The hegemony of green forests
Ramprasad Mahurkar
SYBA
In literature and media, there has always been a stereotypical portrayal of deserts. For instance, the American film, “The Mummy”(1999) presents a generalised and degraded picture of deserts with moving sand dunes, camels, scorpions, snakes, and capital-oriented pyramids in Egypt. Though not an Indian film, it has somewhat influenced Indian society into believing that deserts are only a mode to face loss and deserts are the reason for high temperatures. Often deserts are used as devices to convey emptiness, gloominess, or a source of concern for the environment. This is reflected in the ghazal Aawargi, the verse, “ye dasht ka veeran safar” (this was the empty journey of the desert), which tries to express the lover’s feelings of social disengagement but directly tarnishes the identity of a desert. This poetic expression implies the power operation of only seeing deserts with a lens of scanty rainfall, and sidelining the aspects such as the uniqueness of the ecosystem, and the different cultures surrounding it. Similarly in the film “Dor” (2006), these portrayals and stereotypes of the desert are reinforced. The region of Himachal Pradesh is glorified due to its presence as a lover’s and nature’s paradise in the backdrop of exotic hills and widespread vegetation, whereas the region of Rajasthan is portrayed as dull, barren, isolated, and a region full of sand and water scarcity. This shows how the other reality of deserts is ignored.
Additionally, have you ever come across a green forest or a locale on a poster from a newspaper cutting? If yes, then there is one uncanny common thing about them. It is the notion that only one type of forest will be considered a forest and going to that particular “green forest” will bring you a sort of break from the capitalist world. That green forest is the one, with thick vegetation, an abundant supply of water, rare natural earth resources, many birds, and the iconic Bengal tiger, which is the centre of focus of almost all conservation campaigns like Project Tiger in 1973. As a result other animals, rather, cultural symbols are alienated. If and only if the tiger hunts down a deer, will the deer get the same red-carpet treatment from society, as in the environmental campaigns. Extending this, the same applies to other non-green forests which do not perfectly fit the general notion of green forests. These appear as images which will not fetch money to conservationists when there are forests under threat of development. This normalisation of green forests as the only forests is rooted deep in the perpetuation of colonialism under the stronghold of the British Raj. Under their authority and domination, society’s perception of forests changed drastically. They were now providers of resources which would fuel British domination.
With colonialism, two major changes were observed and it affected the dynamics of the society with respect to establishing what was an ideal forest. The British used the law to influence and dominate their authority over the natural resources in India, with the Indian elites subservient to their hegemony. The Forest Act of 1865, defined forests as “lands which provide timber” With this clearly the society perceived forests as sources of wood, a profitable commodity and a way of earning money when their original occupations were taken over by the enforcement of opium cultivation. Furthermore, the colonial state classified forests as reserved and unreserved. The indigenous residing in the reserved forests were forced to leave.
There was also the bureaucratic classification of three types of forests depending on their level of usage. The colonial state got the authority to monopolise the forests for the rationale of joint forest management. The hegemonic laws strengthened the control of the colonial state on forests and shaped the society’s conception of forests which helped itself get in terms with the British. The Forest Act of 1865 was modified in 1878 and 1927. A thing common to these was the motive to reserve areas with significant forest cover/ wildlife and ensure the safe supply of timber and other natural resources. With time, the tribal population were deprived of access to their indigenous land, eventually creating the green-forest hegemony. Some scholars argue that the British brought the notion of scientific forestry and detailed typification of forests. Moreover, the commercialisation of forests with law enforcement interfered with society’s view of forests as a socio-cultural asset.
With increased governmental control, Indian society started perceiving thickly covered forests as the only “forests” This was because giving timber and natural resources established the power relation between the government and Indian society. Analysing this through Marx’s materialist interpretation and referring to capitalism, ideal forests created more capital as compared to forests with no thick vegetation. With the capitalist value attached to densely covered forests, the other types of forests were neglected.
