From India's largest newsroom, I'm Arun George, and this is the Times of India podcast. Environmentalism is often believed to have its roots in the last 50 years or so and is often portrayed as originating in the Western nations. In India, the first prominent environmental movement was the Chipco movement in the 1970s. The movement against deforestation was the subject of Professor Ram Guha's first book, published in 1989, titled The Unquiet Woods.
He then went on to write multiple books on history, cricket and environmentalism, many of which have been bestsellers, including India After Gandhi and Gandhi Before India. Professor Guha's latest book argues that environmentalism took root in colonial India well before environmentalism became a subject of debate in the West.
His book, titled Speaking with Nature, is the story of nine personalities who are arguing against environmental destruction well before India became independent in 1947. In the book are stories of personalities like Rabindranath Tagore, Patrick Geddis, JC Kumarappa, Varrier Elvin and M Krishnan, among others. Not all of them were Indian, and each of their stories is unique in terms of the larger message
they attempted to spread. The book deals with how these personalities attempted to show the world the effects of industrialization and humankind well before terms like climate change and pollution became everyday topics of discussion. In today's episode, when conversation with Ram Guha about the book and environmentalism, we talk about why lessons from nearly 100 years ago still have relevance and why most of these personalities are inspiring and also noble failures.
We also discussed the lessons that are to be taken from these lives at a time when the environmental problems we encounter are far bigger than anything they ever did. We're in a time where, at least as a policy sort of thing, we claim to have these lessons dating back to our ancient myths and ancient books in terms of how we should preserve our ecology. And we even now want to export it to the world. But in your book, you say that that's not as far back as we want to go.
We shouldn't be going back to our ancient texts and myths. Could you talk about why you would argue that? Let's assume for a minute that our ancient myths, particularly Hindu myths, because that's what our government is most interested in and our epics preach a concern for nature. Then why is the Ganganya Banaras so polluted? Why is the Himalaya, our most sacred mountain chain, so
ravaged? So the idea that ancient religious scriptures from 2000 years ago can guide behaviour today, this is true not just of Hinduism, but of Islam or Christianity. I mean, you know, you can't tackle the problems of 21st century America with the with by taking recourse to the Bible later on, the problems of the 21st century Middle East by blindly following the Quran, right? So I think that's there's a
conceptual problem there. But more substantively, the argument to my book is that while an aesthetic love for nature goes back to the dawn of humanity, while some local village communities present and tribal cultures, you know, manage their water and their forests and their pasture lands with care, environmentalism is a modern phenomenon.
It's a post industrial revolution phenomenon because it's only with the Industrial Revolution and the technologies and forms of consumption it unleashed that human beings first realized that the scale of environmental degradation that unchecked industrialization could cause would imperil the prospects of our life on earth, the survival on Earth.
So if environmentalism is a philosophy trying to find ways in which human beings can live sustainably and only alongside the earth for the long term, it only becomes possible with the industrial revolution because before then you didn't have this extraordinary scale of devastation.
So the awareness that this was the global crisis, an existential crisis, only comes with large scale industrialization, urbanization, the use of fossil fuels, the use of new forms of transportation, Modern Warfare, which is much more destructive of the environment and of human lives than older forms of warfare. So that's really the largest sociological argument I make to suggest that environmentalism per SE is only possible after the industrial.
Even the Chipco movement you you argue, is the sort of starting point where we see that environmental damage is being caused by these large projects that we are taking up. Could you talk about why these personalities ideas appeal to you? And you know, why did you go back to it so many years after actually starting on it?
As a organized social movement with people acting collectively, either starting organisations and groups of many individuals or using a ship coded nonviolent forms of protest dharnas in which hundreds of thousands of people come out as a movement as an organised collective activity. Environmentalism is a phenomenon of the 1970s, not just in India
but in Europe and America too. But before environmentalism as a popular social movement began, you had individual thinkers from the 19th century who were in a sense anticipating what was to become a social and collective concern.
