State Forestry and Social Conflict in British India PDF

State Forestry and Social Conflict in British India Author(s): Ramachandra Guha and Madhav Gadgil Source: Past & Present , May, 1989, No. 123 (May, 1989), pp. 141-177 Published by: Oxford University Press on behalf of The Past and Present Society Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/650993 JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at https://about.jstor.org/terms and Oxford University Press are collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Past & Present This content downloaded from 43.248.153.40 on Wed, 04 Oct 2023 05:29:45 +00:00 All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms STATE FORESTRY AND SOCIAL CONFLICT IN BRITISH INDIA* INTRODUCTION: THE ECOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVE Geographically speaking, India is a land of tremendous from bare and snowy mountains in the north to tropical r in the south, from arid desert in the west to alluvial flood east. Although the United States has, arguably, a compa of ecological regimes, what is especially striking about diversity of human cultures, corresponding to different ag and vegetative zones. These cultures exhibit diverse tech resource use and also of social modes of resource contro the entire range of productive activities known to hum range from stone-age hunter-gatherers at one end of the through shifting cultivators, nomadic pastoralists, subs cash-crop agriculturalists, and planters, to every form of enterprise - from artisanal production to the most modern factory - at the other. There is, too, a great variety o relations which match different techniques - private, corporate or state management of resources, as the case An awareness of this diversity is heightened by the acut resource crisis faced by the country in recent years: shorta for hunters and fishermen, of land for shifting cultivators for pastoralists, of fuel, fodder and manure for subsisten agriculturalists, of power and water for cash-crop agric and of power, water and raw materials for industry. Thes have generated a variety of conflicts - and collusions - as d segments of Indian society exercise competing claims o resources. Inevitably such conflicts, which show no signs o strongly affect the quality both of human life and of environment. 1 These contemporary concerns have led several scholars, i ourselves, to try to reconstruct Indian history using insig * The authors would like to thank Michael Adas, Arjun Appadura Jim Scott and Timothy Weiskel for their helpful comments on an earlier article. 1 For an overview, see Centre for Science and Environment, India: Th Environment, 1984-85: A Citizens' Report (New Delhi, 1985). This content downloaded from 43.248.153.40 on Wed, 04 Oct 2023 05:29:45 +00:00 All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms 142 PAST AND PRESENT NUMBER 123 from recent debates in human ecology. British colonial rule marks an important w history of India. The encounter with a tec dynamic culture gave rise to profound dis of Indian society. However, the essenti ecological and social changes that came in has not been accorded due recognition. The India has focused almost exclusively on s and conflicts over the distribution of its p the ecological context of agriculture - for grazing land and irrigation - and of st spheres.2 Thus the second volume of the C of India, an impressive and in many ways agrarian history, has no section devoted utilization of the forest; it thus leaves out fifth of India's land area, controlled and ways that crucially affected agrarian socia awareness of the existence of this vast wo ment - let alone of the elaborate bureaucra that governed it - and mentions only in pa conflicts around forest resources between However, as a synthetic review of colon Cambridge volume is here only reflecting in the literature. One indication of this gap of our knowledge, not one of the many mentioned what to us is its most obvious flaw.3 It is beyond the scope of this study to investigate the reasons for the almost universal neglect of Indian ecological history, though it is quite clear that it stems from both methodological and theoretical limitations. Suffice it to say that as far as this article is concerned, what are ostensibly "social" changes need to be viewed against the backdrop of concomitant changes in patterns of the utilization of natural resources. Here the significance of the British intervention lies in the novel modes of resource extraction made possible by the 2 A partial exception is irrigation, for which some good studies exist. See especially Elizabeth Whitcombe, Agrarian Conditions in Northern India, i, The United Provinces under British Rule, 1860-1900 (New Delhi, 1971); Nirmal Sengupta, "The Indigenous Irrigation Organization of South Bihar", Indian Econ. and Social Hist. Rev., xvii (1980). 3 Dharma Kumar (ed.), The Cambridge Economic History of India, ii (Cambridge, 1983). Major review symposia appeared in the two premier journals in the field: Modern Asian Studies, xix (1985); Indian Econ. and Social Hist. Rev., xxi (1984). This content downloaded from 43.248.153.40 on Wed, 04 Oct 2023 05:29:45 +00:00 All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms MAJOR FOREST CONFLICTS IN BRITISH INDIA Tehri Garhwal. Jaunsar Bawar.. Kumaun B Adilabad.-. am -;Bastar-..-Gudem :, * This content downloaded from 43.248.153.40 on Wed, 04 Oct 2023 05:29:45 +00:00 All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms 144 PAST AND PRESENT NUMBER 123 political dominance of the raj and the previously foreign to India. The increasing intensity of natural-res onialism was accompanied, too, by equall of management and control. By far the the takeover of woodland by the state. W not been unknown in the pre-colonial pe in its application and oriented toward reservation of elephant forests in the M or later edicts affirming a state mono such as teak and sandalwood.4 Now state c was extended over large tracts and th Moreover, while asserting formal rights natural resources, the colonial governme management a highly developed legal and ture. It is by now well established that the imperatives of colonial forestry were essentially commercial. Its operations were dictated more by the commercial and strategic utility of different species than by broader social or environmental considerations. For what follows, it is important to understand the mechanisms of intervention - the institutional framework which governed the workings of state forestry in British India.s In the early decades of its rule, the colonial state was markedly indifferent to forest conservancy. Until well into the nineteenth century, forests were viewed by administrators as an impediment to the expansion of cultivation. With the state committed to agricultural expansion as its major source of revenue, the early decades of colonial rule witnessed a "fierce onslaught" on India's forests.6 The first show of interest in forestry - the reservation of teak forests in Malabar in 1806 - was dictated by strategic imperial needs. With the depletion of oak forests in England and Ireland, the teak forests of the Western 4 For Mauryan elephant forests, see Thomas R. Trautmann, "Elephants and the Mauryas", in S. N. Mukherjee (ed.), India: History and Thought: Essays in Honour of A. L. Basham (Calcutta, 1982). s For a detailed analysis of colonial forestry science, legislation and management, see Ramachandra Guha, "Forestry in British and Post British India: A Historical Analysis", 2 pts., Econ. and Polit. Weekly, 29 Oct., 5-12 Nov. 1983; Ramachandra Guha, "Scientific Forestry and Social Change in Uttarakhand", Econ. and Polit. Weekly, special no. (Nov. 1985); Madhav Gadgil, "Forestry with a Social Purpose", in W. Fernandes and S. Kulkarni (eds.), Towards a New Forest Policy (New Delhi, 1983). 6 E. A. Smythies, India's Forest Wealth (London, 1925), p. 6. This content downloaded from 43.248.153.40 on Wed, 04 Oct 2023 05:29:45 +00:00 All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms STATE FORESTRY AND CONFLICT IN BRITISH INDIA 145 Ghats were utilized for shipbuilding. Indian teak, the most durable of shipbuilding timbers, was used extensively for the royal navy in the Anglo-French wars of the early nineteenth century and by mer- chant ships in the later period of maritime expansion.7 These isolated and halting attempts at the systematic and sustained production of roundwood, however, did not constitute a general policy of forest management: that had to await the building of the railway network in the last decades of the nineteenth century. It was the pace of railway expansion (from 7,678 kilometres of line in 1870 to 51,658 kilometres in 1910) which brought home forcefully the fact that India's forests were not inexhaustible. The writings of forest officials of the time are dominated by the urgent demand for sleepers. Dubbing early attempts at forest working a "melancholy failure", the governor-general, Lord Dalhousie, had in 1862 called for the establishment of a department that could meet the enormous require- ments of the railway companies (nearly a million sleepers annually). Impending shortages, Dalhousie observed, had made the "subject of forest conservancy an important administrative question".8 As Britain itself had no tradition of managing forests for sustained timber production, the Forest Department was started with the help of German foresters in 1864. However, the task of reversing the deforestation of the past decades required the forging of legal mechan- isms to curtail the exercise of use rights by village communities. After an earlier act had been found wanting, state monopoly over forests was safeguarded by the stringent provisions of the Indian Forest Act of 1878. This was a comprehensive piece of legislation - later to serve as a model for other British colonies - which by one stroke of the executive pen attempted to obliterate centuries of customary use of the forest by rural populations all over India. Several officials within the colonial administration were sharply critical of the new legislation, calling it an act of confiscation and predicting (accurately, as we shall see) widespread discontent at its application. Their objec- tions, however, were swiftly overruled.9 Essentially designed to main- tain strict control over forest utilization from the perspective of strategic imperial needs, the Act also enabled the sustained working 7 R. G. Albion, Forests and Sea Power (Cambridge, Mass., 1926), pp. 35-6, 363-8. 8 Dispatch, government of India to secretary of state, Nov. 1861, quoted in C. G. Trevor and E. A. Smythies, Practical Forest Management (Allahabad, 1923), p. 5. The railways were built to facilitate both troop movements and trade. 