Interestingly, the separation of forests can be compared to the class distinction between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat. The lush green forests of today are a source of money with conservation programs which are the ruling capitalists and forests like deserts, and mangroves have futile value to the proletariat which faces a tremendous amount of exploitation highlighted by the section(s) of society living in the much-ignored forests. The British ideology was such that the Indian society was influenced to ignore the other forests using controlling measures like law, economic rationale, and capitalist interpretation which was heavily contrasting to a society which valued the non-economic aspects of forests. In addition to this, it is said that this hegemony was rooted in the so-called superior European forest management plans focusing on forestry and land usage mostly regulated by the State, directly eliminating the indigenous section of society. As a regular pattern in hegemony, the ruling class of Britishers with the bureaucratic tools of managing all forests only prioritised the needs of the profitable forests. Most of the forest laws were made in Europe based on the homogenous variety of forests which were exclusive to them.
In contemporary Indian society with the environmental movement gaining social momentum, there has been a resurgence of the capitalist value of green forests. Accordingly, the government has been trying its best to ensure that the “forest cover/ greenery” is increased as a formality. In the national reports, even coffee plantations and random clumps of trees get counted as forests. This highlights the principle behind the Forest Conservation (Amendment) Act, of 2023, which permits a greater commercialisation and impetus on the green forests. Even though the environmentalist section of society advocates for equal consideration of ecosystems, the Indian state continues to go for abrupt plantation drives.
With this risk factor itself, the existence of green forests adds to the State’s authority to curb the crisis of global warming. The most widely accepted idea has always been planting trees in an empty area. Even a city like Mumbai is supposed to, again, reproduce the colonial idea of considering wood as a resource extracted from forests by planting clumps of trees as a show. At the same time, there have been many movements about protecting mangroves which were treated like wastelands just like the hegemonized portrayal of deserts as empty sandy lands.
This is relevant to modernity in India as the application of green forest projects has made a buzz in society. In 2021 the Lieutenant Governor of Delhi ordered the plantation of 12,000 sandalwood trees in Delhi, a semi-desert ecosystem, to give employment. Here, the state made a loophole by planting a water-intensive tree unsuitable to the local ecology. Environmental activists claimed an acute water shortage in the future. This can be seen as a part of the state’s ideology of decimating environmental critique and monopolising tree plantations as a one-stop solution. Later on June 5th 2022, the government ordered a plantation of 1,500 alien plant saplings in Chushul, Ladakh which is a cold desert. According to an environmental expert, these forced plantations would certainly affect the society with high water scarcity. The expert suggested a plantation of saplings native to Ladakh. In response, the state instead justified its mandated social and environmental responsibility in doing so.
Some ecologists from Indian society and the United Nations have tried to highlight the importance of ecological restoration projects in contrast to large-scale plantations that harm the local ecology and culture. In the Thar desert, Rajasthan, the concept of ecological restoration has been applied, when it was found out that a large part of the desert was used as dumping grounds. This shows that the deserts have lost their dignity and the state and society have missed out on understanding the initial value of deserts.
There have been plans for rewilding i.e., letting the ecosystem recover by minimal intervention and strategically planting native trees to prevent desertification or abnormal desert cover. It is only seen on the landscape level but has not reached the grassroots yet. This again highlights the lopsided view of greenification but at the same time avoiding it due to the lack of awareness of deserts and the reinforced social behaviour of holding green forests with tigers at the helm of the environmental movement. On a large scale, society is convinced that a forest is always green and cannot be yellow or brown. Deserts become an exception but are kept at a disadvantageous position due to the normalisation of the capitalist attitude. As a result, the culture and ecosystems in the Thar have been altered with the diminishing population of the bird, the Great Indian Bustard (protected by the Wildlife Conservation Act, 1980), and with the inaction of the state by giving clearance to power lines deployed in the sensitive Thar ecosystem. This attitude establishes that there is societal risk involved in rendering the deserts powerless in the environmental movement and modernity.
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