Scientific Forestry and the New
Ecological Regime in Colonial India
Dr. Tahiti Sarkar,
Assistant Professor,
Department of History,
University of North Bengal,
West Bengal, India.
Abstract: Most of
the seminal writings on the Environmental History of Colonial and contemporary
India have unfurled the mega and micro narratives of forestry in terms of
social conflict or ecological enquiry.
Forests have been represented as a contested landscape which exists
either in harmony or in conflict with the human world. Forest as a
socio-ecological domain has been brought to the forefront by the Indian
Environmental historians altogether from a different dimension. They have
informed how forest is spatially, materially and culturally distinct as source
of food, fuel and material shelter. Such seminal discourses provide forest a
place of prominence in the contemporary environmental debate.
The present work
examines the colonial notion of ‘conservation’ that shaped the forest
management in British India during the 1850s. The idea of conservation was
implemented through ‘scientific forestry’, a colonial narrative intricately
linked to imperialist narratives emphasising progress and western superiority.
It emphasised the preservation and a competent western management of the
colony’s forests; however, it effectively converted the forests into valuable
commodities, resulting in their systematic depletion.
Keywords: Scientific
Forestry, Colonial Forest Management, Continental Tradition, Environment,
German School of Forestry
Introduction: Most of the seminal writings on the Environmental
History of Colonial and contemporary India have unfurled the mega and micro
narratives of forestry in terms of social conflict or ecological enquiry. Forests have been represented as a contested
landscape which exists either in harmony or in conflict with the human world.
Forest as a socio-ecological domain has been brought to the forefront by the
Indian Environmental historians altogether from a different dimension. They
have informed how forest is spatially, materially and culturally distinct as
source of food, fuel and material shelter. Such seminal discourses provide
forest a place of prominence in the contemporary environmental debate.
Forests play an essential role in the
protection and maintenance of the natural environment as well as in the
evolution of social, cultural, civic and state institutions. Forests provide
life support system for civilization to sustain in every phase of history. The
colonized Indian forests had undergone massive phenomenal changes and
transformation. The colonial power in one form or other started penetrating for
the establishment of legal proprietary hold over the forests.
Major Debates on
British Forest Policy in India:
The scholarship on India’s Environmental
History is still in its embryonic stage both in terms of interrogation of facts
and finding out new ways of looking into the past. The scholarship is largely divided on the issue
of the impact of colonialism on Indian forest resources. The nationalist school
has emphasized the pre-colonial notion of ‘ecological equilibrium’ while the
imperial writers have harped on the positive motives. The imperial officers and
scholars such as B. Ribbentrop in his Book “Forestry in British India”
(Calcutta, 1900, Reprinted by Indus Publishing Company, New Delhi 1989) and
E.P. Stebbing in his book “The Forestry of India” (London, 1921, Vol.1, AJ
Reprints Agency, New Delhi, 1982) argued that the colonizers had saved the
forests from destruction by indigenous forest users. Stebbing argued that
destructive private interests were brought under scientific supervision and
control in the colonial period. The basic edifice of the recent environmental
debate over colonialism and Indian forests was laid down by Madhav Gadgil and
Ramachandra Guha. They have presented a
romanticised notion of human-nature relationship and have agreed upon the fact
that in spite of several conflicts between class and caste, there was a
harmonious relationship between natural resources and its distribution among
the various strata of the society. The authors have termed the period up to
1800 A.D. as ‘Golden Age of Equilibrium’.1 The various levels of
claims over the resources were set along the caste lines which initiated a
state of equilibrium and provided stability to the supply and demand of
resources. Every single caste has their own economic domain and ecological
alcove. Their traditional belief systems ensured the conservation of their
resource base. While depicting the colonial period, the authors have
highlighted the twofold imperial agenda of managing the forest, i.e. profit
maximization and exploitation of natural resources. The early environmental
debate within the colonial bureaucracy as to whether communities living in
proximity to the forests should be allowed their traditional right of access is
described at some length. The debate predictably ended with the votaries of
people's rights being overruled by those who favoured the sequestering of
forests for commercial exploitation and the passing of the draconian Forest Act
1878.Guha has also pointed out to the importance of revenue earning and
strategic interests played a major role behind the formulation of the imperialist
forest policy. The colonizers completely ignored the indigenous religious
practices that ensured regeneration of forests. On the contrary,
commercialization of forests ensured complete deforestation.2 The
technical strategies employed by the forest officials often went against the
cultivators. The commercial motives behind the establishment of a state
controlled forestry not only disturbed the older land settlement patterns but
also ensured the growth of only those species of trees that were commercially
valuable. Thus mono cultural forestry was encouraged by destructing the natural
bio-diversity. The adverse consequences
of the expansion of the railway network and the two world wars on the forests
of India have been depicted with great skill. The authors confirm that due to
lack of knowledge about the ecology of tropical forests, the colonial foresters
caused huge damage not only by commercial exploitation but also through the
faulty conservational methods that were typically termed as ‘scientific’.