Who through their own personal experience, through their writings, through their scholarship, through their travels, were warning Indians that if you go down the path of blindly and imitating Western models of industrialisation, which are any intensive, capital intensive, resource intensive, you will face all these problems.
So as a movement, as a collective activity, as a collective social activity, environmentalism is born with in India, is born with Chipco in the 1970s, that you have other movements afterwards. But as a way of thinking, as a way of anticipating the damage that these new technologies cause, as a philosophy, I argue that there is a prehistory of environmentalism not as a movement, but of ideas and
thought and reflection. Its also that all these people are writing more in terms of ideas and in letters. There's no science to it like we do these days. Does that also make those arguments harder to accept in some ways? That they seem very in the air and not very direct in some ways. I mean, you're right, and most of them are acting as
individuals. Some of them are doing collective work somewhere like JC Kumarapa is trying to organize villages to use their resources more sustainably to, you know, recycle their manure to be more to practice from the water conservation and, you know, to be more prudent in the use of forest resources and grazing resources. But by and large, they are operating as individuals. They are also, more importantly, going against the grain of the
times. So there you could think of them as intellectual dissidents because they tried a different lesson from our colonization by the British. So the lesson drawn by most intellectuals and almost even political thinkers, say by Jawaharlal Nehru or by Subhash Chandra Bose, so by scientists like CV Ramen or the great engineer M Vishesh Arya, the lesson they draw is that the British colonized us because they were more powerful, they
were more industrialized. And once they go, we have to meet them, not just equal, but excel them at their own term. We have to be larger factories, more gigantic cities, more use, more fossil fuel energy to power our economic growth. So these people are intellectual dissidents because they're going against the grain, they say, no, actually we have to be. We have to follow a slightly different path of development. Yes, poverty is a problem. Yes, unemployment is a problem.
Yes, we have to meet the basic needs of people for food, housing, education, help, but because unlike the British and unlike the Americans, we don't have colonies to conquer. I mean American industrialization and economic growth was made possible because they went and conquered this vast and scarcely populated continent and extinguished and exterminated the indigenous population and built their
economy. British and and French industrialization was possible because they had colonies in Asia and Africa which provided them resources and and money. Now India had none of that. These people are arguing against the grain, and I think that's what makes make their ideas less
influential in their own time. But today, when we are confronted by these multiple forms of environmental crises, maybe their ideas need a fresh herring and a closer and careful and critical look, which is what I have tried to do in my book. I want to start with the Rabindranath Tagore chapter, which is also the 1st chapter of the book. You know you talk about him and you given him one more title like he didn't have enough already.
You add to him the title of being the Indian heading the first environmental movement in India. Given you know, he didn't really like you said have a environmental movement in the sense where he went to the villages and told people to do things. But then why would you argue that he is this? Actually, I don't say he started an environmental movement. I say he was the first important environmentalist.
So the distinction I made in my answer to your first question between environmentalism as thought and environmentalism as action, you know, which only really starts with the typical movement. Tagore is really an environmental thinker, though of course he integrates it in his educational philosophy. So today, you know, every school and college is taught the importance of environmental
education. But in Shantiniketan, and also in the school, the Tagore and the high school part of Bhavan that people like Amarthasan studied, you know, interactions in nature very much part of it. First of all, you know, if a person like Tagore is neglected because it's in this field, because people haven't very clearly seen him as an early or precocious environmentalist, it's because there were so many
other things to celebrate. I mean, there was his poetry, there were his plays, there were his novels, there was art, there was a building of Shantiniketan, there were his travels, there was his influence on Nehru and Subash Bose and Mahatma Gandhi and his rewriting, his reshaping of the Bengali language. So this elevated his work. People missed. And if at all they saw Tagore as an environmentalist, they saw
him only as a nature lover. Who are His poems talks about the beauty of forests, the beauty of mountains. But what I've argued, and I think I've shown, I hope reasonably convincingly, that there are many different dimensions to Tagore's environmentalism. First is the pure aesthetic dimension. He glories in the beauty and diversity of nature in his poetry. Then there is the educational dimension, because he integrates it in how he conceives of school
and college education. Then there is the political dimension, because he is the first person or one of the first people to recognize that colonialism, Western colonialism, was a system not just of economic exploitation and political domination, but of ecological devastation. I mean, there are quotes in my books that, you know, the West
is cannibalistic. Europe, Europe is cannibalistic, it feels on the people and resources of the rest of the world psychically shows that imperialism has an ecological dimension. You know, it ravages the ecologies and landscapes, not just of of other countries, not just dominates and subjugates their people. And finally, it is a prophetic dimension. You know, he talks about how the whole earth will be goused up and they will only be craters and no water.
