Shifting Ground

People, Animals, and Mobility in India's Environmental History

Edited by Mahesh Rangarajan and K Sivaramakrishnan

Emerging research areas in India's environmental history
Covers pre-history to post-independence period
Wide array of themes covered
Renowned editors and contributors

Shifting Ground

People, Animals, and Mobility in India's Environmental History

Edited by Mahesh Rangarajan and K Sivaramakrishnan

Description

Environmental history of India has developed as an important field of inquiry in the last twenty-five years. While providing major insights, the existing scholarship has primarily focused on drawing sharp lines of distinction-those between geographical spaces (forest, rivers, farms), people (herders, farmers, townspeople), eras (colonial, post-colonial), and so on. The limitations of these sharp divides are brought to the forefront when there is a critical engagement with the region's contested environmental past.

Shifting Ground brings together an array of essays that pose critical questions regarding India's environmental past and the way it has been approached by scholars. From debunking the idea of a primeval, pristine forest cover, to analysing the dynamics that shape human-animal relations, to examining the conflicts created by post-Independence projects of rural development and conservation-this volume touches upon the various aspects of environmental studies and juxtaposes them with social history, history of science and technology, and history of trade and culture.

Drawing on original case studies the book not only explores the past, but also portrays how its traditions are often invoked to be deployed in contemporary conflicts-those that are often aggravated by the pressures on natural assets created by the recent prosperity and the vaulting aspirations of a rapidly expanding Indian middle class.

Shifting Ground

People, Animals, and Mobility in India's Environmental History

Edited by Mahesh Rangarajan and K Sivaramakrishnan

Acknowledgements
1 Introduction: People, Animals, and Mobility in India's Environmental History, Mahesh Rangarajan and K. Sivaramakrishnan
2 Conceiving Ecology and Stopping the Clock: Narratives of Balance, Loss, and Degradation, Kathleen Morrison
3 From Eminence to Near Extinction: The Journey of the Greater One-horned Rhino, Shibani Bose
4 Lions, Cheetahs, and Others in the Mughal Landscape, Divyabhanusinh
5 Environmental Status and Wild Boar in Princely India, Julie Hughes
6 The Imperial Ambition of Science and Its Discontents: Animal Breeding in Nineteenth-Century Punjab, Brian Caton
7 Making Room Inside Forests: Grazing and Agrarian Conflicts in Colonial Assam, Arupjyoti Saikia
8 Nature and Politics at the End of the Raj: Environmental Management and Political Legitimacy in Late Colonial India, 1919-47, Daniel Klingensmith
9 How to Be Hindu in the Himalayas: Conflicts over Animal Sacrifice in Uttarakhand, Radhika Govindrajan
10 Logjam: Loss of Commons in Mewas from 1930 Onwards, Vikramaditya Thakur
11 The 'Tiger Crisis' and the Response: Reclaiming the Wilderness in Sariska Tiger Reserve, Rajasthan, Ghazala Shahabuddin
Select Bibliography
About the Editors and Contributors
Index

Shifting Ground

People, Animals, and Mobility in India's Environmental History

Edited by Mahesh Rangarajan and K Sivaramakrishnan

Author Information

Edited by Mahesh Rangarajan, Director, Nehru Memorial Museum & Library & former Professor of Modern History, University of Delhi, and K Sivaramakrishnan, Dinakar Singh Professor, India and South Asian Studies & Professor of Forestry and Environmental Studies, and Co-Director, Program in Agrarian Studies, Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut, USA

Mahesh Rangarajan is Director, Nehru Memorial Museum and Library, New Delhi, and former Professor of Modern Indian History, University of Delhi. K Sivaramakrishnan is Dinakar Singh Professor of India and South Asian Studies at Yale University, Connecticut. He is also Professor of Anthropology, Professor of Forestry and Environmental Studies, and Co-Director, Program in Agrarian Studies at the same university.

Contributors:

Shibani Bose has taught at Miranda House, University of Delhi, and is currently pursuing her PhD in the Department of History, University of Delhi; Brian Caton is Associate Professor of History at Luther College, Decorah, IA. He has published on the history of Punjab and of the Sikh community in several venues; Divyabhanusinh Chavda is the President of WWF India, a member of the Cat Specialist Group, Species Survival Commission, World Conservation Union (IUCN), and a member of the National Board for Wildlife, Government of India; Radhika Govindarajan is a sixth-year graduate student at Yale University; Julie E. Hughes is Assistant Professor of History at Vassar College, where she also teaches courses in Environmental Studies; Daniel Klingensmith is Professor of History at Maryville College; Kathleen D. Morrison is the Neukom Family Professor in Anthropology and Social Sciences at the University of Chicago; Mahesh Rangarajan is Director, Nehru Memorial Museum and Library, New Delhi and Professor of Modern Indian History, University of Delhi; Arupjyoti Saikia is Associate Professor of History at the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, Indian Institute of Technology, Guwahati; Ghazala Shahabuddin works on ecological issues at the interface of human society and biodiversity conservation in India and South Asia; K Sivaramakrishnan is Dinakar Singh Professor of India and South Asian Studies at Yale University, Connecticut. He is also Professor of Anthropology, Professor of Forestry & Environmental Studies, and Co-Director, Program in Agrarian Studies at the same university. Vikramaditya Thakur is a PhD student in the Sociocultural Anthropology programme at Yale University, USA.