9 See D. Brandis, Memorandum on the Demarcation of the Public Forests in the Madras Presidency (Simla, 1878), pp. 41-2, minute by W. Robinson, 3 Feb. 1878, minute by governor of Madras, 9 Feb. 1878. This content downloaded from 43.248.153.40 on Wed, 04 Oct 2023 05:29:45 +00:00 All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms 146 PAST AND PRESENT NUMBER 123 of compact blocks of forest for commercia provided, too, the underpinnings for the sc the forests. But the logical corollary of the c law and "scientific" management was sharp re use. For rationalized timber production through the strict regulation of traditionally the provisions of the 1878 Act, each family allotted a specific quantum of timber and fue forest produce was strictly prohibited. Thi management was, therefore, both physical - d access to forests and pasture - and social - only a marginal and inflexible claim on the p In so far as the main aims of the new de production of large commercial timber and th it worked willingly or unwillingly to enfor agriculture and forests. This exclusion of t from the benefits of forest management had from within the ranks of the colonial intellig an agricultural chemist writing in 1893, th objects "were in no sense agricultural, and mainly by fiscal considerations; the Departme paying one. Indeed, we may go so far as to sa opposed to agriculture, and its intent was rath than to admit it to participate in its benefits In order that forests should more directly se rural population, Dr. Voelcker advocated th fodder reserves, using the characteristic justi quent increased revenue from land tax would for any loss of revenue from a decline in c ations. As the writings of other contemporar bringing about an escalation in the intensity and control, state forestry sharply undermin subsistence cultivation, hunting and gatherin that the ecological and social changes that commercial forestry were not simply an in 10 "Rightholders" denote those villagers who were co use. 1L J. A. Voelcker, Report on Indian Agriculture, 2nd edn. (Calcut 135-6. 12 See, for example, Jotirau Phule, Shetkarya Asud: The Whipcord o (1882-3), reprinted in Marathi in The Collected Works of Mahatma Phu and S. G. Malshe (Pune, 1969). This content downloaded from 43.248.153.40 on Wed, 04 Oct 2023 05:29:45 +00:00 All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms STATE FORESTRY AND CONFLICT IN BRITISH INDIA 147 processes of change and conflict. Clearly many of the forest communi- ties (especially hunter-gatherers and shifting cultivators) described in this article had for several centuries been subject to the pressures of the agrarian civilizations of the plains. Yet while these pressures themselves ebbed and flowed with the rise and fall of the grain-based kingdoms of peninsular India, they scarcely matched in their range or scope the magnitude of the changes that were a consequence of the state takeover of the forests in the late nineteenth century. Prior to that the commercial exploitation of forest produce was largely restricted to commodities such as pepper, cardamom and ivory, whose extraction did not seriously affect either the ecology of the forest or customary use. It was the emergence of timber as the major commodity that led to a qualitative change in the patterns of harvesting and utilization of the forest. Thus when the colonial state asserted control over woodland which had earlier been in the hands of local communities, and proceeded to work these forests for commercial timber production, it intervened in the day to day life of the Indian villager to an unprecedented degree. First, since by 1900 over 20 per cent of India's land area had been taken over by the Forest Department, the working of state forestry could not fail to affect almost every village and hamlet in the subcontinent. Secondly, the colonial state radically redefined property rights, imposing on the forest a system of management whose priorit- ies sharply conflicted with earlier systems of local use and control. Lastly, one must not underestimate the changes in forest ecology that resulted from this shift in methods of management. For a primary task of colonial forestry was to change the species composition of the largely mixed forests of India in favour of component species that had an established market value. Silvicultural techniques, for example, attempted with success to transform the mixed coniferous/broad- leaved forests of the Himalaya into pure coniferous stands, and to convert the rich evergreen vegetation of the Western Ghats into single-species teak forests. While these induced changes in forest ecology have in the long term had a slow but imperceptible effect on soil and water systems, they immediately ran counter to the interests of surrounding villages, since the existence of several species rather than one could better meet the varied demands of subsistence agricul- ture. Significantly, the species promoted by colonial foresters - pine, cedar and teak in different ecological zones - were invariably of very little use to rural populations, while the species they replaced (such as oak) were intensively used for fuel, fodder and small timber. This content downloaded from 43.248.153.40 on Wed, 04 Oct 2023 05:29:45 +00:00 All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms 148 PAST AND PRESENT NUMBER 123 In these various ways, colonial forest economic and political watershed in Indian fication of conflict over forest produce w the changes in patterns of resource use it i analyses some of the evidence for conflict colonial India. While it does not pretend to coverage, it attempts to outline the major d by focusing on its genesis, its geographica forms in which protest manifested itsel sociology of peasant protest under colo provide a set of preliminary findings and research on the ecological history of diffe nent. I HUNTER-GATHERERS: THE DECLINE TO EXTINCTION Until the early decades of this century almost a dozen communi in the Indian subcontinent depended on the original mode of sus ance of human populations, hunting and gathering. They wer tributed over almost the entire length of India, from the Ra Kumaun in the north to the Kadars of Cochin in the south. The abundant rainfall and rich vegetation of their tropical habitats facili- tated the reproduction of subsistence almost exclusively through the collection of roots and fruit and the hunting of small game. While cultivation was largely foreign to these communities, they did engage in some trade with the surrounding agricultural population, exchan- ging forest produce such as herbs and honey for metal implements, salt, clothes and, very occasionally, grain. With minimal social differ- entiation, and restraints on over-exploitation of resources through the partitioning of territories between endogamous bands, these hunter- gatherers, if not quite the "original affluent society", were able to subsist quite easily on the bounties of nature, as long as there existed sufficient areas under their control.13 Predictably, state reservation of forests sharply affected the subsist- ence activities of these communities, each of them numbering a few hundred and with population densities calculated at square miles per person rather than persons per square mile. The forest and game laws affected the Chenchus of Hyderabad, for example, by making 13 The phrase is that of Marshall Sahlins. See his Stone Age Economics (Chicago, 1971). This content downloaded from 43.248.153.40 on Wed, 04 Oct 2023 05:29:45 +00:00 All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms STATE FORESTRY AND CONFLICT IN BRITISH INDIA 149 their hunting activities illegal and by questioning or even denyin their existing monopoly over forest produce other than timber. The cumulative impact of commercial forestry and the more frequen contacts with outsiders that the opening-out of such areas brough about virtually crippled the Chenchus. As suspicious of mobile populations as most modern states, in some places the colonial government forcibly gathered tribal peoples into large settlements. Rapidly losing their autonomy, most Chenchus were forced into relationship of agrestic serfdom with the more powerful cultivating castes. Further south, the Chenchus of Kurnool, almost in desper ation, turned to banditry, frequently holding up pilgrims to the major Hindu temple of Srisailam.14 Like the Chenchus, other hunter-gatherer communities were not numerous enough actively to resist the social and economic changes that followed state forest management. Forced sedentarization an the loss of their habitat induced a feeling of helplessness as outsiders made greater and greater inroads into what was once an undisputed domain. Thus the Kadars succumbed to what one writer called a "proletarian dependence" on the forest administration, whose com- mercial transactions and territorial control now determined their daily routine and mode of existence. In this way, the intimate knowledge of their surroundings that the Kadars possessed was now utilized for the collection of forest produce marketed by the state. In the thickly wooded plateau of Chotanagpur the commercialization of the forest and restrictions on local use had meanwhile led to a precipitous fall in the population of the Birhor tribe - from 2,340 in 1911 to 1,610 in 1921.15 While the new laws restricted small-scale hunting by tribal peoples, they facilitated more organized shikar expeditions by the British. From the mid-nineteenth century there began a large-scale slaughter of animals, in which white shikaris at all levels, from the viceroy down to the lower echelons of the British Indian army, participated. Much of this shooting was motivated by the desire for large bags. While one British planter in the Nilgiris killed four hundred elephants in the 1860s, successive viceroys were invited to shoots in which several thousand birds were shot in a single day in a bid to claim the 14 C. Von Furer Haimendorf, The Chenchus: Jungle Folk of the Deccan (London, 1943), pp. 57, 295, 311-12, 321, et al.; A. Aiyappan, Report on the Socio-Economic Conditions of the Aboriginal Tribes of the Province of Madras (Madras, 1948), p. 32. is U. R. Ehrenfels, The Kadar of Cochin (Madras, 1952), pp. 8, 13-24, 47-8, et al.; S. C. Roy, The Birhors: A Little-Known Jungle Tribe of Chota Nagpur (Ranchi, 1925), p. 549. This content downloaded from 43.248.153.40 on Wed, 04 Oct 2023 05:29:45 +00:00 All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms 150 PAST AND PRESENT NUMBER 123 "world record". Many Indian princes sough instincts of the British. The maharaja of G over seven hundred tigers in the early 190 Although it is difficult to estimate the im hunting on faunal ecology, the consequenc by the time India gained independence declining populations of game species such More relevant to this study is the disjun shown to the white shikari and the clamp- ing. While there were few formal restrict until well into the twentieth century, h cultivators (for whom wild game was a v found their hunting activities threatened The Baigas of central India, for examp hunting skills - "expert in all appliances of shikaris relied heavily on their "marvell the wild creatures". Yet the stricter forest the turn of the century, induced a dramat 1930s, Verrier Elwin noted that while their persisted, old skills had largely perished. T a defiant streak: as one Baiga said, "eve hundred laws we will do it. One of us will the rest will go out and shoot the deer".17 too, where there was an abundance of ga hunt despite government restrictions, takin of the forest staff - a task not difficult t familiarity with the terrain.18 Among shifting cultivators, there was of hunting with the agricultural cycle. De Reddis of Hyderabad clung to their rit Devata Panduga or the hunt of the earth entire male population and preceded th reservation of forests also interfered with 16 Scott Bennet, "Shikar and the Raj", South Asia, J. G. Elliott, Field Sports in India, 1800-1947 (Lon and Management of the Asian Elephant (Cambridge, 17 H. C. Ward, Report on the Land Revenue Settleme Central Provinces, 1868-9 (Bombay, 1870), p. 37; (London, 1935), pp. 123-4; Verrier Elwin, The Ba 18s See "Gamekeeper", "Destruction of Game in G Rains", Indian Forester, xiii (1887), pp. 188-90. (Bombay, 1952). This content downloaded from 