key figures – the first being Rabindranath Tagore (born 1861) and the last being naturalist M. Krishnan (who died in 1996). These were momentous years, spanning the 'high noon' of the British Empire, the freedom struggle and independence, and the consolidation of India as a nation-state.

It is befitting that two key figures in the book were directly associated with Mahatma Gandhi, namely Mirabehn (born Madeleine Slade; the British Admiral's daughter who joined Gandhi in the independence struggle, braving jail and ashram life) and J.C. Kumarappa (who gave up life as a chartered accountant to become a pioneer advocate of rural self-reliance and village-based crafts). Verrier Elwin's association with Gandhi was slight, but his extensive ethnographic work in central India, among what are now called the Scheduled Tribes, led on to him being key adviser to Nehru's government of special importance on the North-East.

The academics here may not be well-known, but Guha's exceptional skill and forte show in the way he combines their life history with well-chosen quotes that show them to be figures who continue to be of abiding relevance. The Scottish town planner Patrick Geddes wrote over 50 town plans in and for Indian cities, none ever seeing the light of day. The core idea that water and green spaces be given primacy, and the existing heritage structures not be tampered with, could be a primer for planning today's cities and towns of India. Similarly, Radhakamal Mukerjee, a distinguished sociologist, talked of the broken balance of trees, soil and cattle in the Indo-Gangetic Plain and advocated recycling organic material in preference to overreliance on chemical fertilisers long before the Green Revolution. The advocacy of local cultivator knowledge was the leitmotif of the scientist couple Gabrielle and Albert Howard, who did fieldwork in Pusa, Baluchistan and Kashmir.

It is fascinating to learn of the author's own journey investigating each of these scholars or practitioners, and it is evidently decades-long. An unfamiliar figure is K.M. Munshi, who served in Nehru's cabinet during 1950-1952 and was the Minister of Food and Agriculture. The Ministry then included the Forest Department, and Munshi set about in July 1950 to inaugurate a Van Mahotsav or forest festival. Its slogan was, "Trees mean water, Water means bread, Bread means life". The idea was to encourage citizens to plant trees and to also exhort well-off people such as merchants, traders and industrialists to step forward and sponsor such efforts. This became a major passion for Munshi as the Governor of Uttar Pradesh, where he placed the revival of sacred groves of Braj in the context of Krishna's childhood.

Guha rightly contrasts the religious symbolism that came first in Munshi's mind with Tagore's Brik-sharopan (Bengali for tree planting) ceremonies in Santiniketan. These were done in the setting of the university, and the trees are special to this day. Munshi was also the founder of the Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan, and the forest festival, unlike the tree-planting ceremonies of Gurudev, was a government-sponsored programme when he was the Minister. It soon became an annual ritual.

What is significant is the way Guha shows how Munshi was deeply affected by global concerns of the time on desertification. Massive afforestation was touted as essential to avert desiccation of land and loss of soil. These ideas seem simplistic in light of today's science, but were given wide credence at the time.

The larger dilemma before India was and is not unique. What stands out is the diversity of nature in a land now teeming with 1.4 billion people and an economy that is among the world's largest. At the start of the book is a quote from Gandhiji c. 1928 in which he warned that if India should take up the path of England, "it would strip the world bare like locusts". As the afterword argues, livelihoods and local ecological stability are now linked to global-level ecological changes, and India is both a site of change and a plausible place for alternatives.

For me, the most fascinating figure in the book is Mirabehn, who wrote to key leaders, including Morarji Desai in 1977-78 and Indira Gandhi in 1980, on the issue of commercial forestry and big dams in the Western Himalayas. She had written near-identical letters in the early years after independence but to no avail. The ear was turned to listen and her enormous prestige gave her access. But not much more.

This leaves us with a question of why and how independent nation-states see the creation of the artifices of economic growth as all important to the neglect of basic ecological principles. In the Indian case, as often with many developing countries, this also entails loss of access for those reliant on nature for a living, such as fishers, pastoralists and cultivators.

Kumarappa's survey of Matar Taluka in 1931, for instance, is rich in insight to this day. There was joblessness and rural underemployment. Life was even harder for those subject to caste-based prejudice. The irrigation department even collected revenues on tanks that had been dry for most of the year! By way of contrast, he found reason to praise the work of the Village Industries Association in Morvi, Gujarat, for planting groves of date palm trees that would sustain the poor while requiring less water and energy than cane sugar. Kumarappa and associates even designed and pioneered a smokeless 'choola' or wood stove in the 1940s.

Guha is of the view that a more decentralised, community-centred approach to planning and development would have suited not only the economy or equity but also the ecology far better than the path set out as early as 1938 by the National Planning Committee of the Congress or the Five-Year Plans from 1951 onwards. One of the key essays in this book is on Elwin, who drafted for Nehru a policy of Panchsheel or the five principles of development of the Scheduled Tribes and Scheduled Areas. But the very first two principles of regard for rights of land and forests were violated time and time again to an extent that it is one of the few points of agreement across the spectrum of politics and policy to this day that the Scheduled Tribes on the whole have gained the least and paid the highest price for dams, forestry and parks.

There have indeed been corrective steps both at the Central and State government levels, but these clearly fall short in a time when the imperative for more and rapid growth is evident. One point the author makes is how the Indian middle class is larger and more consumption-driven than ever before. None of the visionaries studied in the book had to quite contend with this pressure for growth that strains the ecological fabric.

What is heartening is the vibrance and salience of the ideas, practices and philosophy of the diverse thinkers included in the book. They speak with, and not just for, nature. With the possible exception of Krishnan, who saw the Forest Department as the guardian of nature, the rest saw citizen awakening as the key to the future. To think frugally or live within nature's limits looks like a mirage – and yet it has never been more vital to ask how to do so.

This book shows us those who set out on the quest that we should continue on. India is not the only country with the range of problems that countries at various levels of development face. One is struck time and again by the way these thinkers from Tagore to Krishnan, and the Howards to Mirabehn, were both vital to their own time and place, yet relevant to our own.

Mahesh Rangarajan is Professor of History and Environmental Studies at Ashoka University.