Western Ghats Calling - 4
Master storyteller, profound and compelling chronicler of history and society, Amitav Ghosh is that rare writer whose prose dazzles in both his fiction and non-fiction works. Ghosh has published a gripping essay titled 'Wild Fictions' on how literature, legends and folklore have influenced our responses to nature and wildlife. Excerpted from this essay are interesting observations on how indeed our forests are being held sway by a the colonial remains of a system. Forests will be a subject of intense discussion at the upcoming national meeting to Save Western Ghats on Feb 8-10, 2009 in Goa. This is the 5th in the series of despatches leading to the historic event.)
by Amitav Ghosh
When urban tourists visit national parks or sanctuaries, they have litlle conception that their experience of the wilderness is akin to that of spectators at a play: rarely if ever are they given a glimpse of the stage machinery that provides them with their experience - that is to say the administrative apparatus of eviction, restriction and so on that make these wildernesses conform to the tourist's notion of the `pristine'. They are, in this sense, partners in the production of wild fiction: it is their willing suspension of disbelief that makes the exclusivity of forests possible.
In effect, over many decades, there has been a kind of `ethnic cleansing' of India's forests: indigenous groups have been evicted or marginalised and hotel chains and urban tourists have moved in. In other words, the costs of protecting Nature have been thrust upon some of the poorest people in the country, while the rewards have been reaped by certain segments of the urban middle class. Is it reasonable to expect that the disinherited groups will not find ways of resisting, wheter it be through arms, or poaching, or active destruction of forests? This indeed is one of the reasons why the Naxalite insurgency - which the Prime Minister has acknowledged to be the single most serious threat to the country - has fund such fertile ground in India's heartlands.
The Forest Deartment is no different from any other arm of government, in that some of its officers are idealistic and competent while others are corrupt and inefficient. But it so happens that the Forest Department holds sway in areas where there is little oversight, which means, unfortunately, that there is often greater scope for the abuse of bureaucratic power. Such indeed is the atmosphere of repression and secrecy in some of our parks that even influential outsiders risk retaliation if they bear witness to what they see. Not long ago, an eminent tiger biologist whose research suggested that officials were inflating their tiger population statistics had his equipment seized and was taken to court on an unrelated charge.
In another instance, the Forest Department is said to have filed 13 suits of criminal trespass against conservationists who collected data on an environmental harmful mining project in the Kudremukh National Park in Karnataka's Western Ghats. This is what relatively privileged outsiders face in dealing with the rulers of India's forests. As for the realities that confront the people who live under this regime, they are perhaps best deicted in such harrowing works as Gopinath Mohanty's Paraja, and the novels of Mahasweta Devi.
In short, the people who live in India's forests have had to contend, since colonial times, with a pattern of governance that tends to criminalise their beliefs and practices. Ironically, the era of decolonisation, with its growing awareess of environmental issues, has made their situation even more precarious by providing an overarching ideology to sanction their dispossession.
(excerpted from Wild Fictions by Amitav Ghosh, Outlook Nano # 6)
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