43.248.153.40 on Wed, 04 Oct 2023 05:29:45 +00:00 All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms STATE FORESTRY AND CONFLICT IN BRITISH INDIA 151 parties across state boundaries. In 1929 a police contingent had to b called in to prevent a party of Bison Marias from the state of Bast armed with bows and spears, from crossing into the British-admin stered Central Provinces. This, of course, constituted an unnatu intervention, as the ritual hunt was no respecter of political bound aries. Nevertheless in later years the authorities were successful confining the Maria ritual hunt to Bastar, the amount of game kill steadily declining in consequence.'9 II THE "PROBLEM" OF SHIFTING CULTIVATION Shifting orjhum cultivation was the characteristic form o over large parts of north-eastern India, especially the hilly tracts where plough agriculture was not always feasible. ally involves the clearing and cultivation of patches rotation. The individual plots are burned and cultivat years and then left fallow for an extended period (id years or longer), allowing the soil to recoup and recover lo Cultivators then move on to the next plot, abandonin when its productivity starts declining.20 It was usually p "tribal"21 groups for whom jhum was a way of life en beyond the narrowly economic, the social and cultura well. The corporate character of these communities w the pattern of cultivation, where communal labour p and where different families adhered to boundaries established and respected by tradition. The overwhelming importance of jhum in structuring social life was strikingly manifest, too, in the many myths and legends constructed around it in tribal cosmology.22 As in many areas of social life, major changes accompanied the advent of British rule. For, almost without exception, colonial admin- 19 C. Von Furer Haimendorf, The Reddis of the Bison Hills: A Study in Acculturation (London, 1943), pp. 191-3; W. V. Grigson, The Maria Gonds of Bastar (London, 1938), pp. 158-9. 20 See Michael Eden, "Traditional Shifting Cultivation and the Tropical Forest System", Trends in Ecol. Evolution, ii (1987). Shifting cultivation is known by various names - jhum, podu, dhyal, bewar, etc. We shall use jhum here. 21 In India "tribal" is a legal rather than a social category, encapsulating those ethnic groups believed to be autochthonous and which are economically and socially distinct (to a lesser or greater extent) from the "caste" society of settled agriculture. 22 For a fine ethnographic study of one of the last communities of shifting cultivators in peninsular India, see Savyasachi, Agriculture and Social Structure: The Hill Maria of Bastar (mimeo, World Inst. Development Economics Research, Helsinki, Jan. 1987). This content downloaded from 43.248.153.40 on Wed, 04 Oct 2023 05:29:45 +00:00 All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms 152 PAST AND PRESENT NUMBER 123 istrators viewed jhum with disfavour as a pri ive form of agriculture in comparison w Influenced both by the agricultural revol revenue-generating possibilities of intensive forms of cultivation, official hostility tojhum with the commercialization of the forest. Li other parts of the globe, British foresters h destructive of all practices for the forest".2 for this animosity: "axe cultivation was the officer",24 largely because timber operation territorial control of the forest. This negative tempered by the realization that any abru practice would provoke a sharp response fro the areas cultivated under jhum often con timber species.25 Here was an intractable colonial state had no easy solution. A vivid account of the various attempts found in Verrier Elwin's classic monograp tribe of the Mandla, Balaghat and Bilaspur d day Madhya Pradesh. The first serious at cultivation, in the 1860s, had as its impetus chief commissioner of the province, Sir R years, though, it was the fact that the marke "rose in something like geometrical propo for the "shifting of emphasis from Sir R benevolent improvement for their own sa desire to better the Provincial budget". A induce the Baiga to take to the plough culmi of standingjhum crops by an over-enthusiast When many tribal people fled to neighbou government advised a policy of slow weaning Such difficulties had in fact been anticip 23 C. F. Muhafiz-i-Jangal (pseud.), "Jhooming in Rus pp. 418-19. 24 Verrier Elwin, The Aboriginals (Oxford Pamphlet on Indian Affairs, no. 14, Bombay, 1943), p. 8. 25 As the chief commissioner of the Central Provinces put it, "the best ground for this peculiar cultivation is precisely that where the finest timber trees like to grow": Sir Richard Temple, quoted in J. F. Dyer, "Forestry in the Central Provinces and Berar", Indian Forester, 1 (1925), p. 349. 26 Elwin, Baiga. The following account is drawn from this source (as are all quotations), ch. 2, esp. pp. 111-30. See also Ward, Report on the Land Revenue Settlement, pp. 35, 38-9, 160, et al. This content downloaded from 43.248.153.40 on Wed, 04 Oct 2023 05:29:45 +00:00 All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms STATE FORESTRY AND CONFLICT IN BRITISH INDIA 153 officer in 1870, who observed that "it has been found quite impracti- cable, as well as hard and impolitic, to force the Baigas to give u their dhya (jhum) cultivation and take to the plough". He advised limiting of jhum rather than a total ban. A more cautious policy was dictated, too, by the dependence of the Forest Department on Baiga labour for wood-cutting and the collection of forest produce. As consequence, the government established the Baiga chak (reserve) in 1890, covering 23,920 acres of forest, where it planned to confin all jhum cultivators. The area chosen was described as "perfectl inaccessible [and] therefore useless as a timber producing area". While permittingjhum within the reserve, the administration stressed an overall policy of discouraging it elsewhere. In this it was partially successful, as Baiga villagers outside the chak, faced with the prospec of leaving their homes, accepted the terms of plough cultivation. As many Baigas continued to migrate into neighbouring princely states, within the chak itself the population of jhum cultivators steadil dwindled. The Baigas' opposition took the form of "voting with their feet" and other means of resistance that stopped short of open confron- tation, such as the non-payment of taxes and the continuance ofjhum in forbidden areas. The new restrictions inculcated an acute sense of cultural loss, captured in a petition submitted to the British govern- ment in 1892. Afterjhum had been stopped, it said, "We daily starve, having had no food grain in our possession. The only wealth we possess is our axe. We have no clothes to cover our body with, but we pass cold nights by the fireside. We are now dying for want of food. We cannot. go elsewhere, as the British government is every- where. What fault have we done that the government does not take care of us? Prisoners are supplied with ample food in jail. A cultivator of the grass is not deprived of his holding, but the Government does not give us our right who have lived here for generations past". In some areas tribal resistance to the state's attempt to curb jhum often took a violent and confrontationist form. This was especially so where commercialization of the forest was accompanied by the penetration of non-tribal landlords and money-lenders who came to exercise a dominant influence on the indigenous population. Elwin himself, talking of the periodic disturbances among the Saora tribal people of the Ganjam Agency, identified them as emanating from two sources: the exactions of plainsmen and the state's attempts to check axe cultivation. Thus Saoras were prone to invade reserved forests and clear land for cultivation. In the late 1930s several villages This content downloaded from 43.248.153.40 on Wed, 04 Oct 2023 05:29:45 +00:00 All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms 154 PAST AND PRESENT NUMBER 123 endeavoured to fell large areas of reserved f sowing. The Saoras were ready for any penal arrested and gaoled, the women continued returning from gaol, the men cleared the ju year's crop. As repeated arrests were unsucc from trying to establish their right, the Fo uprooted crops on land formally vested in t Perhaps the most sustained resistance, e century, occurred in the Gudem and Ram day Andhra Pradesh. Inhabited by Koya predominantlyjhum cultivators, the hills we rule to a steady penetration by the market ec plainsmen eager to exploit its natural wealth to the rapid development of trade in tam other forest produce exported to urban cent Traders from the powerful Telugu caste of K local chiefs the leases of tracts of forest as liquor. As in other parts of India, they were colonial government, which had banned dom (an important source of nutrition in the lea liquor contracts in a bid to raise revenue. At forest operations were begun on a fairly lar the creation of forest reserves conflicted w Slowly losing control over their lands and me tribespeople were forced into relations of powerful plainsmen, either working as tenan the new system of market agriculture or as felling and hauling of timber.28 Several of the many small risings or fituri Arnold were directly or indirectly related t Rampa rebellion of 1879-80, for example, ar restrictions concerning liquor and the fores against the various exactions, the tribespeop not live they might as well kill the const minor tribal chieftain, Tammam Dora, the r 27 Verrier Elwin, "Saora Fituris", Man in India, Bannerjee, "A Note on the Parlakamadi Forest Divi (1942), pp. 71-2. 28 This account is largely based on David Arnold, "R Rampa Rebellions, 1829-1914", in Ranajit Guha (ed. 1982); supplemented by C. Von Furer Haimendorf, Deccan", Man in India, xxv (1945). This content downloaded from 43.248.153.40 on Wed, 04 Oct 2023 05:29:45 +00:00 All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms STATE FORESTRY AND CONFLICT IN BRITISH INDIA 155 several police stations, executing a constable in an act of ritual sacrifice. Although Tammam Dora was shot by the police in June 1880, the revolt spread to the Golconda Hills of Vishakapatnam and the Rekepalle country in Bhadrachalam. The transfer of the latter territory from the Central Provinces to Madras had led to greater restrictions on the practice of jhum there. Protest emanated directly from forest grievances and, as in otherfituris, police stations - highly visible symbols of state authority - were frequent targets. It took several hundred policemen and ten army companies to suppress the revolt, a task not finally accomplished until November 1880. The last recorded fituri, in 1922-3, was, like its predecessors, closely linked to restrictions on tribal access to the forest. Its leader, a high-caste Hindu from the plains called Alluri Sita Rama Raju, was able to transform a local rising into a minor guerrilla war, recruiting dispossessed landholders and offenders against the forest laws, and gaining help from villagers who gave them food and shelter. After raids on police outposts had netted a haul of arms and ammunition, Raju's men evaded capture thanks to their superior knowledge of the hilly and wooded terrain. Unsuccessful in his attempts to spread the rebellion into the plains, Rama Raju was finally taken and shot in May 1924. When the Indian princes sought to emulate their British counter- parts in realizing the commercial value of their forests, they too came in conflict with shifting cultivators. Regarding the state