Prehistory of Indian Environmentalism: Intellectual Traditions

Author(s): Ramachandra Guha

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 Prehistory of Indian Environmentalism
Intellectual Traditions
Ramachandra Guha

The historical study of natural resource conflict and the anthropological study of indigenous conservation
are two important ways in which we can construct a lineage for Indian environmentalism. This essay
yet a third alternative, the provision of an intellectual genealogy for the movement . The concern here is wi
forgotten thinkers in India who , in a rational , reflective mode , provided important insights into people'
ship with nature .

THE British environmental movement has forgotten thinkers who, in a rational, reflec- cities about what is happening in the coun-
been recently characterised as 'monumental- tive (if you will, 'secular') mode, provided tryside. Conflicts over forests and water, in
ly ahistorical',1 an indictment that applies important insights into the human-nature particular, between a subsistence-oriented
with equal force to its Indian counterpart. relationship in India. rural sector and a commercially-oriented
The beginnings of the environmental move- Some caveats are in order. First, for the urban-industrial sector, provide the material
ment in India are conventionally dated to the writers I deal with the environment question backdrop to these debates. Interpreting these
early 1970s, although there are differences is invariably and explicitly embedded in a conflicts, environmentalists claim that pre-
as to its foundational event. Thus, officials larger perspective on social reconstruction. sent patterns of natural resource utilisation
locate the movement's origins in Indira Therefore, my presentation will have to deprive poorer sections of the rural popula-
Gandhi's famous 'poverty and pollution' follow a different trajectory from that tion of their rightful inheritance even as
speech at the 1972 Stockholm Conference relied upon by historians, for example, of they accelerate processes of ecological
on the Human Environment whereas ac- American environmental ideas. The bipolar destruction.7
tivists point to the Chipko Andolan, which categories used by those chroniclers - In calling for a reversal of state priorities,
broke out a year later. Here it is appositepreservation/utilitarian
to or anthropo- towards more directly serving the needs of
recall Maurice Dobb's remark that Soviet centric/biocentric - have an inherent the (subsistence) rural sector, Indian en-
planning did not spring full blown from the tendency to disembed attitudes towards vironmentalists have continually invoked the
head of Lenin; likewise, Indian environmen-nature from their social context.5 In name con-of Mahatma Gandhi. The energy- and
talism did not begin either with Indiratrast, my categories do not privilege Nature capital-intensive pattern of industrialisation
Gandhi or Chipko. over Society (or vice versa): they are, I followed
hope, since 1947 is bitterly attacked as a
All social movements require a history,more fully socio-ecological. The boxesbetrayal I use of the national movement which
and many have found it necessary to inventto locate my representative thinkers Gandhi
are both orchestrated and directed, a
one. Providing a genealogy for Indian en-labelled 'countryside*, 'city', 'forest', and
movement which promised its peasant base
vironmentalism could take one of three finally a category which subsumes the afirst New Deal in independent India. Although
distinct, if complementary, paths. First, three,
one 'social ecology'. the alternatives are rarely spelt out, it is clear
could document the prehistory of contem- Second, while the thinkers I study did pro-
that agrarianism - viz, the belief that a
porary social conflicts over nature. Indeed, civilisation founded on agriculture alone can
vide striking anticipations of present day
conflicts over forests - and to a lesser extent,
concerns, they were not themselves engaged guarantee ecological and social stability-
water - have been an integral part of the is the dominant strand in Indian environ-
in an environmental debate. Notably,
rural landscape for over a century, even if
though, mentalism.
all wrote in the ferment of the Expectedly, the pre-eminent
such struggles did not always resonate with Indian
Indian national movement, when issues of agrarian, Mahatma Gandhi, is held
the agenda of the Congress Party or inform social policy such as health, work to andbe the founding figure of the environmen-
the deliberations of its National Planning tal movement.
science, were being debated with intensity.6
Committee. The home of Chipko, the In the sphere of action, the claim of
lYue, some of these writers were relating, in
Uttarakhand Himalaya, was itself the an bat- Indian environmentalists to be working in
individual way, to some of these debates.
tleground of the most bitter of these con- the tradition of Gandhi has some justifica-
However, it is best to treat their writings as
flicts in the colonial period.2 tion. For, in drawing public attention to the
discrete, segmented though significant con-
A second alternative is the recoverytributions of social consequences of environmental
to the history of human ecological
traditional attitudes to nature and conser- degradation, social action groups have relied
thinking in India.
vation in Indian society. At the level of 'high' to a considerable extent on the classic
Third, my ecological pioneers include
culture; one could analyse the environmental Gandhian techniques of the hunger fast
both Indians and Englishmen. The handful
implications of the major Indian religious of writers I shall consider include a Indian ('bhook hartal'), the walking tour
traditions - Hinduism, Islam, Buddhism, university scholar with nationalist sym-('padayatra') and non-violent protest
Jainism, Christianity, and Sikhism.3 At the pathies, a full-time Gandhian constructive(satyagraha). There is however, a further
level of folk cosmology and practice, á worker, an Oxford priest who left Churchclaim that at an ideological level too, there
fertile, yet little explored area of study is of is a direct line of continuity from Gandhi
and King to become an Indian citizen, and
the social insitutions regulating the use of a Scotsman who first came to India at the to modern day environmentalists.
nature in different tribal, peasant, artisanal, But was Gandhi himself an early en-
invitation of the colonial government. This
fishing and nomadic communities.4 vironmentalist? Undeniably, his denuncia-
juxtaposition was quite accidental, but
The historical study of natural resource perhaps there is a lesson here for those who tion of industrial civilisation is amenable to
conflict and the anthropological study of would marry environmentalism to cultural an ecological reading; in particular his argu-
indigenous conservation systems are two nationalism. ment that capitalism and communism were
important ways in which we can construct merely two variants of a destructive model
a lineage for Indian environmentalism. This The Countryside
of industrialisation, and his appreciation of
essay takes up yet a third alternative, the the resource exploitation of the countryside
provision of an intellectual genealogy for the It is, I think, fair to say that theby the city, and of the colony by the
Indian
movement That is, our concern is with those environment debate is an argument metropolis.
in the And insofar as the wasteful use

