His memoir, A Walk Up The Hill: Living with People and Nature, is a repository of information about how India’s battle for safeguarding ecology was won and lost. It is also a life lived on his terms. Gadgil pulls no punches as he takes on the caste system or corruption or community forestry that have played a role in India’s ecology and biodiversity. […]
Why are forests dwindling?
In spare prose, he makes sense of India’s huge biodiversity, diverse ecological zones, community requirements ranging from those who live in the foothills of revered mountains to those who live with sacred groves. He sees the Forest Department’s role as that of facilitating destruction of forests by snapping the symbiotic relationship between the communities and forests for some fabled greater good. “Our forests are fast dwindling in area and a major reason for this is that no segment of our population has a personal stake in the protection of tree cover,” he points out. […]
Over the years, his key contribution includes the People’s Biodiversity Register, which incorporates locally-sourced information for understanding and managing biodiversity. Gadgil was also one of the founders of the Centre for Ecological Sciences at the Indian Institute of Science, Bengaluru. […]
At a time when green norms are being dismantled at a rapid clip across the country, Gadgil’s life comes across as a lesson. A lesson that India is unwilling to learn but appears willing to pay a high price for not learning. […]
“The British established mode of forest governance imposed restrictions on local forest-dwelling communities. In 1860, the Company withdrew all access rights for using the forests (food, fuel, medicine and selling forest products) since the forests and forest-dwelling communities provided refuge to the rebels during the Sepoy Mutiny.” – Bharat Rural Livelihoods Foundation >>
“Tribal population was spread all over India and most of them occupied wild tracts, hilly and forested areas, away from more civilized centers. In 1880 their population was estimated at about seventy million. They had existed for centuries with their own social traditions and beliefs and subsisted on natural resources. They had preserved their near isolation and way of life until the British administration and policies made inroads into their territories.” – Subha Johari in Tribal Dissatisfaction Under Colonial Economy of 19th Century >>
In Marginalised but not Defeated, Tarun Kanti Bose (a seasoned public interest journalist) “documents the hard and difficult struggle to implement the Forest Rights Act, how the oppressed adivasis have united into forest unions, how they are now entering into new thresholds of protracted struggles and victories in a non-violent manner.” | Learn more: https://countercurrents.org/2023/05/book-review-marginalised-but-not-defeated >>
“Tribal men and women mix freely, but with respect for each other [but] caste Hindu society in India is so convinced of its own superiority that it never stops to consider the nature of social organisation among tribal people. In fact it is one of the signs of the ‘educated’ barbarian of today that he cannot appreciate the qualities of people in any way different from himself – in looks or clothes, customs or rituals.” – Guest Column in India Today >>