takeover as a forfeiture of their hereditary rights, tribespeople in several chief- doms rose in revolt against attempts to curb jhum. A major rebellion took place in Bastar in 1910, directed against the new prohibition of the practice, restrictions on access to forest and its produce, and the begar (unpaid labour) exacted by state officials. The formation of reserved forests had resulted in the destruction of many villages and the eviction of their inhabitants. In order to draw attention to their grievances, some tribespeople went on hunger strike outside the king's palace at Jagdalpur. Affirming that it was an internal affair between them and their ruler, the rebels - mostly Marias and Murias - cut telegraph wires and blocked the roads. At the same time, police stations and forest outposts were burned, stacked wood looted and a campaign mounted against pardeshis (outsiders), most of them low-caste Hindu cultivators settled in Bastar. Led by their headmen, the rebels looted several markets and attacked and killed both state officials and merchants. In a matter of days, the rebellion engulfed nearly half the state, an area exceeding 6,000 square miles. This content downloaded from 43.248.153.40 on Wed, 04 Oct 2023 05:29:45 +00:00 All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms 156 PAST AND PRESENT NUMBER 123 Unnerved, the king called in a battalion of t a British officer) and detachments of the Mad police. In a decisive encounter near Jagdal tribesmen armed only with bows, arrows an from sixteen upwards, were captured.29 In 1940 a similar revolt broke out in the Adilabad district of Hyderabad. Here Gonds and Kolams, the principal cultivating tribes, were subjected to an invasion of Telugu and Maratha cultivators who flooded the district following the improvement of communications. Whole Gond villages fell to immigrant castes. In the uplands, mean- while, forest conservancy restricted jhum, with cultivated land lyin fallow under rotation being taken into forest reserves. Following th forcible disbandment of Gond and Kolam settlements in the Dhanora forest, the tribespeople, led by Kumra Bhimu, made repeated but unsuccessful attempts to contact state officials. After petitions for authorized resettlement were ignored, the tribespeople established their own settlement and began to clear forests for cultivation. An armed party sent to burn the new village was resisted by Bhimu's Gonds, who then took refuge in the mountains. When the police asked them to surrender, they were met with the counter-demand that Gonds and Kolams should be given possession of the land they had begun to cultivate. The police thereupon opened fire, killing Bhimu and several of his associates.30 Elsewhere in Hyderabad, the Hill Reddis of the Godavari Valley were also at the receiving end of the new forest laws. The restriction of jhum to small demarcated areas forced the Reddis to shorten fallow cycles or to prolong cultivation on a designated patch until deterioration set in. They made their feelings plain by moving across the Godavari to British territory, where the forest laws were not quite so stringent, returning to Hyderabad when the ban on jhum was lifted.31 An ingenious method of protest, similarly questioning forest policy without quite attempting to combat the state, is reported from several coastal districts in Madras Presidency, where cultivators, supported by several officials, insisted that the ban on jhum had resulted in a greater incidence of fever.32 29 National Archives of India, New Delhi, Foreign Department, Secret-I Progs., nos. 16-17 for Sept. 1910, nos. 34-40 for Aug. 1911; Grigson, Maria Gonds, pp. 16- 17; Clement Smith, "The Bastar Rebellion, 1910", Man in India, xxv (1945). For a fuller treatment of the 1910 Bastar revolt, see Ramachandra Guha, "Raja/Praja as Pita/ Putra: Forms of Customary Rebellion in Princely India", forthcoming. 30 Haimendorf, "Aboriginal Rebellions", pp. 213-16. 31 Haimendorf, Reddis of the Bison Hills, pp. 307-8, 318-19; C. Von Furer Haimen- dorf, Tribal Hyderabad: Four Reports (Hyderabad, 1945), pp. 3, 11, et al. 32 Anon., A Selection ofDespatches... on Forest Conservancy in India, pt. 2: Madras (London, 1871), pp. 148-50. This content downloaded from 43.248.153.40 on Wed, 04 Oct 2023 05:29:45 +00:00 All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms STATE FORESTRY AND CONFLICT IN BRITISH INDIA 157 These repeated protests had a significant impact on governmen policy. In some parts of Madras Presidency, certain patches of lan were set aside for tribespeople to continue jhum. For although "th Forest Department would welcome the complete stoppage of pod [Uhum] it is not done for fear offituris [tribal uprisings]",.s Elsewher the state found a novel way of pursuing commercial forestry withou further alienating tribal cultivators. This was the taungya method of agro-silviculture - developed in Burma in the nineteenth century in which jhum cultivators were allowed to grow food crops in th forest, provided they grew timber trees alongside. When, after a few years, the cultivator moved on to clear the next patch, a forest crop had been established on the vacated ground. Taungya thus made possible the establishment of the labour force necessary for fore works at a "comparatively low cost", and it is still widely in operation It helped to forestall the very real possibility of revolt if tribespeople were displaced by a prohibition of their characteristic form of culti- vation (although even taungya cultivators sometimes thwarted th state by planting up only those areas likely to be inspected by touring officials). Ironically enough, its success has even led to th reintroduction of jhum in tracts where it had died out or been pu down at an earlier stage.34 More commonly, however, the cumulative impact of market forces and state intervention forced the abandonment of jhum in favour of the plough or wage labour. Even where the practice continued, the disruption of the delicate balance between humans and forest initially through the usurpation of forests by the state and late through a secular rise of population, led to a sharp fall in the jhum cycle. A form of agriculture practised for several milleniums ha become unsustainable in the face of external forces. III SETTLED CULTIVATORS AND THE STATE Notwithstanding the spatial separation between field and fo the most part of India plough agriculturalists (mostly caste 33 Aiyappan, Report on the Socio-Economic Conditions of the Aborigina 16-17. 34 See H. R. Blanford, "Regeneration with the Assistance of Taungya i Indian Forest Records, xi, pt. 3 (1925); B. H. Baden-Powell, The Fores British Burma (Calcutta, 1874), p. 36; H. G. Champion and S. K. Se Silviculture for India (Delhi, 1968), esp. pp. 315-16. This content downloaded from 43.248.153.40 on Wed, 04 Oct 2023 05:29:45 +00:00 All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms 158 PAST AND PRESENT NUMBER 123 were scarcely less affected by forest reservat For they too depended on their natural habita adequate forest cover was ecologically necess especially in mountainous tracts where terrac and since animal husbandry was a valuable ap the forest was a prime source of fodder i leaves. The forests also provided such necessi and timber for construction and agricultura Here, too, state reservation enforced ch pattern of resource utilization, even if these as radical as in the case of shifting cultivato of the 1878 Act, the takeover of a tract of fo claims of surrounding villages. Under th codified) arrangements, the previously un severely circumscribed. These restrictions aff of agriculturalists, and in somewhat differe nated by cultivating proprietors, and whe was not strongly marked, those affected by primarily of middle to rich peasants, many rather than agriculturalists. On the other ha more advanced forms of class differentiation, was at the receiving end. These were adiv communities, who supplemented their me and share-croppers with the extraction an other minor forest produce. An example of the first form of deprivatio Presidency. There, several decades after fore had vivid memories of their traditional rights ing to adhere to informal boundaries demarc claimed and controlled by neighbouring villag which they clung to their rights was visib escalation in forest offences (averaging 30,00 killing of forest personnel a not infrequent formed to investigate forest grievances w villagers interpreted the term "free grazing the committee itself. While quite prepared to understood "free grazing" to mean "the ri forests": that is, the continuance of the terr 35 On traditional systems of communal resource Brandis, Memorandum on the Demarcation of the Publ This content downloaded from 43.248.153.40 on Wed, 04 Oct 2023 05:29:45 +00:00 All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms STATE FORESTRY AND CONFLICT IN BRITISH INDIA 159 formerly enjoyed.36 Thus the demand for grazing was accompanied by the demand for free fuel, timber and small timber, in effect "for the abolition of all control and for the right to use or destroy the forest property of the state without any restriction whatever". Com- menting on the widespread hostility towards state forest management, the committee observed that "the one department which appears at one time to have rivalled the Forest Department in unpopularity is the Salt Department, which, like the Forest Department, is concerned with a commodity of comparatively small value in itself but an article for daily use and consumption".37 In the state of Travancore, bordering Madras on the Malabar coast, restrictions on village use of the forest stemmed from two sources: the desire to commercialize the forest and the sale, at extremely low prices, of vast expanses of woodland to European planters. These processes were interrelated. The development of a road and railway network to facilitate the export of tea, coffee and rubber also served to hasten the pace of timber exploitation. As a consequence, agricul- turalists faced acute distress through the loss of green manure (exten- sively used in paddy cultivation) and other forest produce. Denied access to pasture, the population of sheep and goats declined precipi- tously in the years following forest reservation. While there were no incidents of large-scale protest, the peasantry refused to co-operate with the Forest Department or to submit to the new regulations.38 Not surprisingly, opposition to state forestry was far more intense among lower castes and tribespeople. An important source of income for tribal households in the Thane district of coastal Maharashtra was the sale of firewood to Koli fishermen. This trade was severely affected by the stricter control exercised over the forest from the later decades of the nineteenth century. Typically, the early manifestations of discontent were peaceful: petitioning the local administration, for example. When this had no impact, however, collective protest turned 36 Under commercial forest management, areas with young saplings are completely closed to grazing, thus restricting grazing to specific blocks of forest where it cannot harm the reproduction of commercial timber species: see, for details, Guha, "Scientific Forestry and Social Change". See also J. McKee, "On Grazing", Indian Forester, i (1875). 37 Anon., Report of the Forest Committee, i (Madras, 1913), pp. 2-3, 8, et al. See also C. J. Baker, An Indian Rural Economy, 1880-1955 (Delhi, 1984), pp. 157-61. 