Economic and Political Weekly January 4-11, 1992 57

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of nature is, ultimately, the consequence of (3) encouragement of individual growth; ness. He does not fail to observe, either, that
resource wasteful lifestyles, Gandhi's own (4) motive force for all activities the in villages where clean drinking water is
code of voluntary simplicity offers a sus- satisfaction of needs according to an available for upper castes, untouchables are
tainable alternative to consumerism.8 altruistic point of view; not similarly privileged.12
However, Gandhi was not himself a (5) collective action only for internal Water is by no means the only natural
systematic thinker who outlined a unified safety and consolidation.9 resource whose conservation Kumarappa is
and consistent social philosophy. Modern What are the 'environmental' implications concerned with. He dwells on the impor-
environmentalists claiming his inheritance of Kumarappa's work? Strewn through his tance of maintaining soil quality by check-
would do well to acquaint themselves with writings are observations with profound ing erosion and water logging. And in a
the man who actually formalised Gandhi an ecological consequences, though he of pithy comment on actual and preferred
economics. This was J С Kumarappa, an course does not express it in these terms. models of forest management, he says:
accountant who abandoned a prosperous This remark, for instance, could well serve The government will have to radically revise
commercial career to join Gandhi in the late as a basic condition for ecological respon- its policy of maintaining forests. Forest
1920s. At the Mahatma's behest, Kumarappa sibility: "If we produce everything we want management should be guided, not by con-
worked out a coherent ideological frame- from within a limited area, we are in a posi- siderations of revenue but by the needs of
work in justification of a 4 village-centred tion to supervise the methods of production; the people. . . Forest planning must be based
economic order', of which resource conser- while if we draw our requirements from the on the requirements of the villagers around.
vation was an integral part. He was to spend ends of the earth it becomes impossible for Forests should be divided into two main
more than three decades studying the us to guarantee the conditions of produc- classes: (1) those supplying timber to be
agrarian economy, with a view to rehabili- tion in such places!'10 planned from the long range point of view,
tating it on sound social and what we would More relevant to our purposes is and (2) those supplying fuel and grasses, to
now call ecological principles. Kumarappa's denunciation of industrial be made available to the public either free
Kumarappa's economic and ethical civilisation. As he pointedly remarks, 'there of cost or at nominal rates. There are village
defence of agrarian civilisation hinged on a can be no industrialisation without préda- industries such as palm gur, paper making,
novel distinction he made between 'pack tion', while agriculture is, and ought to be, pottery, etc, which can flourish only if fuel
type' and 'herd type' societies. He developed "the greatest among occupations", in which and grass can be supplied to them at cheap
rates.13
this contrast from the non-human world, "man attempts to control nature and his own
between animals like the wolf who were environment in such a way as to produce the Equally far-sighted are Kumarappa's
predatory, aggressive and carnivorous, and best results". Elsewhere, he expresses thisremarks on potential biomass shortages in
animals like the sheep which were peaceable, contrast between agriculture and industry inthe rural economy. Here he is particularly
non-violent, and vegetarian. In the human terms of their attempted modifications ofconcerned about fodder availability. He
world, the starkest example of the 'pack the natural world. Thus, points out that cash crops like jute, tobacco
type* was of course the modern west. After In the case of an agricultural civilisation the
and sugarcane reduce food availability for
only a short period as an agricultural men and his domestic animals. Elsewhere,
system ordained by nature is not interfered
civilisation, the west was overtaken by the with to any great extent. If there is a varia-
he draws attention to the widespread com-
Industrial Revolution; consequently, its tion at all, it follows a natural mutation. The plaint of villagers that there is not sufficient
societal features were heavily marked by the agriculturist only aids nature or intensifiesgrazing land, taking the colonial government
hunter, nomad, and industrial stages of in a short time what takes place in nature in to task for its reluctance to allow grazing on
human evolution- all predatory pack type a long period . . . Under the economic systemwaste land without the payment of a fee. Nor
societies. By contrast, long settled, stable, of the 'pack typť derived, as it is, from the. are his horizons restricted to the cultivator.
agrarian cultures like China, India and primitive hunter and feudal baron, we find Thus he asks that waste paper and grass
that variations from nature are very violent from state forests, at the time auctioned to
Japan (before the last named began its
forced march to industrialisation) were held in that a large supply of goods is produced,the highest bidder, be made over at modest
irrespective of demand, and then a demand rates to the handmade paper sector.
up as exemplars of gentler herd type
is artificially created for goods by means of Kumarappa's preference for small industry
societies. Extending this distinction to the clever advertisements.11
sexes, Kumarappa claimed that in general is dictated in part by considerations of
man belongs to the pack type, woman to the In this scheme, the task of man is to resource conservation. A large modern paper
herd type. As custodians of culture and the co-operate intelligently and lovingly with mill, he points out, must necessarily rely
family, women, even in pack type societies, Nature's Economy of Permanence. However,upon freshly cut bamboo taken directly from
were invariably less self-centred than men. like most Gandhians of his generation the forests. By contrast, paper made by the
In Kumarappa's ideal-typical presentation, Kumarappa was an immensely practicalcottage process could draw upon discarded
and rotten bamboo earlier used for mats,
pack type cultures were characterised by: man, primarily interested not in theoretical
(1) centralisation and concentration of reflection but in ameliorating the lot of the baskets, and roofing material.14
power in individuals and small groups; Indian peasant and artisan. An acute set of Kumarappa was virtually the only
(2) disregard of the welfare of workers; observations thus emerge from his own fieldeconomist of his generation to question the
(3) suppression of the individuality of experience and constructive work, on how centralised and resource intensive path of
workers; to more carefully husband the naturaldevelopment adopted in independent India.
(4) motive force for all acctivities being resources of the agrarian economy. He In 1937, he was appointed to the National
provided by the prospect of gain; stresses the need to use night-soil as manure, Planning Committee as a representative of
(5) concentration and limited sharing of asking for subsidies to be given to the All India Village Industries Association.
benefits; individuals, as a means of overcoming casteHe resigned his scat shortly afterwards,
(6) predatory rather than altruistic social prohibitions, far-converting human excretawhen the NPC refused to put the village at
organisation; and village waste into compost [Link] centre of planning. After independence,
(7) collective action for aggressive Again, he views the substitution of chemical Kumarappa was deputed by the Sarva Sewa
purposes. fertiliser for organic manure as an exampleSangh to represent it in the Planning Com-
In contrast, herd type cultures were of the Economy of Permanence yielding to mission's Advisory Body, but again failed
highlighted by: the man made Economy of lYansience. Heto find a receptive audience for his views on
(1) social control overproduction and thecomments on the poor maintenance of economic reconstruction.15
decentralisation of power; irrigation tanks under British rule, and also Quite apart from his concern for the
(2) attempts to safeguard the weak and pleads for the conservation of water to aug- careful husbanding of natural resources,
helpless; ment the water table and reduce brackish- there are several ways in which Kumarappa