3
This nationalist interpretation on the destruction of
Indian forests has been critically challenged by scholars like Richard Grove,
Vinita Damodaran and others. Grove questioned the key assumptions made by Guha.
He argued that As the colonial expansion proceeded, the environmental
experience of Europeans and indigenous people played a steadily more dominant
and dynamic part in the construction of the new European evaluation of nature
and in the growing awareness of the destructive impact of European economic
activity on the peoples and environments of the ‘newly discovered’ and
‘colonized’ lands.4 Systematic forest management and the early
notions of conservation were initiated in the colonies only with the ushering
of British Imperialism.5 He has openly questioned the effectiveness
of the communitarian ownership over forests vis-à-vis the British forest
policy. It was argued that without exclusionist forest acts and regulations the
surviving forms of property management would have been faded away.6 The indigenous forest dwellers were primarily
held responsible for destruction of forests due to lack of exposure to modern
knowledge system. Grove represents conservation as a utilitarian justification
for the exploitation of resources. . Though, broader concerns like the drought
and desiccasionist fear also played their role in the conservation attempts.
Grove emphasizes the positive motives of ‘Green Imperialism’
and contends that commitment towards the utilitarian ethos of a section of
colonial officers was much more significant than the narrow material interests
as upheld by the nationalist scholars on British forestry. Grove negates the
idea of any destructive imperial attitude that was harmful to ecology and
argues in favour of a rapid ecological transformation which proceeded with the
colonial rule.7
Scholars like Ravi S. Rajan have focused on the ‘conflict
of interest’ that grew between the arable agricultural land and non-arable
forests. The chief reason of the conflict was the concern for revenue appropriation
on one hand and the ever increasing demand for timber on the other.8 In order to achieve a balance between the two,
certain lands were identified to be fit for agriculture while the peripheral
and marginal lands were allowed to be developed as forests. The primacy of
agriculture over9 the forestry was quite evident during the first
decades of colonialism. Importance of forestry had a complex notion. Forests
were regarded useful for increase in the amount of rainfall, but at the same
time forests were seen as a threat to the groundwater reserve as forests
sustained themselves on groundwater only.10
The basic notion of introducing a uniform British Forest
Policy all across India have critically been questioned by scholars like K.
Shivaramakrishnan. He has pointed out on a series of conflicts over the arable
and non-arable lands. Centering his discussion on the introduction of a number
of Private Forest Bills between 1865 and 1878 in Bengal11 he tried
to explore the conflict of interest over profit maximization and the use of
natural resources. It was not only scientific knowledge (deforestation and
desiccation) which contributed to the debate but the underplay of various socio
economic interests and environmental concerns that gave a debate such a complex
character that ultimately the bill could not be formatted.12
Another major area of investigation was the introduction
of Permanent Settlement and the consequent property rights sanctioned to the
Zamindars by the East India Company. In southern Bengal, the forest lands were
termed as ‘Jungle Mahal’ hence accepted as private property. Any act to
withdraw or curtail the same led to greater resentment.13 However,
in the forests of Eastern Bengal, a private forest policy was demanded by the
EIC officials to cater to the growing demand for wood. This led to a serious
controversy as the customary rights of the ‘raiyat’ over forests was completely
overlooked. Conversion of private forests to protected forest denied the claims
of the raiyat. The landlords on the other hand were concerned about the
degradation of forest cover and soil erosion.14
Issues like the role of the colonial frost policy in the
ecological degradation and the part played by the indigenous communities have
been taken up by scholars like Ajay Skaria. He argues that implementation of
strict regulations to protect the forests of India was just an extension of the
‘Civilizing Mission’ of the colonizers.15 Protection of forest was
another form of eco-imperialism. The colonial forest officials, trained in the
continental forest tradition played the key role in this civilizing mission as
mentioned by Skaria. He puts more stress on cultural imperialism rather than
economic and commercial considerations. Skaria lamented on the cultural
discrimination that the colonizers made by
by using terms like ‘wild’ and ‘primitive’ to describe the forest
tribes.