38 See M. S. S. Pandian, "Political Economy of Agrarian Change in Nanchilnadu: The Late Nineteenth Century to 1939" (Univ. of Madras Ph.D. thesis, 1985). The impact on local ecology of the massive expansion of tea plantations in north-east India has yet to be studied. Apart from the widespread deforestation they entailed, these plantations also displaced communities of hunter-gatherers and shifting cultivators. This content downloaded from 43.248.153.40 on Wed, 04 Oct 2023 05:29:45 +00:00 All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms 160 PAST AND PRESENT NUMBER 123 violent. Surrounding the camp of a dep villagers demanded that "the forests be abolished, country liquor [be sold] at o anna a paili, rice at R[upe]e 11 per maund should redeem their mortgaged land an another incident, a large number of tribes to market were intercepted by the poli stacked wood on a nearby railway line and pass. Sensing the prevailing mood of defia of the force allowed them to proceed.39 A similar turn of events is reported from Bengal Presidency. In an area called the by the Midnapur Zamindari Company the important British managing agenc was cultivated by Santhal tribal tenants specified that all land was to be handed ov of the railway and consequently of a thr zamindars to impose sharp restrictions tribespeople first tried the courts and oth However, the conditions of economic distr math of the First World War provoked a 1918 the forest-dwelling Santhals procee (market) looting, their principal target traders who were money-lenders as well. Some years later, and after the intervent ists, the Jungle Mahals witnessed a movem on the question of forest rights. Early i forest labour went on strike. Following a of the M.Z.C. and the strikers, the Cong to plunder the forests. Further incidents the burning of foreign cloth) and attempt paddy were also reported. In one subdi Santhals began to plunder jungles leased to police party trying to confiscate the newly 9 Raajen Singh, "Dawn of Political Consciousness in Background Papers in Forestry (mimeo, BUILD n.d.). For attempts to enforce state monopoly over fir coastal districts, see D. Brandis, Suggestions Regard Madras Presidency (Madras, 1883), pp. 313-15. 40 Swapan Dasgupta, "Local Politics in Bengal: M (School of Oriental and African Studies, Univ. of 127-44. This content downloaded from 43.248.153.40 on Wed, 04 Oct 2023 05:29:45 +00:00 All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms STATE FORESTRY AND CONFLICT IN BRITISH INDIA 161 Another form of assertion of traditional rights was the looting o fish from ponds controlled by individual zamindars. In April 19 there was a wave of such activity and breaches of the forest law ov an area of 200 square miles, from Jhargram in Midnapur to Ghatshi in the Singhbhum district of Bihar. While recognizing this to b "illegal", the tribespeople argued that tank-raiding would force t zamindars to concede their customary rights over forests. The Santha commented the district magistrate, "will tell you how in his father time all jungles were free, and bandhs (ponds) open to the publi Sometimes he is right...". When the protests were supported by a dispossessed local chieftain, even the recognition that they were illeg was abandoned. Indeed, as alarmed officials reported, 90 per cent of the crowd believed that they were merely restoring a golden age whe all jungles were free.41 Defiance of forest regulations also formed part of the country-wid campaigns led by the Indian National Congress in 1920-2 and 193 2. Gandhi's visit to Cudappah in south-eastern India in Septemb 1921 was widely hailed as an opportunity to get the forest law abolished. In nearby Guntur peasants invaded the forests in the beli that "Gandhi-Raj" had been established and that the forests wer now open. Ten years later, during the Civil Disobedience movement, the violation of forest laws was far more widespread. In Maharashtr where women played a significant part, nearly 60,000 villagers Akola district marched into government forests with their cattle. I Satara district peasants resolved not to pay the grazing fee, arguing that grazing restrictions deprived the sacred cow of its daily foo Encroachment on reserved forests was followed by the felling of te trees and the hoisting of the national tricolour on a teak pole in fron of a temple dedicated to the Hindu god Shiva. Women also played key role in a similar campaign in the coastal district of North Kana (in present-day Karnataka), garlanding and smearing ritual paste on men who went off to the forest to cut the valued sandal tree. Ther too, the timber was loaded on to carts and stacked in front of local temple. When the men were arrested, the women symbolically breached the rules themselves, invoking the god Sri Krishna wh had gone into the forest. In the Central Provinces, meanwhile tribal peoples had come forth in great numbers to participate in th organized violation of forest laws. While formally conducted und 41 Sumit Sarkar, "The Conditions and Nature of Subaltern Militancy: Bengal fro Swadeshi to Non-Cooperation", in Ranajit Guha (ed.), Subaltern Studies, iii (Ne Delhi, 1984), pp. 302-7. This content downloaded from 43.248.153.40 on Wed, 04 Oct 2023 05:29:45 +00:00 All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms 162 PAST AND PRESENT NUMBER 123 the rubric of the Congress, these mov considerable degree of autonomy from th violent incidents were clearly in defiance ded as the latter were to an ideology of n Perhaps the most sustained opposition to was to be found in the Himalayan distr Pradesh.43 Dominated by magnificent s the hill forests have been the only source most valuable forest property in the subc they have also played a crucial role in su mountainous terrain, a role strikingly systems of resource conservation evolved of village forests. In the period of colonial rule this reg distinct socio-political structures - the Garhwal and the British-administered Kumaun Division. Since the forests of Tehri Garhwal came under commercial management even earlier (circa 1865), however, peasant resistance to encroachment on customary rights was remarkably sustained and uniform in both areas. In Tehri important if localized movements occurred in 1904, 1906, 1930 and 1944-8, and forest grievances played an important and sometimes determining role in all of them. Through the collective violation of the new laws and attacks on forest officials, the peasantry underscored their claim to a full and exclusive control over forests and pasture. As in other pre-capitalist societies where the ruler relied on a traditional idiom of legitimacy, protest was aimed at forest management and its back-up officials and not at the monarch himself. In Kumaun Division, on the other hand, social protest was aimed directly at the colonial state, and at the most visible signs of its rule: the pine forests under intensive commercial management and 42 Sumit Sarkar, "Primitive Rebellion and Modern Nationalism: A Note on Forest Satyagraha in the Non-Cooperation and Civil Disobedience Movements", in K. N. Pannikar (ed.), National and Left Movements in India (New Delhi, 1980); G. S. Halappa, History of Freedom Movement in Karnataka, ii (Bangalore, 1964), pp. 110- 12; Sulabha Brahme and Ashok Upadhya, A Critical Analysis of the Social Formation and Peasant Resistance in Maharashtra (mimeo, Gokhale Inst. Politics and Economics, Pune, 1979), ii, pp. 153-4, iii, pp. 679-80; D. E. U. Baker, "A 'Serious Time': Forest Satyagraha in Madhya Pradesh, 1930", Indian Econ. and Hist. Rev., xxi (1984). 43 For a detailed treatment of forest management and social protest in these districts, see Ramachandra Guha, "Forestry and Social Protest in British Kumaun, c. 1893- 1921", in Ranajit Guha (ed.), Subaltern Studies, iv (New Delhi, 1985); Ramachandra Guha, The Unquiet Woods: A Century of Protest in the Indian Himalaya (New Delhi and Berkeley, forthcoming). This content downloaded from 43.248.153.40 on Wed, 04 Oct 2023 05:29:45 +00:00 All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms STATE FORESTRY AND CONFLICT IN BRITISH INDIA 163 government buildings and offices. It reached its zenith in the summer of 1921, when a wide-ranging campaign to burn forests controlled by the Forest Department virtually paralysed the administration forcing it to abolish the much-disliked system of forced labour and to abandon effective control over areas of woodland. Largely auton- omous of organized nationalist activity as represented by the Con gress, the movements of 1916, 1921, 1930 and 1942 in Kumaun Division brought to the fore the central importance of forests i peasant economy and society. Notwithstanding inevitable differences in the social idiom of protest, in both Tehri Garhwal and Kumaun Division forest restrictions were the source of bitter conflicts, unpre- cedented in their intensity and range, between the peasantry and the state.44 IV EVERYDAY FORMS OF RESISTANCE: THE CASE OF JAUNSAR BAWAR In a penetrating study of rural Malaysia the political scientist Ja Scott has observed that, while most students of rural politics focused on agrarian revolt and revolution, these are by no m the characteristic forms of peasant resistance. Far more frequen peasants resort to methods of resisting the demands of non-cultiv 61ites that minimize the element of open confrontation: non operation with imposed rules and regulations, for example, g false or misleading information to tax collectors and other offic or migration.45 In colonial India, too, the peasantry often resort violent protest only after quasi-legal channels, such as petitions peaceful strikes, had been tried and found wanting. Although historical record is heavily biased towards episodes of violent rev in which peasants impose themselves rather more emphatical the processes of state, it is important not to neglect other form protest that were not overtly confrontational in form. These other forms of resistance often preceded, or ran concurre with, open conflict. Thus in many areas breaches of forest laws the most tangible evidence of the unpopularity of state managem the available evidence shows that, typically, the incidence of for "crime" followed a steadily escalating trend. While this woul 44 Since 1973 these hill districts have been the epicentre of the Chipko (tree-hug movement, possibly the best-known environmental movement in contemporary 45 J. C. Scott, Weapons of the Weak: Everyday Forms of Peasant Resistance Haven, 1986). This content downloaded from 43.248.153.40 on Wed, 04 Oct 2023 05:29:45 +00:00 All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms 164 PAST AND PRESENT NUMBER 123 true of regions where sustained protes described above), the absence of an organiz not signify approval of state forestry.46 That the conflict between villagers and c did not always manifest itself in open rev experience of Jaunsar Bawar, the hilly seg which bordered Tehri Garhwal on the w the forests of Jaunsar Bawar had attracted They were important for three reasons: as railway, as "inspection" forests for train School in the nearby town of Dehra Dun, a timber for the military cantonment of Ch made in 1868 the state divided the forests into three classes. While Class I forests were wholly closed for their protection, villagers had certain rights of pasturage and timber collection in the second class. The third class was to be kept for the exclusive use of the peasants with the caveat that they were not allowed to barter or sell any of the produce. Early protests were directed at this apparent government mon- opoly. The confused legal status of the Class III forests, in which (village leaders argued) it was not clear who held actual proprietary right, the state or the village, was compounded by the refusal to allow rightholders to dispose of their timber as they pleased. While peasants believed that they could not dispose of the produce of the Class III forests as they liked and that their control was only a formal one, the government for its part was loath to give up its monopoly over the timber trade. Extending over three decades, and conducted through a series of petitions and representations, this was in essence a dispute over the proprietary claims of the two parties. As the superintendent of the district observed, villagers were concerned more with the legal status of the Class III forests than with their extent: indeed "they would be contented to take much less than they have now, if they felt it was their own".48 46 Work on forest "crime", so far unpublished, by three Indian historians should help clarify some of these issues: Neeladri Bhattacharya on Kulu and Kangra, Prabhu Mahapatra on Chotanagpur and Gopal Mukherjee on Chathisgarh. 