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anticipated the alternate theorists of today. grapher Dudley Stamp, the regionalist Lewis mended the Indian tradition of narrow
Like his mentor, he was a critic of both Mumford, and the ecologist С С Adams.21 public thoroughfares with ample courtyards
capitalism and communism, holding them Another commentator held Geddes's within houses, criticising the modern
to be but two variants of a centralising, greatest contribution to be his recognition
tendency in favour of wide, dusty streets
destructive and violent system of produc- of the interrelationship of the human which
and he saw as an aid only to the auto-
tion.16 Following Gandhi too in questioning natural environments, and consequently that
mobile, an artefact he detested.29 While the
the reign of Economic Man, Kumarappa protection of trees would also result in a
physical planning, in the city as elsewhere,
went on to challenge modern civilisation for must go hand in hand with social plan- supply of fruit and fuel, the conservation of
lisemhcdding the economy from its ethical ning.22 Geddes insisted that a training in within the city's precincts was an
water
and cultural moorings- a decade before sociology was indispensable for the would-
equally important objective. Therefore, he
Karl Pülanyi was to lend intellectual respec- be planner.23 At a more philosophical level,
strongly recommended the preservation and
tability to sudi criticisms.17 Finally, in seek- Geddes was an early harbinger of that maintenance of tanks and reservoirs; simul-
ing to build a new order on the foundations "general revolution in science now in rapid
taneously a protection against flooding after
of Indián civilisation, Kumarappa is pro- progress, the change from a mechanocentric
heavy rain, a beneficial influence on dimate,
foundly sympathetic to pre-modera systems view and treatment of nature and her pro-and of course an assured source of water
of though* and action. (Geddes scoffed at the fear of sanitary
cesses to a more and more fully biocentric
Thus, Kumarappa could be said to have one0.24 engineers that these water bodies would be
begun the task of building an ecological 'Biocentric* is of course a term much a malarial hazard, pointing out that they
programme on Gandhian lines. Although favoured by radical environmentalists tocould easily be stocked "with sufficient fish
they are almost wholly unaware of his work, describe their own worldview. But unlike the
and duck to keep down the Anopheles").30
the environmentalists of today are only tak-
radical socialists of his day and the radicalAfter a visit to Thana, he recommended the
ing up where he left off. ecologiste of ours, Geddes's interest lay notprotection of wells as a reserve to existing
in dreaming of new communities but in stu-water supplies, presdently remarking that
The City
dying and improving the habitats of existing"any and every water system occasionally
cities. As Donald Miller has observed, bothgoes out of order, and is open to aeddents
In the annals of folklore and politicalGeddes and Mumford were concerned not and injuries of very many kinds; and in these
economy, the countryside is invariably op-
with Utopia, no place, but with Eutopia, the old wells we inherit an andent policy, of life
posed to the city. And in their rejection of
best place possible.25 However, his town insurance, of a very real kind, and one far
modern society, environmentalists are fre-
plans are far from being dry as dust too valuable to be abandoned'2- words that
quently accused of turning their back on the
technocratic reports. Wonderfully idiosyn- planners in Madras, Hyderabad and a dozen
city.18 India is no exception in this regard. othrr dties would do well to remember.31
cratic, they are shot through with throw away
For in their angry denunciations of the
lines and bon mots , while his philosophy Another theme of contemporary relevance
urban-industrial way of life, Indian en-
emerges in the most unexpected places. in Geddes's writings, more sodological than
vironmentalists have yet to come to terms
Geddes's methodological contributions to ecological than nature, is his warning "not
with the fact that by the turn of the century
the art of town planning were his concepts to coerce people into new places against their
India shall have the largest urban popula- associations, wishes and interest. . ."32 He
of 'diagnostic survey- an intensive walking
tion in the world. This would seem to call
tour to acquaint oneself with the growth, commented sharply on a proposed scheme
for an active engagement with the problems
development and existing status of the city for dty improvement in Lahore which would
of the city, for which something environmen-
being planned for - and 'conservative have demolished two temples, five mosques,
talists are as yet largely unprepared.
surgery', the practice of gentle improvements two 'dharamshalas', many tombs, shops in
The foremost modern interpreter of with the minimal disruption of people and their a bazaar and houses, with the police station
JLly is undoubtedly Lewis Mumford. habitat. Un- These ground rules were meti- alone bdng spared. Geddes condemned this
culously observed in his indian town
fairly accused of being yet another intellec- scheme as an "indiscriminate destruction of
plans.26 In those reports, the ecologicalthe whole past labour and industry of men,
tual versus the city, Mum ford 's lifelong con-
cern was rather with making the city thrust is also quite marked. As he reflected of all buildings good, bad and indifferent,
habitable: His work in urban history and in his Dacca plan, the town planning move-and with these, of all their human values and
city
planning can also be read as an amplifica- ment (of which he was, by common consent associations, profane and sacred".33 Again,
tion and extension of the ideas of his master,
the vanguard) was itself "on this side a revolt in his Patiala report, he remarks that while
Patrick Geddes.19 of the peasant and the gardener, as on the well intentioned improvers were puzzled by
Like Mumford a polymath who ranged other of citizen, and these united by thethe 'obstinate prejudice' with which the poor
widely over the humanities and life sciences,
geographer, from their domination by the clung to their habitations, the objection of
unlike his disciple Geddes was a madden- engineer"27. these people to displacement was founded
ingly obscure writer. As a long time pro- The central ity of Nature in Geddes's on 'bitter experience'.34 In fact, his ground
fessor of Botany and activist city planner in of town planning finds expression in
theory rule for clearance and eviction (even partial
Scotland, he inspired students primarily the one general treatise he wrote on the sub- eviction) was that "these must in any and
through the spoken word and by forceject. of There, in order to enhance thè beauty every case be deprecated until and unless new
example. For those with patience, however, of the city and the health of its inhabitants, and adequate location is provided"- words
there are veritable nuggets to be found in hehis
strongly states the "case for the Conser- which in a just world would be on the lips
writings. This is certainly the case withvation
the of Nature and for the increase of our not only of the town planner, but the dam
several dozen town plans he wrote while in to her", going on to prescribe the
accesses engineer and missile builder as well.35 Not
India from 1915 to 1919, as a guest careful suc- preservation of upland watersheds surprisingly, Geddes repeatedly clashed with
cessively of the colonial governmentoutside and cities and forestry and park-making engineers and civic officials who wished to
Indian princes.20 within them.28 In his Indian town plans, destroy poor neighbourhoods to clean up the
Apart from his seminal work in the theoryGeddes's ecological approach is reflected in city and build broad avenues.36
and practice of town planning, Geddes the alsoconcrete recommendations for open Well aware of the resource extractive
made a more general contribution to space for recreation, tree planning and pro- characteristics of the archetypal dty, Geddes
ecological thinking. No less a person than tection (especially, but not exclusively, sought to harmonise urban living with the
A G Iknsley noted Geddes's influence on around sacred sites), and perhaps most im- countryside. He thus called for a "return to
early ecological studies of the Scottish portantly, for the provision of sustainable the health of village life, with its beauty of
Highlands, while the American ecQlogist and safe water supply. In a plea for increas- surroundings and its contact with nature",
Paul Sears hailed his impact on the geo- ing tree space and garden space, he com- but "upon a new spiral turning beyond the