I mean, in 1922, a hundred years ago, maybe you should not be saying this, but it could be that someone like me was able to document Tagos, environmentalism in all these different dimensions because I'm not myself a Bengali, you know, I come from a slightly adjacent perspective. So maybe I saw things that others had not seen so clear. You also write about JC Kumar Appam, who is, at least for me, the most interesting character in this book in terms of his
whole story. What explains this sort of staunch holding on to his beliefs? You know, and at every turn that he's offered an opportunity to do something. There is a man who says, no, I will not do this, and instead I will stick to my beliefs. And why wouldn't he sort of choose instead to be with the government and infect the change from within?
Well, he, it could be better of personality, was a difficult man and angular man, but he was, I mean, he again, I think his, his work is really important because he's taken up much later. I mean, people today see him as someone who integrated ecology with economics. I talk about how EF Schumacher, for example, was influenced by him. By the way, I, you know, its, its nice to see that you thought him the most interesting because other readers have found others.
Someone I talked to recently thought that the the couple who did agricultural science, Howard Albert and Gabriel Howard was the most interesting. A wildlife scholar I who interviewed me found M Krishnan the most interesting. And urban planner might find Patrick Eddies. I think delighted when different readers find, you know, because I think each of them is interesting and timely and relevant in their own way. But Kumar, the answer to your question was Kumar Appa was a difficult man.
You know, some people are not team players. Some people are not compromising. You know, it may. The question you posed is quite interesting. Would he, if he had worked within the government, if he had not abandoned of the Planning Commission committee he was asked to join, would he have moderated economic development in a way that would have been more sensitive to village concerns and environmental
concerns? Yeah. But you know, I think it was it he was a stubbornly independent minded man and I think that was both his strength and his weakness because it made it gave his work a certain integrity and wholeness. If you had been compromising or cut corners wouldn't happen. The other hand, possibly what you suggest may have been the case that in terms of concrete policy implementation and he couldn't have any kind of
tangible influence. We're back in conversation with author and historian Ramachandra Guha about his latest book titled Speaking with Nature, which is about 9 personalities who attempted to raise awareness about environmental degradation well before it was a topic of debate in homes. In this segment, we're in conversation about cities, forest rights for tribals, and whether it is the curse of an environmentalist to always be portrayed as an enemy of
progress. With a Patrick Geddes, we get an insight into the sort of town planning that is almost against the grain of what we consider town planning. Now. You add more greenery, you kind of make touch ups to things rather than making these massive changes. But then for you, why does someone like a Geddes fail? And is it that we always wanted our cities to be these big grand places which now we are again
suffering for? Actually, I must say that I have often been attracted by failure, by heroic and noble failure in a lot of my work. I've written about people who are extraordinary individuals who didn't really reach the pinnacle, the Dalit cricketer Palwankar Balu, who was never appointed captain of the Hindu team, you know, very rarely it
was done support margin. So maybe there's something heroic and noble failure, you know, attracts me because this again, I assist the integrity of their work and their vision, which appeals to me. Now again, Geddies, the colonial urban town planners, didn't find him easy to work with Noddy, the Princess, but he left. Again, like Kumarapa, he left
behind his legacy. And in some ways he's the odd man out in that in my book, because all the other nine are dealing with rural landscapes, dealing with farms, with forests, with water, with agriculture, with the wilderness. And Geddes, he's saying, look, hey, India is also an urban civilization. He's telling the Gandhians, he's telling indirectly telling people like Kumarapa that and Gandhi himself, that you don't like city life, but other people do.