47 For the compulsions behind the state takeover of forests in this area, see N. Hearle, Working Plan of the Deoban Range, Jaunsar Forest Division, Northwestern Provinces (Allahabad, 1889); and D. Brandis, Suggestions Regarding the Management of the Forests Included in the Forest School Circle, Northwestern Provinces (Simla, 1879). 48 Uttar Pradesh Regional Archives, Dehra Dun (hereafter U.P.R.A.), Post Mutiny Records (hereafter P.M.R.), List No. 2 (hereafter L2), Dept. XI, file no. 71, H. G. Ross, superintendent of Dehra Dun, memorandum on verbal complaints made to the (cont. on p. 165) This content downloaded from 43.248.153.40 on Wed, 04 Oct 2023 05:29:45 +00:00 All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms STATE FORESTRY AND CONFLICT IN BRITISH INDIA 165 The unsettled state of the forest boundaries had made the peasantry suspicious that the government would slowly take over the Class III forests and put them under commercial management. On a tour of the district, the lieutenant-governor of the province encountered repeated complaints concerning the "severity of the forest rules, dwelling chiefly on the fact that no forest or wasteland was made over to them in absolute proprietary right, and so they were afraid that at some future period government might resume the whole of it and leave them destitute". As one hill man succinctly put it, "the forests have belonged to us from time immemorial: our ancestors planted them and have protected them: now that they have become of value, government steps in and robs us of them". The superintendent urged a revision of the forest boundaries and the confirmation of village proprietorship in Class III forests, since "nothing would tend to allay the irritation and discontent in the breasts of the people so much as giving them a full proprietary title to all lands not required by government".49 At the level of everyday existence, the restrictions on customary use under the Forest Act were regarded as unnecessarily irksome. Thus the government tried, not always with success, to restrict the use of deodar (Himalayan cedar, the chief commercial species) by villagers, arguing that, while the peasants were "clearly entitled to wood according to their wants, nothing is said about its being deodar". This legal sleight of hand did not always succeed, as villagers insisted on claiming deodar as part of their allotted grant, the wood being extensively used in the construction of houses.50 Again, the takeover of village grazing lands and oak forests to supply the fuel and grass requirements of Chakrata cantonment was a grievance acknowledged by district officials to be legitimate, even if they could do little about it within the overall structure of colonial administration. Particularly contentious were proposals to regulate or ban the traditional practice of burning the forest floor before the monsoons for a fresh crop of grass. While this was regarded by the Forest Department as essential for the reproduction of timber trees, it led to the drying-up of (n. 48 cont.) lieutenant-governor by syanas (headmen) of Jaunsar and Bawar (n.d., but probably 1871 or 1872). 49 U.P.R.A., P.M.R., L2, Dept. I, file no. 2, no. 340, superintendent, Dehra Dun, to commissioner, Meerut Division, 15 Sept. 1873. See also C. Bagshawe, "Forest Rights in Jaunsar", in D. Brandis and A. Smythies (eds.), Report on the Proceedings of the Forest Conference Held at Simla, October 1875 (Calcutta, 1876), p. 33. so G. F. Pearson, "Deodar Forests of Jaunsar Bawar", in Selections from the Records of the Government of the Northwestern Provinces, 2nd ser., ii (Allahabad, 1870). This content downloaded from 43.248.153.40 on Wed, 04 Oct 2023 05:29:45 +00:00 All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms 166 PAST AND PRESENT NUMBER 123 grass and, consequently, a shortage of proliferation of ticks.51 Pointing to deod young seedlings had sprung up despite th occasional fires, villagers were openly sce claim that closure was "scientific".52 An additional reason for the persistent hostility towards grazing restrictions was the liberal allow- ance extended to nomadic cattle herders from the plains. Important as suppliers of milk to the cantonment and to lumbermen working in the forest, these herdsmen from the Muslim community of Gujars were allowed access to forest pasture even in areas where sheep and cattle belonging to the local peasantry were banned.53 The Forest Department also prohibited the use of the axe by peasants claiming their allotment of timber. Villagers demurred, arguing that the saw was too expensive, that they were not familiar with its use, that split wood lasted longer than sawn and, finally, that since their forefathers had always used the axe, so would they. As a consequence, attempts to insert a clause prohibiting the use of the axe in the land settlement of 1873 came to nothing. Although the settlement had considerably raised the land revenue, the main griev- ance expressed continued to be the infringement of village rights over forest. Village headmen first asked for a postponement of the settlement, and then drove a hard bargain, agreeing to the new revenue rates and the continuance of forest restrictions only on condition they were allowed to use axes in obtaining their grants of timber from forest land.54 If such petitions represented an appeal to the "traditional" obli- gations of the state,ss the peasants of Jaunsar Bawar also resorted to 51 U.P.R.A., P.M.R., L2, file no. 244, note by C. Streadfield, superintendent, Dehra Dun, 1 Nov. 1898. See also Guha, "Scientific Forestry and Social Change", for attempts to resolve this conflict. 52 See E. C. McMoir, "Cattle Grazing in Deodar Forests", Indian Forester, viii (1882), pp. 276-7. 53 U.P.R.A., P.M.R., L2, file no. 244, no. 483, B. B. Osmaston, deputy conservator of forests, Jaunsar Division, to assistant superintendent, Jaunsar Bawar, 19 Mar. 1899. This clash between the peasantry and Gujars, with the Forest Department trapped in between, has persisted to this day. See Bharat Dogra, Forests and People (Rishikesh, 1980). 54 U.P.R.A., P.M.R., L2, file no. 244, no. 520, report on forest administration in Jaunsar Bawar, submitted by superintendent, Dehra Dun, to commissioner, Meerut Division, 10 Dec. 1900; L2, Dept. XXI, file no. 244, E. C. Buck, officiating secretary to Board of Revenue, N.W.P., to C. A. Elliot, secretary to government of N.W.P.; L2, file no. 2, no. 47, settlement officer, Jaunsar Bawar, to commissioner, Meerut Division, 17 Feb. 1872. ss That is, what James Scott has called the key reciprocal duty of non-cultivating elites in peasant societies, the guaranteeing of subsistence. See J. C. Scott, The Moral Economy of the Peasant (New Haven, 1976). This content downloaded from 43.248.153.40 on Wed, 04 Oct 2023 05:29:45 +00:00 All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms STATE FORESTRY AND CONFLICT IN BRITISH INDIA 167 extra-legal forms of protest which defied the government's control over forest extraction and utilization. Before an era of motorized transport, commercial forestry depended on the fast-flowing hill rivers to carry felled logs to the plains, where they were collected by timber merchants and sold as railway sleepers. Nearly two million sleepers were floated annually down the Yamuna and its chief tribu- tary, the Tons, and they were considered to be the property of the Forest Department. Although villagers dwelling on the river banks had been "repeatedly warned that Government property is sacred", thefts were endemic. As "every Jaunsari knows well all about the working of the Government forests and the floating of timber", officials tried to stop pilfering by levying heavier sentences than those sanctioned by the Forest Act. Thus, while each sleeper was worth only 6 rupees, it was not unknown for villagers caught in possession of one to be sentenced to two months' rigorous imprisonment or a fine of 30 rupees. Stiff sentences needed to be enforced, magistrates argued, as "river thieves are pests and a deterrent fine is necessary". Such measures failed to have the anticipated effect, and as late as 1930 - a full sixty years after the state takeover of woodland - the superintendent of the district was constrained to admit that "pilfering, misappropriating and stealing Government and State timber" was "a chronic form of crime in Jaunsar Bawar".56 As in eighteenth-century England, the infringement of forest laws, which was viewed as "crime" by the state, was an assertion of customary rights, and as such it represented an incipient form of social protest.57 In Jaunsar Bawar the theft of floating timber and the defacement of government marks were accompanied by other forms of forest "crime", notably the infringement of the laws preventing forest fires. In a fascinating incident, the head priest of the major temple of the area, dedicated to the god Mahashu Devta at Hanol,58 organized a firing of the pine forest to get rid of the dry grass and the insects it harboured, and of the deer who were a hazard to the adjoining croplands. Under the direction of the priest, Ram Singh, 56 See Dehra Dun Collectorate, Criminal Record Room, Basta (Box) for 1927-30 for Chakrata Tehsil, trial nos. 98 of 1925, 36 of 1927, 53 of 1930, and unnumbered trials dated 1 May, 15 June 1922, 7 Apr. 1923. 57 See the fine studies by Douglas Hay and E. P. Thompson in Douglas Hay et al., Albion's Fatal Tree (Harmondsworth, 1976); and Thompson's Whigs and Hunters (Harmondsworth, 1976). 5ss For the importance of the deity in the social and cultural life of the area, see the sensitive study by Jean Claude Galey, "Creditors, Kings and Death", in Charles Malamud (ed.), Debts and Debtors (New Delhi, 1983). This content downloaded from 43.248.153.40 on Wed, 04 Oct 2023 05:29:45 +00:00 All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms 168 PAST AND PRESENT NUMBER 123 several villagers set fire to the forest on Under Section 78 of the Forest Act, villag the forest staff of any fire in their vicin do, but only after several hours had elaps a low-caste labourer, Dumon Kolta, to c go slowly. While early enquiries clearly revealed that the fire was not acciden- tal, its occurrence near the Mahashu Devta temple and the involve- ment of its priest made it difficult for the state to convict those accused."9 Indeed several prosecution witnesses, after a meeting with village headmen at the temple, suddenly retracted their confessions in court. Expected by the state to act as a bulwark of the administra- tion, the headmen underlined their partisan stance by appearing en masse for the defence. One elder, Ranjit Singh (whose fields were closest to the forest fire), disavowed the wajib-ul-arz (record of rights), which required headmen personally to put out fires and collect other villagers for the same purpose. As he defiantly told the divisional forest officer, "such a wajib-ul-arz should be burnt and... his ancestors were ill-advised to have agreed to such a wajib-ul-arz with the Government".60 Such organized and collective violations were hardly as frequent, of course, as the numerous acts of individual "crime". In Jaunsar Bawar centuries of unrestricted use had fostered the belief that the forests were open and accessible to all villagers. Not surprisingly, the demarcation of forest land as government property aroused a "great cry". 