Economic and M&teal Weekly January 4-11, 1992 59

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old one which, at the same time; frankly and folklore and art, Elwin wrote a series ofbecause it competed with timber operations
fully incorporates the best advantages of remarkable ethnographies of tribal com- for territorial control of the forest.43 In his
town-life".37 In the words of his closest munities at the margins of survival. One famous polemic against Elwin, the Hindu
disciple, to "the townplanner's art, Geddes focused on the religion of the savarras;sociologist G S Ghurye took him to task for
brought the rural virtues: not merely respect another on the dormitory system of thearguing that bewar was not harmful to the
for the land and for agricultural processes; murías; yet another on murder and suicideforest. Like most nationalist intellectuals,
but the patience of the peasant, and the among the marias; and a fourth on the per-Ghurye too was an Improver, and he
sense that orderly growth is more important sonality of the bondas of highland Orissa. therefore insisted that the 'final word' rested
than ordér at the expense of growth" (or, we Each of these studies is, deservedly, a minor not with the anthropologist but with the
classic. Somewhat neglected are two equally 'forestry expert', one of whom he quotes as
may add, growth at the expense of order).38
Perhaps tne hallmark of Geddes's powerful works which take tribal relationssaying that "of all practices initiated by man
with the forest as their central theme: the the most noxious is that of shifting cultiva-
approach to town planning was its conser-
first on a tribe of swidden agriculturists, the tion". In holding tribais to be profligate in
vatism, i e, "his esteem for every genuine
material or spiritual value in the local baigas, the second on the agaria, com- their use of nature, Ghurye significantly held
munities of charcoal iron markers. bewar, as an extensive form of agriculture,
heritage, his almost miserly reluctance to
part with the least scrap of it". He found The baiga study is structured around the to be violative of the rights of
much to admire and retain in the Indian economic and cultural significance of non-aboriginals.44
'bewar' (as shifting cultivation is locally In placing itself on the side of artisanal
heritage. After a visit to that 'wonderful city
of religion*, Benares, he wrote feelingly of known) in the life of the tribe.41 Their production, Elwin's study of the agaria also
the respect he found there for nature, sex, origin myth represents Bhagwan himself asran counter to the modernist thrust shared
establishing the baiga in the practice ofby the colonial state and the national move-
creatures, and life itself. In other letters to
his family, he marvelled at the traditional bewar, with the admonition: "You must notment. The book was composed at the height
architecture and planning of the south tear down the breasts of your Mother Earth of the second world war, and Elwin's
Indian temple towns, which, he felt,with the plough like the Gond or Hindu!'justification for its timing is worth quoting
exemplified the "spirit of hope, of impul-These sentiments were given short shrift byat some length. It must seem absurd» he
the British, who from the middle decades ofwrote:
sion, of growth, the temple of the elan vital,
the last century attempted systematically to even fantastic, to turn from the millions of
the spirit of evolution, of whom these Hindu
gods, whom fools call idols, are as yet destroy
in bewar. Colonial objections to bewar tons of death-dealing steel employed in
were rooted in part in an ideology of Im- modern battle to the few thousand tons
many ways (I do not say in all ways) the most
vital and vivid expressions yet reached byprovement (wherein settled agriculture smelted annually in thè little clay furnaces
man".39 would 'civilisé the tribais by curing them of of central India and used for the simplest
Geddes's organic and vitalistic philosophy their wayward habits), and equally by the human implements- -ploughshares, axe-
heads, sickles. Yet in the end the agaria may
drive towards commercial forestry, for which
of 'life insurgent' was to be more fully
developed, after his death, by Lewis bewar was an obvious impediment. Accor- have the advantage; their iron is magic iron,
dingly, bewar was banned in almost all vestal iron that is powerful to protect from
Mumford. Mumford's masterly histories of
technology and the city owe a considerable tehsils of the Central Provinces, being earthquake and lightning and every assault
ultimately confined only to a small patch of of ghostly enemies; for centuries, their simple
debt to Geddes. Mumford inherited from
Geddes a fundamentally ecological ap-forest (about 24,000 acres in all) in the ploughs and harrows have raised rich crops
in the wild uplands of the Maikal Hills. This
Ramgarh
proach and a repertoire of neo-logisms - tehsil of Mandla district, known
aboriginal iron has brought the law of plenty
hereafter as the baiga 'chak' (reserve).
neo-technic/paleotechnic, conurbation, to the jungle: that civilised iron is bringing
megalopolis, etc - that he put to innovativeElwin arrived in the baiga country several the law of the jungle to the lands of the plen-
decades after these attacks on bewar. Yet he
use.40 As we shall see presently, the thought ty. In the old days, says the agaria legend,
found that the aboriginals were still not fully
of the Scottish ecologist was also a formative 'iron was used as food, not for weapons!43
reconciled to the loss of their traditional
influence on the social ecology of a notable
Indian contemporary of {Aumford. But we mode of livelihood. "Every Baiga who has This brave gesture of defiance not-
yielded to the plough", he remarks, "knows withstanding, Elwin was in fact chronicling
must first encounter an English scholar as
himself to be standing on papi-dharti , the last days of charcoal iron-smelting. As
on
delightfully eccentric as Geddes himself.
sinful earth!' One tribal said: "When the in the case of the baiga, for the agaria too
The Forest bewar was stopped, and we first touched thecolonial forest laws (here coupled with
plough, a man died in every house." Theforeign competition) were inexorably under-
anthropologist was himself convinced thatmining their way of life. In the agaria
We come now to the forest, a socio-
ecological domain which, unlike the city, has
restrictions on bewar, coupled with the banheartland, British territory was interspers-
been in the forefront of the modern en- on hunting for subsistence, had economical- ed with many princely states, and Elwin
vironmental debate in India. As we have ly and psychologically crippled the baiga. Asmaps out the desperate migrations across
noted, Geddes was acutely aware of the im-he concluded: "A nomadic tribe, living on political frontiers of agaria smelters thwarted
portance of tree cover in urban spaces, whilethe fruits of the chase, the rich harvest of at every turn by high taxation and the forest
Kumarappa criticised the separation of shifting cultivation, and the natural gifts ofdepartment. The agaria revelled in their
agriculture and forestry under colonial [Link] forest, is slowly being changed by ad-craft, "generally delight[ing] in anything tKat
However, our focus in this section is not soministrative action into a low and degradedtakes them to the jungle". But forest laws had
much on the uses of forest produce but withcaste of Hindu cultivators". made these trips fraught with hazard. Even
the forest as a living abode, spatially and In passing, Elwin also takes on the ad-at night, the agaria were plagued with
culturally distinct from both the countrysideministration's claim that bewar destroyed thedreams about being intercepted, abused and
and the city. forest, a prejudice that quickly got crystal-beaten up in the jungle by forest officials.46
Our representative figure here, Verrierlised as scientific prthodoxy. Although it was The baiga and agaria were close neigh
Elwin, is somewhat better known today thanscholars like Harold Conklin and Clifford bours of the great gond tribe of central
either Kumarappa or Geddes, though notGeertz who more thoroughly demonstrated India, amongst whom Elwin made his home
always for the right reasons. A missionarythe ecological wisdom of swidden agri- from the early 1930s. Although they were
who left the church to join Gandhi, Elwinculture, Elwin must be credited with being plough agriculturists, the gond sense of self
spent a lifetime studying and workingthe first anthropologist to arrive at this con- was also deeply interwoven with the forest.
among the tribal people of central andclusion.42 He was clear that "axe cultivation His gond hosts told Elwin that the loss of
north-east India. Apart from collecting was the despair of every forest officer" only their forests signalled the coming of