And you know, the whole logic of urbanization will shift a larger number of Indians to the city. And that the question is not I want to dispense to city life, but how do I make it more inclusive, more habitable, more environmentally friendly, where there's democratic accountability, which the, you know, the mayors and the politicians have, the citizens have some say. And how do we build cities that
reduce that? What the term that is now used ecological footprint on the countryside that try and use their own resources for their water, for their energy, for their housing, for their consultation. Indian cities and cities everywhere have this ecological footprint where it's the countryside that provides them all the resources for their growth. And of course, they create jobs, they create money. So all that's also true. But are they sustainable?
I mean, I'm speaking to you from Bangalore, right? Later this week, I'll be in conversation at the Bangalore International Center with a very fine ecologist, Harini Nagendra, who's written a very good book on Bangalore. You know, on how we destroyed our lakes and our parks and our water sources. Now, Bangalore is in many ways the most economically dynamic city in India. It's a city that is replaced Bombay as a city of dreams or young people. You young people, all of India.
But how sustainable is this? Our lakes are gone. We used to get our water from a reservoir close by. Then we went to the Kaveri. Then we have Kaveri, second stage, fourth stage, fifth stage with water pumped up 1000 feet to the plateau where Bangalore is, you know using cross whole amount of energy. Now we are saying Bangalore needs to go to the Saravati which is in the Western guards
now. I mean, the idea of ecological town planning to reduce the dependence of the city on the resources of the countryside, town planning that is more egalitarian, more democratic, more participative town planning that finds a way of conserving great ancient buildings too. You know, I mean, Bangalore had some beautiful buildings that
are all gone, right? I mean, I think some other place, cities like maybe Mumbai and Delhi have done a slightly better job of conserving their architectural and aesthetic heritage. So I think guide is as an ecological town planner, as a democratic town planner. I think again, he speaks to us today. I'll again say one thing, that my book is a work of historical scholarship. Its not a work of policy and advocacy. I mean, that's there.
That's obviously there indirectly, indirectly, and readers will draw their own lessons about the present from what I say about the past. They will draw their own conclusions about what ideas among all these 10 individuals, which of their ideas may have some resonance or relevance with our situation today. But I think Gary's is one of the most interesting figures in the book. I mean, he's a very interesting man.
I mean, if you look at his story, I mean, for a biographer, he was a celebrated urban town planner in Europe. He was invited to show his exhibition on town planning in Europe. Here the exhibition is sunk by a German destroyer and he had nothing to show. So he says, I'll study Indian, Indian cities and talk about them, talk about their past, their present and their future. So I think each of these individuals has a very interesting and to be a poignant individual trajectory.
You know, the ideas are of course, the main emphasis of the book. I mean, the main emphasis of the book is not in the lives and not the biography, but on their ideas. But I think they're already very unusual people. You also write about Vernier Elvin, who is actively working towards letting tribals. Stay the way they would like to stay, rather than the central government telling them how to live, imposing lots of rules on
them. You also write about how that sort of imposition of rules and a sort of lack of freedom for tribals is what resulted in something like the Maoist movement. We are now at a stage where we are talking of ending the Maoist movement. What then does that mean for Indias future forest planning and even the present forest planning in that sense? That's a very good question. I should say straight away that I've never been a fan of the Maoists.
And I think they were a savage and nihilistic group of radicals who actually worsened the tribal predicament because they, the tribals, became caught in a crossfire between the Indian states, paramilitary and the Maoists.
But you know, how do you envisage the future for the Adivasis who live close to or within the forest now in right, in the end of the book in the Epidogue, I talk about what is happening in the Gachiroli district of Maharashtra, which was a Maoist infested area, but which is also an area in which the Forest Rights Act was properly and honestly implemented and where community forest rights were given to dozens of villages once they got back control the forest.