61 What differentiates Jaunsar from other forest areas where protest took a more open and militant form is the reliance on individ- ual and largely "hidden" forms of resistance. But this was an equally effective strategy in thwarting colonial forest administration. As an official reflecting on the history of state forestry in Jaunsar Bawar remarked, "prosecutions for forest offences, meant as deterrents, only led to incendiarism, which was followed by more prosecutions and the vicious circle was complete".62 Clearly, these ostensibly individual acts of violation relied on a network, however informal, of 9 The oath in the court of Jaunsar Bawar was taken in the name of Mahashu Devta. 60 See Dehra Dun Collectorate, Criminal Record Room, criminal case no. 98 of 1915. Ram Singh and five others were sentenced to terms of imprisonment ranging from three months to a year. 61 See E. T. Atkinson, The Himalayan Districts of the Northwestern Provinces of India, i (1882; repr. Delhi, 1981), p. 870. 62 M. D. Chaturvedi, "The Progress of Forestry in the United Provinces", Indian Forester, li (1925), p. 365. This content downloaded from 43.248.153.40 on Wed, 04 Oct 2023 05:29:45 +00:00 All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms STATE FORESTRY AND CONFLICT IN BRITISH INDIA 169 consensus and support within the wider community. Since all strata of village society were uniformly affected by commercial forestry, every violation of the Forest Act could draw sustenance from a more general distrust of state control; and since individuals could quit easily be subject to the due processes of colonial justice, this resistance could hardly "hope to achieve its purpose except through a general- ized, often unspoken complicity".63 V THE DECLINE OF ARTISANAL INDUSTRY Apart from its all too visible impact on the cultivating classes, forest management also contributed to the decline of various f of artisanal industry by restricting access to traditional sources material.64 Chief among these was bamboo, a resource vital to aspects of rural life. Extensively used in house construction, b weaving, for the manufacture of furniture and musical instru and even as food and fodder,65 this plant was initially trea weed by colonial foresters; and early management plans ad its removal from timber-producing areas. With the discovery early decades of this century that bamboo was a highly suitabl material for paper-making, there was a radical shift: foresters encouraged industrial exploitation while maintaining restrictio village use. Many weavers were forced to buy bamboo from ernment-run depots or on the open market.66 Limited avai also led to new forms of social conflict within the agrarian pop Thus the Baigas, who had earlier supplemented slash-and-burn culture with bamboo-weaving, lost this subsidiary source of in when the Basors, an artisanal caste specializing in basketwo serted their "trades union" rights to a monopoly of bamboo su by the Forest Department.67 While bamboo, whether obtained surreptitiously from the fo 63 Cf. J. C. Scott, "Resistance without Protest and without Organization: Opposition to the Islamic and the Christian Tithe", Comp. Studies in Soc. an xxix (1987), pp. 417-52. 64 There is an extensive literature on the decline of Indian handicrafts under rule. An early statement of the "deindustrialization" thesis is D. R. Gad Industrial Evolution of India in Recent Times (Oxford, 1922). 65 See S. Kurz, "Bamboo and its Use", Indian Forester, i (1876). 66 See S. N. Prasad and Madhav Gadgil, Conservation of Bamboo Resou Karnataka (mimeo, Karnataka State Council of Science and Technology, B 1981). 67 Elwin, Baiga, p. 80. This content downloaded from 43.248.153.40 on Wed, 04 Oct 2023 05:29:45 +00:00 All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms 170 PAST AND PRESENT NUMBER 123 or bought in the market, continues to present-day village society, one form of i collapsed under colonial rule was the manu iron. Again we are indebted to Verrier Elw the industry in its declining years. In his b smelting tribe of the Central Provinces, E detail how the high taxes on furnaces a charcoal led to a sharp fall in the numb from 510 to 136 between 1909 and 1938. A the soft, malleable ores of village smelter virtually forced the Agaria out of busines communications made local iron uncomp imported British metal. Deeply attached t resisted as best they could, by defying for burning or, alternatively, migrating to n were accorded more liberal treatment.6 Madras Presidency, the first inspector-g Brandis, provided confirmatory evidence that was formerly very widespread.69 Proposals to set up ironworks controlle briefly evoke an interest in the conservat Pointing out that the metallic content of I that of European, several administrator large tracts of forest for the benefit of Eu works, using the latest technological pr of charcoal-based iron production was pre that "iron-making by hand in India will s things of the past". 70While acknowledg wood in presently inaccessible areas made iron a potential source of forest income, B 68 Verrier Elwin, The Agaria (Calcutta, 1942), pp. 3, et al. Cf. also S. Bhattacharya, "Iron Smelters Industry of India: From Stagnation to Atrophy", i Culture and Society (Calcutta, 1972). As is evident, contemporary writings of anthropologists. Elwin particular, have portrayed with great sensitivity an and cultural deprivation whereby different commu over their means of subsistence. As detailed and fir changes under colonialism, their writings should q sources. 69 Brandis, Suggestions Regarding the Management of Forests, p 70 Anon., "Iron-Making in India", Indian Forester, vi (1880), also H. Warth, Notes on the Manufacture of Iron and the Future o Industry in India (Simla, 1881). This content downloaded from 43.248.153.40 on Wed, 04 Oct 2023 05:29:45 +00:00 All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms STATE FORESTRY AND CONFLICT IN BRITISH INDIA 171 form of utilization. Articulating an early version of "intermediate" or "appropriate" technology, he believed that any such attempt must build upon, rather than supplant, traditional forms of manufacture. In the event both proposals came to nothing and the industry died an inevitable if slow death.71 Other forms of artisanal industry, too, declined under these twin pressures: the withdrawal of existing sources of raw material and competition from machine-made, largely foreign, goods. Thus the tassar silk industry, depending on the collection of wild cocoons from the forest, experienced a uniform decline through most of India from the 1870s onwards. Here, too, decay could be attributed to the new forest laws: specifically, the increased duties levied on weavers collecting cocoons from the forest. Although the tassar industry experienced a later revival under official patronage (chiefly in response to a growing export market), the household industry was in no position to compete with the newly formed centres of production operating from towns. A parallel case concerns the decline of village tanners and dyers, likewise denied access to essential raw materials found in the forest.72 CONCLUSION: THE SOCIAL IDIOM OF PROTEST AND ITS MECHANISMS As we indicated at the outset, in the absence of detailed stud the socio-ecological history of different regions, the present stud only provide a preliminary mapping of the various dimensi forest-based conflict in British India. Through a synthesis o available evidence from both primary and secondary sources, we tried to indicate the quite astonishing range of conflicts over ac to nature, a range entirely consistent with the wide variety of eco 71 Brandis, Suggestions Regarding the Management of Forests, pp. 53-9, 136 D. Brandis, "The Utilization of the Less Valuable Woods in the Fire-Protected of the Central Provinces, by Iron-Making", Indian Forester, v (1879). The vis modern charcoal-fired iron furnace finally came to fruition in Karnataka Visveswaraya, Memoirs of my Working Life (Bangalore, 1951), pp. 92-5. 72 This paragraph is based on information kindly supplied to the autho Tirthankar Ray of the Centre for Development Studies, Trivandrum, who is r ing handicraft production during the colonial period. Fishing communities w affected by forest laws, being forced to use inferior wood for canoes owing to th duties levied on teak by the Forest Department. See Grigson, Maria Gonds, p 4. Among other artisanal castes, evidence from Khandesh in western India su that bangle-makers were almost ruined by the fee imposed on wood for f Maharashtra State Archives, Revenue Department, file 73 of 1884 (personal com cation from Sumit Guha, St. Stephen's College, Delhi). This content downloaded from 43.248.153.40 on Wed, 04 Oct 2023 05:29:45 +00:00 All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms 172 PAST AND PRESENT NUMBER 123 regimes and, correspondingly, of social fo lent in the Indian subcontinent. Yet even some interesting regularities in the form in cally expressed itself, notably against the traditional rights over the forest. In essence, state monopoly and its comm forest ran contrary to the subsistence eth a contrast first developed by E. P. Thom eighteenth-century food riot, if the custom on a moral economy of provision, scientif on a political economy of profit. 73These of the forest were captured in a percept Wyndham, commissioner of Kumaun du he observed that the recurrent conflict "struggle for existence between the villag ment; the former to live, the latter to sh department looks on as efficient fores duality was invoked by someone ranged fence: Badridutt Pande, the leader of the state management, tins of pine resin had re butter) as the main produce of the forest consequences for the village economy.74 If state monopoly severely undermine what is striking about social protest is tha this monopoly. In many areas peasants government to rescind the regulations. impact, they issued a direct challenge to s attacks on areas controlled by the Forest D profit. Whether expressed covertly, throu or openly, through the collective violat focused on commercially valuable spe deodar in different geographical region were being promoted at the expense of 73 E. P. Thompson, "The Moral Economy of the E Century", Past and Present, no. 50 (Feb. 1971). 