60 Economic and Political Weekly January 4-11, 1992

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'Kalyug'. In this age of darkness, their rich aboriginal's frustration with state forestry: prejudices of the western sociologists".
medical tradition had been rendered ineffec- The reservation of forests, inevitable as it Indeed, even in the west that abstract ideal
tive, and even their gods had left the forest was coming under criticism. In particular,
was^ was. . . a very serious blow to the
for the cities. Asked his idea of heaven, one tribesman. He was forbidden to practice his western industrialism was flawed on three
of Elwin's closest gond friends defined it as traditional methods of cultivation. He was counts: (i) its elevation of production over
"miles and miles of forest without any forest ordered to remain in one village and not to distribution, so that massive increases in-
guards".47 wander from place to place. When he had wealth had not led to a decline in poverty;,
The significance of the forest in tribal life cattle he was kept in a state of continual (ii) its privileging of the economic motiva-
is a running theme in Elwin's work, from his anxiety for fear they should stray over the tion in man, leading to cultural and spiritual
earliest days in a gond village of the Mandla boundary and render him liable to what were impoverishment; (iii) its drive towards
district of the Central Provinces to his later, for him heavy fines. If he was a Foresthomogeneity, by the crushing of individuali-
policy oriented studies in north-eastern Villager he became liable at any moment to ty and the flattening out of all local customs
be called to work for the Forest Department. and idioms to one uniform standard. Like
India. Noting that a majority of tribal If he lived elsewhere he was forced to obtain
rebellions had centred around land and Kumarappa, he also noted the massive
a licence for almost every kind of forest pro-
forests, he argued forcefully for greater tribal dependence of western living standards on
duce: At every turn the Forest Laws cut across
involvement in forest management in in- access to raw materials from its colonies.56
his life, limiting, frustrating, destroying his
dependent India. Even if tribais no longer It was as yet early days for industrial
self confidence. During the year 1933-34
had any legal rights of ownership in the there were 27,000 forest offences registered development in India, and Mukerjee
forests, Elwin believed that they had con- in the Central Provinces and Berar and pro- hopefully charted out a radically different
siderable moral rights. And as tribais werebably ten times as many unwhipp'd of justice. path from the west. India industrialisation,
as much part of the national treasure as the
It is obvious that so great a number of he wrote, will
forests themselves, there should be an offences would not occur unless the forest tend to establish a solidarity between the
amicable adjustment between forest regulations ran counter to the fundamental villager and the city, the labourer and the
management and tribal rights and needs. needs of the tribesmen. A Forest Officer once employer, the specialist and the layman, the
Here Elwin suggested (in the event, unsuc- said to me: "Our laws are of such a kind that multitude and the genius, the brain worker
cessfully) that the tribal forest co-operatives, every villager breaks one forest law every day and the manual labourer. . . India will not
of his life".52 allow the city to exploit the village, she will
so successful in Maharashtra, should be
replicated in all other tribal forfest areas.48 retain the vitality of life and culture of the
Social Ecology village. She will not suck out the blood of
While an enthusiastic supporter of wild one part of society to feed another part . . . ,
life conservation,49 Elwin sharply criticised The three thinkers we have considered so
but she will feel the pulsations of life deep
game laws which curbed tribal hunting prac- far were all activists: in the field, city and and strong in her throbbing veins in every
tices while allowing shikar by outsiders. In forest respectively. The man we come to now, part of her social system.57
response to a proposal to allow shikar by Radhakamal Mukerjee, was a scholar rooted
Mukerjee's critique of social evolutionism
officials in the North East Frontier Agency more firmly in the university than Patrick
developed, over time, into a more focused
(NEFA), he recalled that in his years in Geddes, though as a 'public intellectual' he interest in the ecological infrastructure of
Central India tribais were bitterly hostile to too participated in debates on economic and social life. In a series of books and essays
outsiders, whether official or non-official, social reconstruction. Nonetheless, his
written over a 20-year period, he explored
coming to hunt the game they regarded as relative detachment from practical action the interconnections between human social
rightfully theirs. (One baiga had told Elwin: enabled a more synoptic and inclusive view
groups and the biophysical world they
"even if government passes a hundred of human interactions with nature, one he shared with other species. While he drew
[game] laws we will do it. One of us will keep came to call 'sc^al ecology'.53 fascinating parallels with plant and animal
the official talking; the rest will go and shoot In touch with Lewis Mumford- -with life, he emphasised that among the earth's
the deer".50 Now, he asked for a 'self deny-
whose writings his own had a marked creatures man was unique in at least three
ing ordinance' whereby shikar would be affinity- Mukerjee venerated and was great- respects: (i) As a tool maker, man was
banned for outsiders in NEFA. He suggested ly influenced by Geddes.54 In fact, the capable of a dynamic and interventionist
that officials indulge in shikar only when Scotsman wrote the foreword to Mukerjee's relationship with nature: here, as the "super-
invited by tribais to participate in their own first book. There, the master noted that dominant of life's existing communities",
ceremonial hunt. If this proposal was not India was experiencing the breakdown of its humans had an awesome potential for
acceptable to the administration, then Elwin village order at the hands of the industrial ecological devastation and/or regeneration;
asked for a stipulation that where an officer revolution, something which had already (ii) Man has a history and traditions in a way
did shoot a bird or animal, the meat would occurred in Europe. There were, in the west that plants and animals do not; (iii) The
be shared, in the first instance, with the local as in India, two familiar responses to this human response to nature is characteristical-
people. Elwin concluded, however, that process - the 'regretful', vide the Romantics ly collective rather than individual, and thus
"when we consider the urgent necessity of like Ruskin and Morris, and the 'trium- oriented to the study of communities in their
saving the animals of NEFA from the extinc- phalisť, exemplified by the politicians and natural environment ('synecology') rather
tion which now threatens them, combined economists. But Mukerjee, remarked Geddès than an individual oriented 'autoecology'.
with the possible political repercussions on approvingly, avoided both extremes by seek-
Mukerjee owed his interest in the bio-
the people of the taking away of their game ing to rebuild the old with the help of the physical world, in the first instance to
by an ever increasing number of officials, new, displaying in the process a "cheering Geddes, with whom he came in close con-
I feel it would be better to ban shooting by faith in the survival capacity of his old
tact in the latter's first visit to India. (They
non-tribals altogether".51 village as well as in the value of its used to meet at the homes of those two
As Elwin so vividly demonstrated, state villagers".55 Bengali intellectual giants, Rabindranath
forestry and game laws represented a violent In his early work, Mukerjee deplored the Ikgore and Jagadish Chandra Bose). He was
attack on the economic and cultural integrity tendency of European thinkers to "judge the also familiar with the work of French
of aboriginal life. Modern, instrumental progress of different peoples by an abstract historical geographers (and geographically
attitudes to the forest rested on a legal and and arbitrary standard deduced from the oriented historians like Lucien Febvre) and
administrative framework that violated, at evolution of western civilisation". The "idea
personally acquainted with ecologically
that western humanity represents the oriented social thinkers in the United States
every step, the aboriginal's own relationship
with nature. In his autobiography, Elwin culmination of the idea of humanity", heof America- e g, Howard Odum, Lewis
poignantly summed up the essence of the observed, "is based on the narrowness and Mumford, and the Chicago School of