I mean, instead to extraordinary resurgence of the ecology, particularly species like bamboo and those associated with bamboo, which is led to a thriving artisanal economy, which is replenished the springs, that is enhanced biodiversity. So it is renewed the ecology and also provided opportunities for economic livelihood so that tribals who are migrating cities have come back.
And now this is only a Model 1 can follow that you use tribal culture, which is based on a deep understanding of nature, which is egalitarian, which is participative to generate economic growth in livelihoods. Now there was talk recently, I don't know what will happen to it, about taking a steel mill to Gadchiroli. Now what is that going to do,
you know? So you know, a wild steel mill with a kind of massive fortification, you know, a few 100 people employed, most of the engineers will come from outside. And we know tribals are going to get skilled work, community forest rights in Adivasi areas that you can think of new models of economic development that enhance the livelihood security of the Adivasi communities that provide them dignified employment and at the same time don't ravish the environment. So its not free.
You know, sometimes there's a there's a caricature. You want to keep the tribals in a zoo, you want to keep them as a museum piece. So people who argue in that way, I would ask them to go to Gachiroli and look at what is happening there. And what is happening in Gachiroli can also should be emulated in, you know, Chhattisgarh and in Orissa and in, you know, other places where you can actually revive, I mean use and often using science.
So the Gadchiroli experiment, I used modern ecologist. So it's not as if it's only tribal knowledge. You know, modern ecologist like Madhav Gadgil and his colleagues have gone there and said these are the species you can grow, these are the methods you can follow and and so on and so forth. So I think there is a, you know, this caricature that environmentalists are against development, that tribal rights activists want to keep tribals in a kind of museum. This is utterly fallacious.
One thing that kind of runs through the book is also this sort of opposition to the centralization of management of natural resources. Was it just colonialism and like you said, the British and French colonialism we having spread? Was it that which made all these personalities so clear eyed about the centralization of resources?
Yeah, because the British, you know, took over 20% of Indias land area and said this is state forest and this is owned by the government and local communities have very marginal rights. And we will police the forest from the local community with guns and the Indian Forest Service because it is called heritage where khaki like policeman. So centralization is anti democratic and it also goes against the grain of sustainable management.
You know, I mean, I think so, you know, so for example, in many parts of India you had local communities managing the water resources but the state irrigation department took it over. So there was number responsibility, no incentive for the local community. Likewise with other forms of planning. I have talked about town planning and how one needs a much more participatory, you know, involvement of citizens in how to use a city's financial and other resources.
So yes, absolutely. I think a responsible environmental management requires political decentralization now. It requires a reactivation of the 73rd and 74th amendment. Right now the 73rd and 74th amendments which allow for panchayats and municipalities to have the elected bodies, you know they have those bodies have no teeth, they have no policy making powers. They have no money generating powers, they have no finances.
All they have is you have an election and but is the MLA and the minister in the state secretariat or in in Delhi who decides everything? Other people who understand these things better than I may use some of the arguments of these thinkers to make a more substantive case of political decentralization as being good not just for democracy but for
environmental sustainability. But I think all these thinkers saw that the damage that sent the colonial system of resource management, which was based on excessive centralization, which was based on according enormous powers to the state bureaucracy, which was based on arrogance that ordinary people don't know, that peasants and tribals know nothing about how to manage forests or water or anything else.
I think that is in a in a democracy like ours, to still have this coronary system of resource management, I think is is a huge problem. But, you know, in the current age, with the problems that we're facing, especially with climate change and things, a lot of that sort of pressure is now again, back on that sort of centralization because we feel that, you know, without a sort of large effort that's concerted from the top, you can't manage something as big as climate
change. So how do you view that argument? It's true that you need some amount of centralization, you need some amount of macro thinking, but it is more a balance. And I think, again, this is something I only allude to towards the end of the book, because the bulk of the problem that India faces are not connected to climate change. I mean, air pollution in Delhi is not connected to climate change. The depletion of groundwater aquifers is not connected to climate change.
