Environmental History and British Colonialism in India: A Prime Political Agenda

THIS ARTICLE HAS DEVELOPED FROM A DESIRE TO DEVELOP A THEORETICAL position for "Nature" in the context of modernity. It argues that the near-total absence of theories of nature in modern Western social thought stands in stark contrast to the remarkable extent to which nature has assisted and indexed the rise of modernity itself. This historical-theoretical imbalance has had grave social consequences, and it calls for an urgent reintegration of nature in theoretical discourses. The recently emerging genre of "environmental history" has carved a small but significant niche for itself in this direction. Some exciting literature has been produced that addresses itself to the task at hand. It is interesting to note that even though, as a discipline, environmental history registers its rise in the West, particularly the United States in the early 1970s, most of the radical environmental histories that are being written today emanate from the "peripheral" zones of the global political economy. While the peripheries have been severely exploited for their raw materials and natural products in the international division of labor since the beginnings of the modern world-system, it is also strangely not coincident that in the cultural division of labor, so to speak, these peripheries have been seen as part of the wild, natural world, whereas the core, Western regions have portrayed themselves as bearers of civilization and cultural advancement. Thus, it is appropriate that some of the radical environmental histories have committed themselves to analyzing the environmental impact of colonialism on peripheral societies. I would like to propose the term environmental colonialism as a metaphor and point of departure through which I will locate and critique practices and structures of colonial-capitalist-modernity over the last five hundred years, along with the different strategies, discourses, and narratives employed to enact environmental colonialism in different parts of the earth.

Themes and Issues in the Environmental History of India

In line with this emerging body of research, I seek to carry out as a long-term project the intellectual and political decolonization of nature—its knowledge, practice, and history—in the South Asian subcontinent. Needless to say, this would be a very elaborate project, but a beginning can be made by exploring the following research questions that I have in mind:

• What are the specific modalities and methods that were used to colonize the environment and nature during the period of British colonialism in India? How were these techniques for the exploitation of the environment different or similar to previous regimes? Can we talk of British colonialism constituting a decisive break as far as the appropriation and conquest of nature and environment is concerned, or is there a continuity with respect to the theme in question? In other words, I am interested in locating what Partha Chatterjee, in another context, calls the "colonial difference" ¹ of the environmental regime in India. The other side of this question also calls for an analysis of the environmental relationships and practices of the colonized population, taking a particularly close look at how far the mostly anthropological notion of idyllic, "environmentally sustainable," and nature-nurturing communities or tribes is a historically viable one.
• How much is the problem of "nature" and the environmental crisis a problem of modernity? What is the peculiarly modern component of this problem? In what ways has the separation of the categories of "nature" and "culture" itself been the construction of modernity? How does this seemingly naturalized separation between nature and culture prevent us from considering the fact that it is human labor that mediates between nature and culture, and the different categories of race, class, and gender that mediate this mediation. In other words, I would like to challenge and critique the theoretical separation of nature and culture, and think in terms of a framework that allows a historical view of nature and...