The sign of a true scholarly work is to make you rethink conventional issues in a new light. Eleven essays in Shifting Ground — dealing with issues from the near extinction of the one-horned rhino, the significance of lions and cheetahs in the landscape of the Mughals, the environmental status of wild boars in princely India, the tiger crisis in Rajasthan’s Sariska, the political and historical anxieties before and after the Raj, and ranging across areas as wide as Assam, Punjab and the Narmada valley — debating seriously on the critical corridors of human and nature interface, finally leave the reader reflecting on primal points of biodiversity loss and degradation, of difference and integration. That the documenting of the environmental history of India despite the enormous amount of admirable work currently available in this direction is not yet over is highlighted by the book under review. There is much to rethink and reassess. As borders and frontiers sink and digress, views and visions get redefined.
Committed field work and equally intense critical thinking and scholarship have gone into the production of these diverse essays. Their common point apparently is that collective insights gathered from archaeology and anthropology, geography, history, and culture studies, needs to be incorporated into ecological and environmental debates while vital policy decisions are arrived at and implemented. Their underlying anxiety is that thus far the operation of poor science and official machinery has but perpetrated and perpetuated only existing social hierarchies in this direction. Perhaps in the final analysis people end up protecting only some parts of themselves all along and not wildlife or environment, all on account of flawed perceptions of the binary of wilderness and domesticated spaces. In their introduction the editors point out: “… how people thought about the wild and wilderness remains important for these conceptual and representational categories also provided the means for interpretation by which uses were expanded or limited, of different kinds of non-human life.” And further, to recognise the fluidity of boundaries between ecological zones and perceived land cover and land reform was to acknowledge new perspectives in ecological science, notably those of disturbance, resilience and adaptation.
Each essay constitutes a separate thesis in itself: I would only highlight a few in order to reveal their overall strategy, methodology and range. The essay “How to be a Hindu in the Himalayas” revolves round the issue of animal sacrifice in the Uttarakhand, while it ends up highlighting the paradoxes and contradictions involved in those professed Hindu systems of belief. While animal rights activists strive to stop animal sacrifice as running counter to Hindu systems of tolerance and compassion, the paharis look upon sacrifice as a matter of pride that distinguishes their beliefs from that of the desis or the plainsfolk. The Chipko movement that emerged in the hill ranges of the Garhwals and its discourses have incarcerated the villagers as peace loving ecologists. This image definitely is not in keeping with those who support and hail bali or sacrifice of animals and who partake of their meat as prasad . Pahari regionalist and Hindu nationalist organisations have also entered the fray in support of people’s right to sacrifice animals in temples. In Nainital, the Gwal sena — a regional group named after the legendary deity of justice Goril Devta — declared that they would not tolerate any attack on ancient Kumauni religious and cultural beliefs and would respond to any attempt to implement the court’s order with violence. The Bajrang Dal has also come out in fervent support of the Hindu right to sacrifice. Now both sides have kept clear of the liberal western concept of animal rights. However, any insistence on homogenised Hindu beliefs tends to obliterate regional distinctions, local beliefs and practices. A further contentious dimension is revealed when the issue brings in the role of sacrifice in Islam. What is striking is the ease with which different groups involved in the conflict are able to articulate a variety of different and often mutually conflicting positions that trouble the unity and coherence of categories like Hindu and non-Hindu, hill and plain, animal lover and animal killer. And the point is how does one define worship? But we do need to gather the big picture when it affects the human-nature space.
When a holistic approach is taken perceptions need to be inclusive rather than exclusive. An examination of how science is used or abused in the service of conservation is central to the debate on the Sariska tiger reserve, where in 2005 the Bengal tiger became extinct all of a sudden. Tigers were relocated and the management pressed on with the idea of the reserve. However in analysing the tiger’s disappearance the historical legacy of commercial forest use, external biotic pressures, tourism, mining etc had been completely ignored only at the peril of the big cat. While the essay on wild boar traces the pleasures of hunting the boar as depicted in paintings and miniatures, the author draws on fresh material to depict the life of the north western princely rulers and their culture. Ultimately there is no single, primordial, or true condition for any given species or environment.
Throughout the text the image of the shifting ground holds good. What was privileged earlier — like the distinctions between geographic spaces (forest, river, farm) or peoples (herders, farmers, townspeople) or eras and epochs (prehistoric, historic, ancient, medieval modern, or even colonial and postcolonial) cannot continue to be relevant anymore. Not that they are invalid concepts but while engaging with India’s environmental history each reveal their inherent limitations. Here the socio-economic cultural fabric is more of a fluid patchwork quilt rather than a grid with sharp distinctions.
Wherever one goes in India one is bound to encounter a living landscape of mountains, rivers, forests and villages all linked to tales and folk memories of gods and spirits. This interrelated web of culture, geography and mythology has definite consequences for environmental politics, the lot of the land, of humans and animals alike. Just as too narrow a focus on the Raj and an independent India seen in isolation from the rest of Asia can only obscure the longer term material histories of a subcontinent that has seen human occupancy and activity for millennia, any approach that does not call for the larger issues of human-nature interaction cannot expect any definitive evaluation either. Shifting Ground is an interesting repository of footprints, hoof prints and after.