Economic and Political Weekly January 4-11, 1992 61

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Human Ecology. More strikingly, Mukerjee brakes on nature's continous operations of reaching exploitative activities by importing
also kept close track of the proliferating recuperation and regeneration. Renewal and new values - the thought for tomorrow, the
literature in the emerging fields of plant and enrichment rather than exhaustion and sacrifice for inhabitants of the region yet
animal ecology. depletion of the region should be man'sunborn".69
The concept of the 'region* enabled synecological goal, if he wants to nourish
Mukerjee to synthesize a vast assemblage of his land water culture in which civilisation A Usable Past?
ecological and sociological materials in a is rooted on a continuing basis for his
penetrating and challenging intellectual species!'64 As an organised and articulate social
fiamewoťk. This regional approach to social These philosophic reflections were fleshed movement, environmentalism is very much
analysis, which Mumford was also out by Mukerjee and his associates through a product of the last two decades. Yet the
independently developing at the same detailed studies of the human ecology of the work of our four exemplars has a markedly
time,58 took off from Geddes's conceptualregion where they themselves lived, the Indo- contemporary ring; it speaks directly to the
Gangetic plains. He particularly deplored
trinity of Folk/Work/Place (itself an adap- concerns of the present. For economic plan-
tation from the work of the French man's continuing crimes against vegetation ning still largely disregards the biomass basis
sociologist, Frederick Le Play). Any humanthroughout northern India: "brand tillage of the agrarian economy; the process of
urbanisation in modern India has been
group, wrote Mukerjee, must be considered in the hills and hill slopes, encroachment of
in relation "not merely to temperature, arable land on forest and grove everywhere extraordinarily resource intensive, parasitical
humidity, sunshine, altitude, etc, but also
in the
to valley and close and persistent brows- and polluting; tribais continue to be denied
ing and grazing by herds of co-dominant
their indirect effects, the interwoven chain their rightful claims in the forest even as
of bî^'o communities to which it is in- animals".65 On a consultancy to the many are dispossessed altogether by dams,
mines and other instruments of 'destructive
extricably linked, the plants it cultivates, the
princely state of Gwalior, he stressed the im-
animals it breeds and even the insects which portance for a peasantry plagued by soil development'; and there has been no further
are indigenous to the region".59 The region,
refinement of a philosophy of 'social
erosion and poor yields, of erosion control,
he wrote elsewhere, "is at once an ecological afforestation, and controlled grazing.66 An
ecology' that would integrate scientific
aggregation of persons, an economic outcome of these varied studies is the chart ecology and the humanities. These con-
framework and a cultural order".60 In his where Mukerjee summarises an ecological tinuities testify to the prescience of our four
comprehensive treatise on Regional view of the bad life and the good life. thinkers, and more distressingly, to the
Sociology , Mukerjee studied the impress of neglect of their work by a later generation.
This is a veritable Green Charter for India, It is noteworthy that the writings we have
the natural region on work, economic in-
stitutions, property structures, culture, relevant in every detail fully 50 years after examined are overwhelmingly from the
it was first drafted, It beautifully illustrates interwar period. From the 1920s, Indian
character and diet. In this framework, dif-
Mukerjeťs dicta that man has no option but independence was widely regarded as immi-
ferences (and similarities) between different
to 'some extent imitate Nature's extra- nent (though in the event it took some time
societies could often be explained with
reference to ecological factors. Thus the ordinarily slow methods', and that applied coming). Here, the work of our four
human ecology is the "only guarantee of a exemplars can be understood as a contribu-
community oriented cultures of China and
permanent civilisation".67 But we still wait tion to a larger debate on social and
India, centred on the village, were interpreted
as an adaptive response to rice cultivation - for the change in values for which Mukerjee economic reconstruction in an independent
hoped, when "ecological adjustment [would] India. There was, at the time, considerable
wherein the activities of field preparation,
be raised from an instinctive to an ethical optimism that with its considerable material,
transplanting, irrigation, etc, all required a
plane".68 For it is only then that man would spiritual and intellectual resources India was
great deal of collective action. Indeed, in
work towards an "alliance with the entire uniquely placed to chart its own destiny,
almost all long settled peasant cultures, the
ecological imperatives of water and common
range of ecological 'forces', and curb his without necessarily emulating any other
land management worked with cultural fac-
"subtle and wholesale, quick and far- country. Thus Kumarappa could be hopeful
tors to foster community solidarity. In con- Chart
trast, wheat cultivation, particularly in the
cold northern hemisphere, was typically an Social Regression Social Evolution
activity of pioneers and hence, productive
of individualism. Again, unlike rice, the Deforestation Protection and plantation of forests
ecology of wheat cultivation made it Mountain denudation and field erosion Tree-cropping in the hillsides
amenable to a socio-technical organisation Single and continual cropping Scientific pasturage and permanent agriculture
that approximated the factory: thus, "the Silting up of rivers and loss of natural drainage
Conservation of rain, river and sub-soil water
great [wheat] fields in Canada may be said and flush irrigation supply
to be populated by machines rather than Surface tillage, defective soil aeration and Plant and animal breeding and introduction of
men".61 drainage new strains
Social ecology, then, was a "vast and Soil exhaustion Selection and use of micro-organisms in
virgin field orienting social phenomena on cropping
the basis of the give and take between mind Destruction of crops and herds by insects and
Ecologi&l control of plant and animal pests
and region".62 However, like the other three parasites
thinkers we have encountered in this essay, Destruction of too large a number of animals Preservation of animals and birds from
and birds for food and materials extinction
for Mukerjee too theoretical reflection was
Deficiency diseases of animals and humans,Conservation of the environment suitable for
merely a prelude to prescription and prac-
spread of bacterial and protozoal infection,
animal and human habitation
tical action. In all regions of the world, the
contamination of the region by wastes and
natural environment set certain limits to
sewage
human action, boundary conditions which Growth of jungle in human settlements and Economic
of balance between the forest, meadow-
man must learn to respect. Thus, "the weeds in streams land, field and factory
ecological process is constantly thwarted and Depopulation in the countryside and conges- Regional planning of villages, cities and
modified by the [human] cultural process, tion in the big cities and manufacturing .industries
but again and again reasserts itself'.63 And regions
"synecology demands that men should work
in harmony with the balanced relationships Source: Radhakamal Mukerjee, The Regional Balance of Man : An Ecological Theory of Popula-
in nature, so as to accelerate and not put tion (University of Madras, Madras, 1938), p 296.