Some new interpretations came up in the recent years
about different environment related issues vis-à-vis the role of the colonial
government and the indigenous people. The new genres of writings on India’s
Environmental History have received impetus either from Annale School or from
Post- Marxian Critical School and have been designated as Post- Colonial
Critical scholarship on Environmental History (Sumit Guha, Daud Ali, Aloka
Paraser-Sen, Neeledri Bhattacharya, Sajal Nag, Bina Agarwal, Amita Baviskar are
some of the few names out of many engaged in such scholarly writings of
different areas on forestry India’s Environmental History). A good number of research
works has been undertaken on North Western, Central Himalayas and Southern
Hills relating environmental issues which include colonial and pre-colonial
forestry, forest rights of the indigenous forest people, development and
displacement.
Evolution of Forest
Legislation in India:
Indian Forest Act
of 1865: The first attempt of asserting monopolistic
control of the state over the forestry was reflected in the Forest Act of 1865.
This act was a direct outcome of the continental forest tradition initiated in
colonial Burma by Dietrich Brandis. This act was primarily passed to acquire
those forest areas that were undertaken for the railway supplies.
The Indian Forest Act of 1865 empowered the government of
India in the following ways16:
1. The Government reserved the right to declare any land
covered with trees, brushwood or jungle as Government Forests by notification,
provided that such notification should not abridge or affect any existing
rights of individuals or communities.
2. Local Government may make rules for management and
preservation of forests and for regulating the conduct of persons employed on
them. Such Rules shall not be repugnant to any law in force.
3. Powers were given to local government to prescribe
punishment for breach of provisions of the Act.
4. Rules when confirmed and published had the force of
law.
This Act was passed by the Governor General of India in
Council and received the assent of the Governor General on 24th February 1865.17 The most
important feature of this Act was that it empowered the local government to
draft local rules for their respective provinces for the better management and
preservation of the forests. It was aimed at establishing state control over
forestry that were required at once, subject to the conditions that existing
rights were not abridged.
The Forest Act,
1878: This Act aimed at improving on the
inadequacies of the Indian Forest Act of 1865. This act was much more
comprehensive in nature. The 1878 Act was just a continuation of the expansionist
Imperial Agenda of establishing unusable control over the forests.
Precise Definitions: In the new definitions, 'tree' included palms, bamboo,
stumps, brushwood and canes; 'Timber" included trees when they have fallen
or have been felled, and all wood, whether cut up or fashioned or hallowed out
for any purpose or not. 'Forest produces included.18
a. The following, whether found in, or brought from, a
forest or not, that is to say timber, charcoal, caoutchouc, catechu, wood-oil,
natural varnish, bark, lac, mahua flowers and myrabolams.
b. The following when found in, or brought from, a
forest, that is to say:
1. Trees and leaves, flowers and fruits and all other
parts or produce not herein before mentioned of trees.
2. Plants not being trees (including grass, creepers,
reeds and moss), and all parts of produce of such plants.
3. Wild animals and skins, tusks, horns, bones, silk
cocoons, honey and wax, and all other parts or produce of animals; and tv.
Peat, surface soil, rock, and minerals (including limestone laterite, mineral
oils and all products of mines or quarries. Besides cattle and rivers were also
defined in details.
Classification of
Forests: For the first time, forest was classified
into three groups namely Reserve forests Protected forest and Village forests.
These classifications are contained in the Chapter II section 3-26, chapter III
section 27 and chapter IV section 28-33.19
a) ‘Reserved’ Forest: In such forests, which were compact
and connected to the towns, a legal separation of rights was aimed at. A
permanent settlement either extinguished all private rights or transferred them
elsewhere or in exceptional circumstances allowed their limited exercise.
b) ‘Protected’ Forests: These were also controlled by the
state. Here the rights were recorded but not settled. The state control was
firmly maintained by outlining detailed provisions for the reservation of
particular tree species as and when they became commercially viable and for
closing the forests whenever required for grazing and fuel wood collection.
c) ‘Village’ Forests: The name itself explains this
category. Such forests were under the control of the villages and were used by
their inhabitants.
The new legislation greatly enhanced the punitive powers
of the forest officials and prescribed a comprehensive set of penalties for
violation of the act.
Notifications were to be issued for concerned people to
record their claims over land and forest produce in the proposed reserved and
protected forest. Activities like grazing of cattle and trespassing were
prohibited. Provisions were made to impose duties on timber. Certain activities
were declared as criminal offences and rigorous imprisonment and fines were
imposed to control such ‘crime’.
