Humanscape Book Review

Humanscape Features Dec 2002-A valuable book for those trying to understand the science and politics of our degrading environment

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Women and their environment

VOL. IX ISSUE XII DECEMBER 2002

The truth about eco-feminism Other articles in this issue Tilted scales Sumi Krishna Women in the fields Virendar S Khatana & J Jangal Engendering development organisations

Malnourished women in Maharashtra Seema Kulkarni Seeing through the dam Sucheta Dalal The women of Idukki Shwetha E George Education: rights and wrongs Kathyayini Chamaraj Across the borderline Rukmini Datta The plight of Dalits Refractive Index Human Index

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by Pankaj H Gupta

of Myths and Movements by Haripriya Rangan offers an interesting insight into how the ecologywomen link has been turned into bankable rhetoric Women in the villages of ‘underdeveloped’ economies like India are the primary managers of the natural resources available to them. They do most of the work on the farm and in taking care of the livestock. This “living environment” of soil, water, forests and energy form the patterns of their daily lives from sun up to sun down. In addition, women also participate in buying and selling of agricultural produce. The raw materials they use in their crafts and tool making also come from nature and are vulnerable to environmental degradation. As farmers and traders, women experience environmental problems directly undermining the basis of their lives. This link between environment and women is obvious, but rarely acknowledged. It has been of little scholarly interest, and other than an occasional conference paper here and there, it has been undeservedly ignored. of Myths and Movements, rewriting Chipko into Himalayan History by Haripriya Rangan is not about this subject either – it is primarily a brilliant account of the journey of the Chipko movement from fact to myth, but it offers an interesting insight into how the ecology-women link has been turned into a bankable rhetoric.

of Myths and Movements, rewriting Chipko into Himalayan History by Haripriya Rangan (Verso, 272 pages, $20)

The book has a vast sweep as it unravels the fascinating ecological history of Garhwal, linking the Chipko movement to pre-British history and the Uttarakhand agitation, and describing the roles played by some of the now most famous names in India’s environmental pantheon, like Chandi Prasad Bhatt, Sunderlal Bahuguna, et al. The author is herself “amazed by how Chipko has found a niche in the imaginations and memories of numerous scholars” in the West and “appears, without fail, in conversations that centre on sustainability, the Himalayas, deforestation in India, or social movements in poor regions of the

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Humanscape Features Dec 2002-A valuable book for those trying to understand the science and politics of our degrading environment

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world.” Chipko is, in fact, almost a metaphor for this country’s environment on the world stage. Even in India, the idea of Chipko has been clung to as tenaciously as supposedly did the original tree-huggers, by many activists, scholars, journalists and academicians. One of these players who brought the story to world audiences was Vandana Shiva, who gave Chipko her own twist of eco-feminism. Of Shiva, Rangan says, “It would be fairly accurate to say that her recognition as the spokesperson of Third World women and their relationship to nature derives, in large part, from her repeated and widespread narration of the Chipko story to environmental audiences in the English-speaking world. Shiva’s narratives of Chipko centre on women. She draws the village women of Garhwal into her narratives by binding them to the Himalayan forests and nature…Nature is feminine; the Earth is Mother”. Rangan then goes on to explain Shiva’s elaborate feminist logic. Women in India are an intimate part of nature both in imagination and in practise. At one level, nature is symbolised as the embodiment of the feminine principle, and at another, she is nurtured by the feminine to produce life and provide sustenance. According to Vandana Shiva, even the legendary Bishnoi love for nature is a feminist environmental action, when, 300 years ago, they were led by a woman called Amrita Devi to cling to trees to prevent them from felling. Embodying the same feminist principle, the Garhwal women clung to the trees to prevent their economic exploitation by the patriarchal elements of society (like the British colonisers, timber merchants in independent India, etc.). In Shiva’s own words: Peasant women came out, openly challenging the reductionist commercial forestry system on the one hand, and the local men who had been colonised by that system, cognitively, economically, and politically on the other. Rangan concludes that it is precisely by this constant insertion of “Chipko women” into Shiva’s narratives that she is able to reinforce her own authenticity as an eco-feminist in contemporary environmental discourse. of Myths and Movements, while outlining the details of the so-called movement, does so with an objective detachment. This, however, does not fail to convey to the reader the thought that Shiva’s concept of eco-feminism seems to be just a convenient rhetoric with little basis in fact. This

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Humanscape Features Dec 2002-A valuable book for those trying to understand the science and politics of our degrading environment

9/25/07 9:18 AM

is true of a lot of other rhetoric we are at times fed by environmentalists: Were the British ruthlessly mining the Garhwal forests of its timber? Were Garhwali women dead against the economic exploitation of their forests, while their men were insensitive predators? To Rangan, it is not important whether these myths are based on fact, but the motives that perpetuate them. Nevertheless, she examines these ‘givens’ indepth, and reveals to us the truth in its complexity. Fortunately, Rangan has the advantage of distance; as a researcher in an Australian University, she is not burdened by the politics and counter-politics that often govern the local environmental discourse. It is always a challenge to bring science to those not possessing that specialist knowledge, but Rangan has written an eminently readable book. In fact, the book is unputdownable. The strength of the book is not just its impeccable research, but its gripping style. Both academics and laypersons – not to forget the activists – will find it invaluable in understanding the science and politics of our rapidly degrading environment. Pankaj H Gupta works with video for development, and is an occasional documentary filmmaker and writer. He can be contacted at [email protected] Click here to subscribe to Humanscape print magazine Give online comments for this article Send this article to your friend Click here to view comments given by readers Back to Humanscape Magazine Print this article Click to advertise here Copyright © Foundation for Humanisation. All Rights Reserved

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