62 Economic and Political Weekly January 4-11, 1992

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that a free India would restore the social and 4 The pioneering work has been that of 1990), was not available to me at the time
natural integrity of the village (something Madhav Gadgil. See, for example, his essay of writing.
colonial rule had gravely undermined); 'Social Restraints on Resource Utilisation: 21 See R P Mcintosh, The Background of
Geddes that Indian urbanisation would The Indian Experience^ in D Pitt and Ecology: Concept and Theory (Cambridge:
J A Mcneely, (eds), Culture and Conserva-
build upon longstanding architectural and Cambridge University Press, 1985),
town planning traditions while being in tion : The Human Dimension in Environ- pp 293-94.
Hailing Geddes as a father of bio-social
hamiony with the countryside; Elwin thatmental Planning (Dublin: TVcooly, 1985).
5 See for example, Stephen Fox, The
the forest world and the life world of the ideas, one of his more recent biographers
American Conservation Movement : John has claimed that 'almost all the whole foun-
tribais Would be once again united; and
Muir and His Legacy (Madison: University dation of our current regional, environmen-
Mukerjee that social theory and planning tal and ecological thinking is there in his
of Wisconsin Press, 1985).
would benefit alike from a fundamentally ideas...'. See Paddy Kitchen, A Most
6 See also Shiv Visvanathan, Organising for
biophysical and ecological approach. Science' The Making of an Industrial Unsettling Person: An Introduction to the
Geddes died in 1933, but the other three Ideas and Life of Patrick Geddes (London:
Research Laboratory (New Delhi: Oxford
lived for some time after independence. University Press, 1985), especially Chapters Victor Gollanz, 1975), pp 11, 24.
However, Mukerjee's own intellectual 11 to IV. 22 Marshall Stalley, 'Introduction', in Stalley
interests shifted considerably, towards the 7 For an overview, see Anil Agarwal and (ed), Patrick Geddes: Spokesman for Man
study of culture and values. Kumarappa con- Sunita Narain (eds), India: The State of the and Environment (New Brunswick: Rutgers
tinued his village work, but found himself Environment 1984-85: A Citizens' Report University Press, 1973)J
out of tune both with the formal planning (New Delhi: Centre for Science and En- 23 Cf Helen Meiler, 'Urbanisation and the
process and the direction the Gandhian vironment, 1985). Introduction of Modern Town Planning in
movement was taking after the Mahatma's 8 See for example, M К Gandhi, Industrialise India, 1910-1925' in К N Chaudhuri and
demise. Elwin did play a formative role in and Perish /, edited and compiled by С J Dewey (eds), Economy and Society:
state policy in tribal areas, particularly in the R К Prabhu (Ahmedabad: Navjivan, 1966). Essays in Indian Economic and Social
northeast, but his influence on forest policy 9 J С Kumarappa, Why the Village Move- History (New Delhi: Oxford University
ment! second edition (Rajahmundry: Press, 1979), especially pp 342-45.
specifically appears to have been negligible.
Meanwhile, they had also to contend with Hindusthan Publishing Corporation, 1938). 24 Patrick Geddes, Report on Town Planning,
Dacca (Calcutta: Bengal Secretariat Book
the overwhelming consensus in favour of 10 J С Kumarappa, The Gandhian Economy
and Other Essays (Ward ha: All India Depot, 1917), p 17, emphasis in original. He
resource-intensive industrialisation, a
Village Industries Association, 1948), p 10. says much the same thing on page 8 of The
strategy -which accepted as axiomatic the Proposed University , for Central India at
subordination of the village to the city, ofII Kumarappa, Why the Village Movement?, Indore, reprint of his Town Planning
the community to the nation, and of naturepp 27-28.
towards City Development: A Report to the
to man. 12 See, for example, J С Kumarappa, Direc-
tor, A Survey of Matar Taluka, Kaira
The first decades after independence were
District (Ahmedabad: Gujarat Vidyapith,
verily an age of ecological innocence, and
1931), pp 36-38, 46-47, 117.
it is hardly surprising that environmentally-
13 J С Kumarappa, The Economy of Per-
IMPORTANT BOOKS
oriented thinking - in the domains ofmanencethe , second edition (Wardha: All India
ON
city, countryside or forest - found little Village Industries Association, 1948), Part
resonance in intellectual or political life. II, p 55. WOMEN AND CHILD
From today's vantage point, however, 14 See, inter alia, A Survey of Matar Taluka, STUDIES
Kumarappa, Geddes, Elwin and Mukerjee p 127; Gandhian Economy , p 6; Economy
may justly be regarded as pioneers of human of Permanency °art II, p 34. 1 . Atlas of the Child in India
ecological thinking in India. Their work, of 15 See M Vinaik, The Gandhian Crusader A
Moonís Raza and Sudesh Nangia
which only glimpses have been offered in Biography of J С Kumarappa (Gandhigram: Rs. 300
this essay, do constitute an eminently Gandhigram Thist, 1987). 2. Child Nutrition and Poverty in South India.
usable past for the Indian environmental 16 See, in this connection, the book by his Noon Meals in Tamil Nadu
movement. brother Bharatan Kumarappa, Capitalism, Barbara Harriss Rs. 130
Socialism or Villagism? (reprint Varanasi: 3. Marriage and Matrimonial Remedies: A
Notes Sarva Seva Sangh, 1965). A long-time Uniform Civil Code for India
Gandhian like his brother, Bharatan M.A. Qureshi Rs. 110
[An earlier version of this essay was presented Kumarappa was the first editor of the Col- 4. Marriage Breakdown and Divorce Law
at an IDRC sponsored conference on 'Science, lected Works of Mahatma Gandhi. Reform in Contemporary Society: A
Technology and Medicine^ at the Centre for the 17 Karl Polány i, The Great Transformation Comparative Study of USA, UK and India
S. Jaffar Hussain Rs. 70
Study of 'Developing* Societies. I am grateful (1944: reprint Boston: Beacon Press, 1958).
to Ashis Kothari for his comments and to 5. Media Utilization for the Development of
18 Cf Martin Wiener, English Culture and the Women and Children
Shiv Visvanathan for his support and B.S. Thakur and Binod C. Agrawal Rs.
Decline of the Industrial Spirit (Cambridge:
encouragement.] 150
Cambridge University Press, 1981); Morton
1 See Michael Rand Hoare, 'When the Earth and Lucia White, Intellectuals versus the 6. Religion Social Change and Fertility
Behaviour
Moved', Times Higher Educational Supple- City (1962: reprint New York: Mentor
ment , February 1, 1991, p 15. Books. 1964). R. Jayasree Rs. 125
7. Socialisation of the Indian Child
2 For the prehistory of popular movements 19 See Donald L Miller, Lewis Mumford: A
in defence of forest rights, see Ramachandra L(fe (Sew York: Weidenfeld and Nicholson, Durgananda Sinha Rs.65
8. Women Dimension in Mass Media: Policy,
Guha, The Unquiet Woods : Ecological 1989).
Personnel and Programme
Change and Peasant Resistance in the 20 Geddes returned to India in 1922-23, serv- llaJoshl Rs. 140
Himalaya (New Delhi: Oxford University ing as Professor of Sociology and Civics at 9. Women in Agricultural: A
Press, 1989); Ramachandra Guha and Bombay University. For an assessment of Socio-Economics Analysis
Madhav Gadgil, 'State Forestry and Social his early work, see Hellen Meiler, 'Cities Shashi Kanta Varma (In Press)
, Conflict in British India', Past and Present , and Evolution: Patrick Geddes as an Inter-
number 123, May 1989. national Prophet of Tbwn Planning before PUBLISHERS:
3 For one such attempt, see O P Dwivedi, 1914' in Anthony Sutcliffe, (ed), The Rise CONCEPT PUBLISHING COMPANY
(ed), World Religions and the Environment of Modern Urban Planning (London:
A/15-16, Commercial Block, Mohan Garden
(New Delhi: Gitanjali Publishing House, Mansell, 1980). Meller's recent biography
1989). of Geddes (published by Basil Blackwell in

Economic and Political Weekly January 4-11, 1992 ' 63

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 Durbar of Indore (Indore: Holkar State Called'- and Their Future (Poona: Gokhale Barnabas et al (eds), Challenge of Societies
Printing Press. 1918). Institute of Politics and Economics, 1943), in Transition iNew Delhi: Macmillan,
25 Miller, Lewis Munrford, page 156. pp 156-210. 1978); Kuriakose Mãmkootam, Radhakamal ,
26 Fór an earlier assessment of Geddes's work 45 Verrier Elwin, The Agaria (Calcutta: Oxford Mukerjee's Contribution to 'Man and his
in India, see Shiv Visvanathan, 'Ancestors University Press, 1942), p xxl. Biosphere ', project report, Indian Council,
and Epigones', Seminar , February 1987. A 46 Ibid, pp 121-22, 267-68, etc. of Social Science Research, New Delhi,
publication that reviewed town and country 47 Verrier Elwin, Leaves from the Jungle ; Life 1980.