Forest Settlements: Yet another important characteristic of the Forest Act
of 1878 was the forest settlement.20 Persons were to be notified to
prefer their claim over land and forest produce in any proposed reserved
forests. Forest settlement officers were appointed to record such rights and to
make some special provision to ensue exercise of such rights. Every person had
to appear before the officer, within a fixed period, to register the nature of
rights, and the amount and particulars of the compensation claimed in respect
thereof. The forest settlement officer was empowered to enter by himself or any
officer authorised by him for the purpose, upon any land, and to survey,
demarcate and make a map of the same, stop any public or private way or water
course in a reserved forest. In the trial of suits, he was given powers of a
civil Court. He was also empowered, in the case of a claim to right of pasture
or to forest produce, to pass an order admitting or rejecting the same in whole
or in part.
The debate over the establishment of colonial control
over forests has been categorized under three distinct positions21
(a) Annexationist; (b) Pragmatic; (c) Populist. The Annexationist’s claim is
the total State Control over all forest areas. Pragmatists argue favouring
state controlled governance of technologically valuable forests, while in other
areas communal system of management is allowed. The populist claim, on the
other, completely rejects state intervention and holds that indigenous forest
people must exercise sovereign rights over forests. Between these extreme
positions, the colonial Government brought out a comprehensive forest policy in
1894 that clearly spelt out the sujurnity of the colonial interest over that of
interest of the commons. Government of India invited Dr. John Augustus Voelker
to examine the conditions of agriculture in the country and, how, it could be
improved. Subsequently Dr. Voelker submitted his report on improvement of
Indian Agriculture in 1893.22
National Forest Policy Of 1894: The Government of India, came out with a comprehensive
forest policy in 1894. It was a clear cut assertion of State’s interest over
the popular interest. The main features
of the Forest Policy189423 are:
1. The maintenance of adequate forests is dictated
primarily for the preservation of the climate and physical conditions of the
country and to fulfill the needs of the people.
2. Forests which are reservoirs of valuable timber should
be managed on commercial lines as a source of revenue to the state.
3. Whenever the effective demand for cultivable land
exists and can only be supplied by forest area, the land should ordinarily be
relinquished without hesitation, subject to the following conditions:
a) Honeycombing of a valuable forest by patches of
cultivation should not be allowed; and
b) Cultivation must be permanent and must not be allowed
to an extent as to encroach upon the minimum area of forest that is needed to
meet the reasonable forest requirement, present and prospective. The following
recommendations were made subject to the above mentioned conditions
c) Permanent cultivation should come before forestry
d) The satisfaction of the needs of the local population
at non-competitive rates, if not free, should over-ride all consideration of
revenue.
e) After the fulfillment of the above conditions the
realization of maximum revenue should be the guiding features.
4. The forests were broadly divided into four classes in
this policy
a) Forest, the preservation of which was essential on
climate or physical grounds.
b) Forest that afforded a supply of valuable timber for
commercial purposes
c) Minor forests and
d) Pasture land
These classifications were not intended to be rigid and
particular forest might fulfill more than one function. It appears from the
policy statement that the forest tracts which supplied valuable timber like
teak, sal deodar were given greater importance than the minor forests or
pastoral land. It presumes that the fourth class of forest referred to as
pastures and grazing grounds were only forests in name. They can be
conveniently declared as forests in order to obtain statutory settlement.
The essence of the colonial forest policy has been aptly
summed up by Elwin (1962) as: “the sole object with which state forests are
administered is the public benefit. In some cases the public to be benefited as
the whole body of tax payers, in others, the people of the tract within which
the forest is installed; but in almost all cases the contribution and
preservation of a forest involve, in greater or lesser degree, the regulation
of rights and the restriction of privileges of users in the forest area which
may have previously been enjoyed by the inhabitants of its immediate
neighbourhood. These regulations and restrictions are justified only when the
advantage to be gained by the public is great, and the cardinal principle to be
observed is that rights and privileges of individuals must be limited,
otherwise for their own benefit, only in such degree as is obviously necessary
to secure that advantage.24
Indian
Forest Act of 1927: It was the first all-inclusive piece of
legislation on colonial forests. This was an attempt to codify all practices of
the forest officials and to regulate further people’s rights over forest lands
and produce. The Forest Act 1927 consolidated the law relating to forests, the
transit of forest produce and duty levied on timber and other products. The
revenue yielding aspects of forests was given prime emphasis. Under this Act,
British Indian forests were reclassified as reserved, protected and village
forests. Provisions were made wherein the Forest settlement officer was
supposed to record the claims relating to practice of shifting cultivation and
to inform the government together with his opinion as to the permissibility or
otherwise of the practice. The government was finally to decide on the issue of
permission or prohibition. The privilege so granted was always subject to
control, restriction and abolition by the Colonial Government.
