In New Delhi, a month ago, I purchased this just published history by Sumit Guha for less than 10 euros. India gets special pricing for books and they are eminently affordable. I ended up purchasing 7 for less than 50 euros, including the hard cover of Amitav Ghosh’s latest.
I didn’t expect to be as enthralled by this book as I was – the writing is a readable academic style but not as engrossing as the details of the way the land and the forests and the waters were managed by peoples, going back 2500 years ago to the Arthashastra (India’s prequel to The Prince whose authorship is attributed to Chanakya, a Maurya Empire advisor.
What stood out for me is Guha’s rapidly sketched outline of the relationship between the elephant’s importance for imperial power, its biology – adult males begin warfighting training at age 20, and the landscape of forest groves across South Asia. Guha explicitly compares this ecosystem engineering by early south asian empires to the way fields across Europe were outlined by the Romans. This ecological impact and influence going back millennia was my biggest takeaway from the book.
One note at this point is the clarity offered by Guha’s descriptions of how environmental sciences first considered “primitive” peoples as having a lighter footprint on the landscape but when it became profitably expedient to do so, they were converted to a destructive effect who had to be removed for “conservation”. The Kenyans are very sensitive to this issue.
As a bonus, Guha compares and contrasts two Empires – the Mughal and the British – and their attitudes to land management. Until I read the book, I had only the stereotypes of the hapless fatalistic Indian villager promoted by popular culture and colonial legacy. Instead, the book is full of anecdotes of intrepid villagers hiding from various imperial agents and troops.
For a snapshot of history intertwined with environmental management and thinking in South Asia, this book is very highly recommended.