74 Uttar Pradesh State Archives, Forest Departme 11/21, Percy Wyndham to H. S. Crosthwaite, 27 Fe W. C. Dible, district magistrate, Almora, crimin perceptive study of alternate notions of property colonists and native Indians in North America, see Land: Indians, Colonists and the Ecology of New 1985), esp. ch. 4. This content downloaded from 43.248.153.40 on Wed, 04 Oct 2023 05:29:45 +00:00 All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms STATE FORESTRY AND CONFLICT IN BRITISH INDIA 173 commercially but of greater use to the village economy. While chal- lenging the proprietary right of the state, peasant actions were remark ably discerning. Thus in the Kumaun movement cited above, th "incendiary" fires of the summer of 1921 covered 320 square mile of exclusively pine forests. In other words, by design rather than accident, the equally vast areas of broad-leaved forests also controlled by the state were spared, being of greater use to hill agriculture. As in peasant movements in other parts of the world, arson as a techniqu of social protest had both a symbolic and a utilitarian significance the latter by contesting the claim of the state over key resources, the former by selectively choosing targets where the state was most vulnerable.75 Historical parallels with other peasant movements far removed in time and space are evident, too, in the close association of protest with popular religion. The ideology of social protest was heavily overlaid with religious symbolism. In the imagery of the famous Hindu epic, the Ramayana, for example, the British government was portrayed as a demonic government (Rakshas Raj) and the king emperor equated with the very personification of evil, the demon king Ravan.76 A religious idiom also reflected the sense of cultural deprivation consequent on the loss of control over resources crucial to subsistence. In many areas the customary use of nature was governed by traditional systems of resource use and conservation which involved a mix of religion, folklore and tradition regulating both the quantum and the form of exploitation.77 The suppression and occasionally even obliteration of these indigenous systems of resource management 75 Modern environmentalists concerned with the abuse of nature for profit have also considered using forms of directed arson or "ecotage" (that is, ecological sabotage). Thus a group in the western United States which had previously fixed spikes in trees to thwart logging has now threatened to burn forests marked for felling, with the justification that, while fires were "natural", logging brought in roads and more felling. See Nicholas D. Kristof, "Forest Sabotage Is Urged by Some", New York Times, 22 Jan. 1986, p. A-21. 76 Guha, "Forestry and Social Protest", p. 92. On the religious idiom of peasant protest, see the important work by Ranajit Guha, Elementary Aspects of Peasant Insurgency in Colonial India (New Delhi, 1983). Religion was sometimes invoked to stall attempts to take over forests. Thus the manager of a temple grove in Malabar refused to lease the forest to the government, on the grounds that the temple deity had threatened him with dire consequences if he entered into such an agreement: see Anon., Selection of Despatches, pp. 213-15. 77 For a review of traditional conservation practices in India, see Madhav Gadgil, "Social Restraints on Resource Utilization: The Indian Experience", in D. Pitt and J. A. Mcneely (eds.), Culture and Conservation (Dublin, 1985). This content downloaded from 43.248.153.40 on Wed, 04 Oct 2023 05:29:45 +00:00 All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms 174 PAST AND PRESENT NUMBER 123 under colonial auspices was acutely felt b albeit in somewhat different ways. The Ba attempts to convert them into plough a their myth of origin, in which they had b lacerate the breasts of mother earth w observes, "every Baiga who has yielded to to be standing on papidharti, or sinful ear conversion, it was not without divine re it, "when the bewar [slash and burn] w touched the plough... a man died in ev The Gonds, aboriginal plough cultivators, by a melancholia or what Elwin has e nerve".79 They were convinced that the lo the coming of Kaliyug, an age of darkness medical tradition would be rendered comp ous and seductive was the power of mod their deities had gone over to the camp resist the changes wrought by that ubiqui society, the railway, "all the gods took the t the big cities" - where with their help the The belief that traditional occupations we was evident, too, in the obvious reluctance iron-smelting. According to their myth of and plough cultivation were sinful. The old days, when they were faithful to iron health. Now that government taxes an forced many ironworkers to take to cultiv provided immunity from disease. The r authority concerned charcoal-burning, and in the numerous dreams that hinged on jungle, and which often culminated in the and beaten up by forest officials."' 78 Elwin, Baiga, pp. 106-7. See also R. N. Datta, " Shifting Cultivation in Madhya Pradesh (India)", 371. Drawing a parallel with attempts to settle A Smohalla, prophet of a "messianic" cult of the Co followers in 1870: "You ask me to plough the gro my mother's bosom? You ask me to dig for stone. S bones? You ask me to cut grass. But how dare I cut 79 Elwin, Aboriginals, passim. 80 Verrier Elwin, Leaves from a Jungle (1936; rep Elwin, A Philosophy for NEFA (Delhi, 1960), p. 8 Elwin, Songs of the Forest: The Folk Poetry of the 81 Elwin, Agaria, pp. 264, 267-8. This content downloaded from 43.248.153.40 on Wed, 04 Oct 2023 05:29:45 +00:00 All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms STATE FORESTRY AND CONFLICT IN BRITISH INDIA 175 Researches over the past two decades have demonstrated that, while peasants operate in a world largely composed of "illiterates" whose movements lack a written manifesto, their actions are imbued with a certain rationality and an internally consistent system of values. It is the task of the scholar to reconstruct this ideology - an ideology that informs the peasant's everyday life as much as episodes of revolt - even where it has not been formally articulated.82 From a reconstruction of the different episodes of social protest surveyed in this article, we can discern a definite ideological content to peasant actions. Protest against enforced social and ecological changes clearly articulated a sophisticated theory of resource use that had both political and cultural overtones. Of special significance is the wide variety of strategies used by different categories of resource users to oppose state intervention. Hunter-gatherers and artisans, small and dispersed communities lacking an institutional network of organization, were unable directly to challenge state forest policies. They did, however, try to break the new regulations by resorting chiefly to what one writer has called "avoidance protest": petty crime or migration, for example, which minimized the element of confrontation with the state.83 In the long term, however, these groups were forced to abandon their traditional occupations and to eke out a precarious living by accepting a subordi- nate role in the dominant system of agricultural production. Both slash-and-burn and plough agriculturalists were able to mount a more sustained opposition. Their forms of resistance ranged from individual to collective defiance, from passive or "hidden" protest to open and often violent confrontation with instituted authority. Tightly knit in cohesive "tribal" communities, jhum cultivators characteristi- cally responded to forest laws with a militant resistance which was almost wholly outside the stream of organized nationalism. The fate of this protracted resistance varied greatly across different regions. Occasionally the colonial state capitulated, allowing traditional forms of cultivation to continue. More frequently the state reached an accommodation with these communities, restricting but not eliminat- ing jhum cultivation. The consequent shrinkage of the forest area available for swidden plots, coupled with rising population, led 82 One may cite in this connection the work of Rodney Hilton, Eric Hobsbawm, George Rude, Jim Scott and E. P. Thompson and, in India, the writings of the "Subaltern Studies" school. 83 Michael Adas, "From Avoidance to Confrontation: Peasant Protest in Precolonial and Colonial Southeast Asia", Comp. Studies in Soc. and Hist., xxiii (1981), pp. 217- 47. This content downloaded from 43.248.153.40 on Wed, 04 Oct 2023 05:29:45 +00:00 All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms 176 PAST AND PRESENT NUMBER 123 gradually to a reduction in fallow cycles large proportion ofjhum cultivators have t to becoming landless labourers. Settled cultivators have perhaps been mo some degree of control over forest resour access, the new laws did not seriously agriculturalists and graziers. Since subordi monly hailed from the same castes, the pe obtain forest produce by bribing rangers of access may have increased significantly i of forest resources was very rarely tota protesting against forest restrictions were the resources and strategies of modern na and litigation, to advance their own intere Whatever the specific modalities of protest and across different regions and forms its essence "social": it reflected a genera management of the forest, and it rested he of communication and co-operation. It is n leaders of agrarian society - clan and v always played a key role in social mobili colonial state regarded them as local bulwar such leaders were subjected to conflicting decided to throw in their lot with their k exercised by the premier nationalist organ most of the movements described in this article is also instructive. Although individuals like Gandhi may have recognized the import- ance of natural resources such as salt and forest produce in the agrarian economy, even protests formally conducted under the rubric of Congress often enjoyed a considerable autonomy from its leader- ship. Social protest over forests and pasture pre-dated the involvement of the Congress; and even when the two streams ran together they were not always in tune with one another. Finally, these conflicts strikingly presaged similar conflicts in the post-colonial period. Con- temporary movements asserting local claims over forest resources have replicated earlier movements in their geographical spread, in the nature of their participation and in their strategies and ideology of protest. A study of colonial history may thus have more than a fleeting relevance to contemporary developments. Nowhere is this more true than in the highly contentious sphere of forest policy. Here a vigorous This content downloaded from 43.248.153.40 on Wed, 04 Oct 2023 05:29:45 +00:00 All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms STATE FORESTRY AND CONFLICT IN BRITISH INDIA 177 debate among intellectuals, policy-makers and grass-roots organiza tions has in recent years brought to the fore two opposed notions property and resource use: on the one hand, communal control ov forests is paired with subsistence use, and on the other, state con with commercial exploitation. Yet this duality merely mirrors, alb in a more formal and institutionalized fashion, the popular opposi to state control over forests which was endemic during the period colonial rule. The movements described in this article may have be short-lived and unsuccessful, but their legacy is very much with today. 84 Institute of Economic Growth, Delhi Ramachandra Guha Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore Madhav Gadgil 84 Madhav Gadgil and Ramachandra Guha, "The Two Options in Forest Policy", Times of India, 12-13 Sept. 1984. This content downloaded from 43.248.153.40 on Wed, 04 Oct 2023 05:29:45 +00:00 All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms

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