Basic
Features of Indian Forest Act of 1927:
a)
It intensified the
power of the state to create reserve forests, village forests and protected
forests
b)
Enhanced state
control of the timber and non-timber forest produce.
c)
Prescribed
penalties for the violation of the act
d)
Formalised the
duties and powers of forest bureaucracy.
The concept of ‘ecological equilibrium in
pre-colonial environmental history of India is based on three broad premises.
The first of these focuses on the limited reach of states beyond the
agricultural land. Barring a few exceptions, the pre-colonial rulers never
participated in the process of natural resource appropriation.25 The
second premise talks about the gradual disappearance of the big ancient empires
making local forces the prime players. The third premise, while providing a
logical corollary to the second, talks about the changing socio economic forces
that gave the local communities considerable control over the natural resources
within the wider power structure of the village society.26
Conclusion: The
colonial state intervention in Indian forests was primarily and basically
planned to bring total colonial control over natural resources so that the
government could cater the external markets. From all the colonial
legislations, it was clear that commercial interests were the primary
consideration in declaring forests reserved. The colonial Indian forests had
been the central place of strategic raw materials crucial for imperial interest
such as timber for shipbuilding, sleepers for the Railways, forest based
industries such as pulp, paper and plywood. The colonial forest policy was
perceived and chalked out with three dimensional mandate: to organize
sustained-yield timber production for the long future; to preserve the forest
cover of remote and unstable watersheds; to ensure that the people living in
forests have adequate supplies of wood and fodder for their subsistence needs.
In reality, however, policy pursued by the colonial government was mostly
cantered around the first mandate and the second mandate was pursued to fulfil
the first one, however the declared third mandate was never pursued in reality
as it directly confronted with the colonial notion of ownership over forests
and extraction of forest resources to the maximum extent possible. The most
serious consequence of colonial forestry was the diminution of customary rights
as well as the decline in traditional conservation and management systems.27
References
1. Gadgil, Madhav and Guha
Ramchandra (1992). This Fissured Land:
An Ecological History of India. New Delhi: Oxford University Press
2. Guha, Ramachandra (1996).The Unquiet Woods: Ecological
Change and Peasant Resistance in the Himalayas.Delhi: Oxford University Press,.
3. Gadgil, Madhav and GuhaRamchandra (1992).Op.Cit.New
Delhi: Oxford University Press
4. Grove, Richard (1995). Green Imperialism: Colonial
Expansion, Tropical Island Edens and Origin of Environmentalism:
1600-1860.Delhi:Oxford University Press,P.3
5. Grove,Richard Damodaran, V &Sangwan, S. ed( 1998).
Nature and the Orient: The Environmental Discourses of South and South East
Asia’, ‘New Delhi: Oxford University Press
6. Ibid
7. Ibid, P.7
8. Rajan,Ravi. S (1998). “Foresters and the Politics of
Colonial Agro Ecology : The Case of Shifting Cultivation and Soil Erosion
1920-1950” in Studies in History, 14(2), 20-25
9. Ibid
10. Ibid
11. Shivaramakrishnan, K ‘Conservation and Production in
Private Forests: Bengal 1864-1914’, Studies in History, Vol. 14, No.2, 1998.
12. Ibid
13. Ibid
14. Ibid
15. Skaria, Ajay (1999).Hybrid Histories: Forests, Frontiers,
and Wildness in Western India. Delhi :Oxford University Press
16. Stebbing, E.P (1982). The Forests of India Vol I:New Delhi
17. Ibid., p.8.
18. Ibid., pp.8-9.
19. Ibid., Section 2, p. 9
20. Ibid., Para, 6,7&8
21. Gadgil, Madhav and GuhaRamchandra (1992).Op.Cit.New
Delhi: Oxford University Press
22. Government of India. Hundred Years ofindian
Forestryl861-1961. Vol I, Op.cit ., P.63
23. Government ofIndia. Hundred Years of Indian Forestry.
Op.cit., p.63-64
24. Rao, R.S., Reddy, D. Narsimha(1995). Towards
Understanding Semi Feudal Semi Colonial Society: Studies in Political
Economy:Perspectives
25. Rangarajan, M and Shivaramakrishnan,K (ed.)( 2012)
ndia’sEnvironmentalHistory Volume I. Ranikhet: Permanent Black
26. Ibid
27. Tucker, Richard P(1987)., Dimensions Of Deforestation In
The Himalaya: The Historical Setting in Mountain Research and Development,
7(3), pp. 328-331.