The chemical contamination of the soil is not connected to climate change. The invasion of our forests by exotic weeds like Lantana is not connected to climate change. So I think in some ways the obsession with climate change now climate change is real, it is visible, it is affecting the whole world. I mean, look at the floods in the cyclones in Florida very recently. Of course, what happened in Kerala a few months ago is real, it is visible, it is it can be extremely damaging.
But the environmental crisis that India faces today, much of it has nothing to or little to do with climate change. And unfortunately our whole way of thinking, regardless of which political parties in power. I mean, I would, this is something I don't take up in my book, but I would take it up in a, in a conversation like this, I would hold economists accountable because economists have become a priesthood. And this is regardless of left wing or right wing.
You know, India has produced great left wing economies and great right wing economies or celebrated left wing economists who have got the Nobel Prize. Right wing economists have got many great awards. What is common to them? Ecological illiteracy. They believe that either the state or the market can solve everything and there is no environmental problems are ephemeral. That is actually they affect the bulk of the Indian society.
You know, environmental degradation has enormous negative impacts in the livelihood and health of ordinary Indians. So I think economics has become a kind of priesthood, esoteric priesthood priesthood. And they are the people who, you know, advise governments. You know, it is not urban planners or community ecologists or, you know, people working on democratic decentralization advise government. So I mean, this is this is in my book. It is a work of scholarship.
I kept out this polemic. But my personal belief is that economists, regardless of whether they are left wing or right wing, free market or welfarist, Indian economists, are a esoteric peace stood that has blinded us to the the the massive scale of the environmental crisis that India faces. Another theme that again runs through the book is this sort of opposition to a sort of top down model of governance and also an acceptance of slow growth rather
than, you know, 15% GDP growth. Does such views also make, say, even these personalities and even the modern day environmentalists much less acceptable to the general public? That may be so, but that will be to our cost. I would say, notwithstanding what I've said about the economic profession, that the younger Indian economists are much more alert to this.
You know, there's a network of environmental economists, mostly composed of people in their 30s and 40s who do much more field work, who are aware of the condition of the soil, the water, the air, and what economic costs it exacts and why they need to, you know, be much more ecologically responsible. But yes, it is at the moment. It's kind of going against the
grain. But as the problems deepen 10/15/20 years from now, I mean, I talked about who knows if Bangalore will be habitable, you know, in the next 15 or 20 years, who knows? I mean, look at the Punjab, once a grain, the bread basket of India. Look at, you know, the condition of the soils in the groundwater aquifers. So these are real issues that are coming up and this is where it may be.
You know, some of the thinkers in my book, they can't tell you exactly what to do because they were working a long time ago. But they can provide you clues, they can provide you a framework, they can provide you a, you could say, a moral and ecological philosophy which will help us get a clearer understanding of where India is today. Is it the curse of an environmentalist to always be seen as the enemy of the people? As in you will always be branded
one not. Enemy the people, because I would argue that environmentalists are the real people are speaking on behalf of the majority of the people. They see this enemies of a very conventional, narrow minded, outdated version of what is progress and development. 10% growth is not long term progress. I mean, of course you need growth, you need innovation, you need entrepreneurship, you need the product, you know, greater
efficiency. But I think they are really they're posing very large fundamental questions about what kind of growth we need, how to make it environmentally sustainable, how to make it more participative. Early in the book, I quote Anil Agarwal, who is one of our pioneering environmentalists, who said environmentalism in India is not about pretty trees and tigers. It's about the livelihoods of the majority of Indians, of slum dwellers or workers or artisans or peasants or tribals or
pestilists. It's about, I think that's what many other thinkers in this book really also argue. It's a livelihood concern more than much more than it's a merely aesthetic concern. Today's episode was produced by. Jayaraj Singh and Sahil. Gupta for a daily. Spotlight on people, ideas, and stories that matter. Subscribe to us. We're available on the Times of India website, Spotify, Apple, Amazon, or wherever else you get your podcast. For any new.
Steps of feedback Mail me at arun.george@timesgroup.com.