planning in India claimed that 'Geddes's in a Gond Village (second edition, London: 54 See Boardman, Patrick Geddes , pp 397-98.
work opened as it were a new era of plan- Oxford University Press, 1958 (First 55 Patrick Geddes, 'Introduction' in Radha-
ning in India. . . [which] was conceived in published in 1936), p 12; Shamrao Hivale kamal Mukerjee, The Foundation of Indian
terms of primary human needs: not of and Verrier Elwin, Songs of the Forest: The Economics (London: Longmans, Green and
business or engineering conventions'. This Folk Poetry of the Gonds (London: George Co, 1916), pp ix-xi, Mukerjee himself (ibid,
report goes on to say that Geddes attracted Allen and Unwin, 1935), pp 16-17. pp 3-4) referred to Indian village com-
a large number of professional followers in 48 Verrier Elwin, A Philosophy for NEFA munities as 'the most complete and con-
India, a claim that is difficult to sustain on (second edition, Shillong: Adviser to the tented in the world'.
the available evidence. See Anonymous, Governor of Assam, 1959), pp 62, 66-67, 56 Ibid. Book IV. ChaDters I and II.
Town and Country Planning in India etc; idem 'Advances in Freedom', an undated 57 Ibid. DD 448-49.
(New Delhi: Ministry of Health, 1962), essay probably written in the late 1950s in 58 See for example, Lewis Mumford, 'Regions
PP 9-11, 32. File No ATA/XII/5 (Serial No 4), Verrier and Irregionalism', The Sociological Review,
27 Geddes, Dacca Report , p 2. Elwin Papers, Nehru Memorial Museum Vol 19, No 4, 1927; idem , 'The Theory and
28 Patrick Geddes, Cities in Evolution (first and Library, New Delhi (hereafter cited as Practice of Regionalism' in two parts, The
- in 1915, revised edition, London: Elwin papers). Sociological Review , Vol 20, Nos 1 and 2,
Williams and Norgate, 1949), pp 51-52.49 For example, after a trip to the Kaziranga 1928.
29 Jacqueline lyrwhitt, (ed), Patrick GeddesRhino Reserve in Assam, he hoped for 59 Radhakamal Mukerjee, Regional Sociology
in India (London: Lund Humphries, 1947), stronger public opinion in support of such (New York: The Century Company, 1926),
pp 57-58. This compilation contains extracts sanctuaries, for "India, of all countries, pp 45-46.
from Geddes's reports on town planning for witji her tradition of ahimsa and her classic 60 Radhakamal Mukerjee, Social Ecology
Lucknow, Kapurthala, Indo re, Balrampur, love of animals, should lead the world in (London: Longmans, Green and Company,
and the consolidated report on several towns her preservation of the wildlife within her 1942), p viii.
in the Madras Presidency. borders". See the typescript entitled 'Rhino 61 Mukerjee, Regional Sociology , pp 167-68,
30 Ibid, pp 78-83. Reserve^ (undated) in File No ATA/Misc/1 etc.

31 Patrick Geddes, Reports on Replanning of (Serial No 107), Elwin Papers. 62 Mukerjee, Social Ecology , p xv.
Six Towns in Bombay Presidency (1915, 50 Elwin, Baigay p 84. 63 Ibid, p 112.
reprint Bombay: Government Central Press, 51 Elwin to Adviser to Governor of Assam, 64 Ibid, p 129.
1965), p 3. dated 12.12.1956 in Serial No 15, Elwin 65 Ibid, p 131.
32 Patrick Geddes in India , p 22. Papers. Recent decades have witnessed a 66 Radhakamal Mukerjee, Planning the Coun-
33 Stalley (ed), op cit, pp 394-95. wholesale slaughter, particularly by army tryside (second edition, Bombay: Hind
34 Ibid, p 95. officers, of wild animals in NEFA. Kitab, 1950).
35 Dacca Report, p 14. 52 Verrier Elwin-, The Tribal World of Verrier 67 Radhakamal Mukerjee, The Regional
36 Philip Boardman, Patrick Geddes : Maker Elwin: An Autobiography (Oxford: Oxford Balance of Man: An Ecological Theory of
of the Future (Chapel Hill: University of University Press, 1964), p 115. Population (Sir William Meyer Foundation
North Carolina Press, 1944), pp 346-47. 53 Earlier appreciations of Radhakamal Lectures, 1935-36: Madras: University of
37 Patrick Geddes in India , d 57. Mukerjee's ecological writings are Walter Madras. 1938). dd 306. 304.
38 Lewis Mumford, introduction' in ibid, p 11. Firey, 'Sociological Contributions to the68 Ibid, d 36.
Study of Natural Resources' in Manorama 69 Mukerjee, Social Ecology , pp 336-37.
39 Philip Mairet, Pioneer of Sociology: The
Life and Letters of Patrick Geddes
(London: Lund Humphries, 1957), pp 119,
158, 164-67.
40 I have in mind especially Mumford's SAMEEKSHA TRUST BOOKS
masterful ecological histories Technics and
Civilisation (1934) and The Culture of Cities Selections of Articles from Economic and Political Weekly
(1938), both published in New York by Genera! Editor: Ashok Mitrar
Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich. For il-
luminating recent treatments of the Geddes-
M urn ford connection, see the essays by
Poverty and Income Distribution
Rosalind Williams, John L Thomas, Allen Edited by
lUllos and Casey Blake in Thomas P
Hughes and Agatha С Hughes (eds), Lewis К S Krishnaswamy
Mumford : Public Intellectual (New York: While there has been, over the years, a perceptible increase in per capita income
Oxford University Press, 1990). and expenditure and possibly some decline in the incidence of poverty in India,
what still remains is massive and of a kind that is not remedied quickly or smoothly.
41 The following paragraphs are based on
Verrier Elwin, The Baiga (London: John Even with radical policies, the shifts in income and occupational structures to
make a serious dent on it will take more than the rest of this century. In the welter
Murray, 1939), especially pages 76-130.
of recent exchanges between the government and the opposition as well as bet-
42 See Harold Conklin, 'An Ethno-Ecological ween planners and market advocates on the strategy of growth, these issues, have
Approach to Shifting Cultivation' (1954), been largely obfuscated, it is therefore more than ever necessary today to recognise
reprinted in Andrew Vayda (ed), Environ- the magnitude of the problem and the inadequacy of thé measures adopted so
ment and Cultural Behaviour (Garden City, far to deal with it.
N Y: Anchor Books, 1969), Clifford Geetez,
pp viii + 420 Rs 240
Agricultural Involution (Berkeley: Univer-
Available from
sity of California Press, 1963).
43 Verrier Elwin, The Aboriginals (Bombay:. OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS"
Oxford University Press, 1943), d 8. Bombay Delhi Calcutta Madras
44 G S Ghurye, The Aboriginals- So-

64 Economic and Political Weekly January 4-11, 1992

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