Peasants Farmers and Deforestation in Colonial period

The Coming of Modern Agriculture in England

On 1 June 1830 a farmer of northwest of England found his barn and haystack reduced to ashes by a fire started at night. In the months that followed cases of such fire were reported from the numerous districts . At times only the rick was burnt at other times the entire farmhouse. Then on the night of 28th august 1830 a threshing machine of a farmer was destroyed by the labourers in East kent of the England . In the subsequent two years ,riots spread over Southern England and about 387 threshing machines were broken.

In this period farmers recieved the threatning letters from the Swing Rioters . Captain Swing was an imaginary character that was used by the labourers in the threatning letters.

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HERE IS AN IMAGE OF THE SWING LETTER

THE TIME OF OPEN FIELDS AND COMMONS

Over the late eighteenth and the early nineteenth centuries the english countryside changed dramatically .Before this time in the large parts of the England the countryside was open .It was not partitioned into the enclosed lands privately owned by the landlords . Peasants cultivated on the strips of land around the village they lived in .At the beginning of the each year , at a public meeting each villager was allocated a number of the strips to cultivate .Usually these strips of the varying quality and often located in the different parts ,not next to each other .The effort was to ensure that everyone was having a mix of the good land and the bad land.Beyond these strips of cultivation lay on the common land.

All villager were having an equal right on the common land anybody can go the common lands and take anything.

WHY DEFORESTATION

The disappearance of forests is referred to as deforestation.

Deforestation is not a recent problem. The process began many

centuries ago; but under colonial rule it became more systematic and

extensive. Let us look at some of the causes of deforestation in India.

LAND TO BE IMPROVED

In 1600, approximately one-sixth of India’s landmass was under

cultivation. Now that figure has gone up to about half. As population

increased over the centuries and the demand for food went up,

peasants extended the boundaries of cultivation, clearing forests and

breaking new land. In the colonial period, cultivation expanded

rapidly for a variety of reasons. First, the British directly encouraged

the production of commercial crops like jute, sugar, wheat and

cotton. The demand for these crops increased in nineteenth-century

Europe where foodgrains were needed to feed the growing urban

population and raw materials were required for industrial

production. Second, in the early nineteenth century, the colonial

state thought that forests were unproductive. They were considered

to be wilderness that had to be brought under cultivation so that

the land could yield agricultural products and revenue, and enhance

the income of the state. So between 1880 and 1920, cultivated area

rose by 6.7 million hectares.

We always see the expansion of cultivation as a sign of progress.

But we should not forget that for land to be brought under the

plough, forests have to be cleared.

SLEEPERS ON THE TRACKS

The absence of cultivation in a place does not mean the land was

uninhabited. In Australia, when the white settlers landed, they

claimed that the continent was empty or terra nullius. In fact, they

were guided through the landscape by aboriginal tracks, and led

by aboriginal guides. The different aboriginal communities in

Australia had clearly demarcated territories. The Ngarrindjeri

people of Australia plotted their land along the symbolic body of

the first ancestor, Ngurunderi. This land included five different

environments: salt water, riverine tracts, lakes, bush and desert

plains, which satisfied different socio-economic needs.

DEMAND OF NAVY

By the early nineteenth century, oak forests in England were
disappearing. This created a problem of timber supply for the Royal
Navy. How could English ships be built without a regular supply of
strong and durable timber? How could imperial power be protected
and maintained without ships? By the 1820s, search parties were
sent to explore the forest resources of India. Within a decade, trees
were being felled on a massive scale and vast quantities of timber
were being exported from India.
The spread of railways from the 1850s created a new demand.
Railways were essential for colonial trade and for the movement of
imperial troops. To run locomotives, wood was needed as fuel, and
to lay railway lines sleepers were essential to hold the tracks together.
Each mile of railway track required between 1,760 and 2,000 sleepers.
From the 1860s, the railway network expanded rapidly. By 1890,
about 25,500 km of track had been laid. In 1946, the length of the
tracks had increased to over 765,000 km. As the railway tracks spread
through India, a larger and larger number of trees were felled. As
early as the 1850s, in the Madras Presidency alone, 35,000 trees were
being cut annually for sleepers. The government gave out contracts
to individuals to supply the required quantities. These contractors
began cutting trees indiscriminately. Forests around the railway tracks

fast started disappearing.

PLANTATIONS

Large areas of natural forests were also cleared to make way for

tea, coffee and rubber plantations to meet Europe’s growing need

for these commodities. The colonial government took over the

forests, and gave vast areas to European planters at cheap rates.

These areas were enclosed and cleared of forests, and planted with

tea or coffee.

RISE OF COMMERCIAL FORESTERY

British needed forests
in order to build ships and railways. The British were worried that
the use of forests by local people and the reckless felling of trees by
traders would destroy forests. So they decided to invite a German
expert, Dietrich Brandis, for advice, and made him the first Inspector
General of Forests in India.
Brandis realised that a proper system had to be introduced to manage
the forests and people had to be trained in the science of conservation.
This system would need legal sanction. Rules about the use of forest
resources had to be framed. Felling of trees and grazing had to be
restricted so that forests could be preserved for timber production.
Anybody who cut trees without following the system had to be

Dietrich Brandis

Commercial forestry during colonial period

Punished. So Brandis set up the Indian Forest Service in 1864 and

helped formulate the Indian Forest Act of 1865. The Imperial Forest

Research Institute was set up at Dehradun in 1906. The system they

taught here was called ‘scientific forestry’. Many people now,

including ecologists, feel that this system is not scientific at all.

In scientific forestry, natural forests which had lots of different types

of trees were cut down. In their place, one type of tree was planted

in straight rows. This is called a plantation. Forest officials surveyed

the forests, estimated the area under different types of trees, and

made working plans for forest management. They planned how much

of the plantation area to cut every year. The area cut was then to be

replanted so that it was ready to be cut again in some years.

After the Forest Act was enacted in 1865, it was amended twice,

once in 1878 and then in 1927. The 1878 Act divided forests into

three categories: reserved, protected and village forests. The best

forests were called ‘reserved forests’. Villagers could not take anything

from these forests, even for their own use. For house building or

fuel, they could take wood from protected or village forests.

LIVES OF PEOPLE AFFECTED

Foresters and villagers had very different ideas of what a good forest

should look like. Villagers wanted forests with a mixture of species

to satisfy different needs – fuel, fodder, leaves. The forest department

on the other hand wanted trees which were suitable for building

ships or railways. They needed trees that could provide hard wood,

and were tall and straight. So particular species like teak and sal were

promoted and others were cut.

In forest areas, people use forest products – roots, leaves, fruits, and

tubers – for many things. Fruits and tubers are nutritious to eat,

especially during the monsoons before the harvest has come in. Herbs

are used for medicine, wood for agricultural implements like yokes

and ploughs, bamboo makes excellent fences and is also used to make

baskets and umbrellas. A dried scooped-out gourd can be used as a

portable water bottle. Almost everything is available in the forest –

leaves can be stitched together to make disposable plates and cups,

the siadi (Bauhinia vahlii) creeper can be used to make ropes, and the

thorny bark of the semur (silk-cotton) tree is used to grate vegetables.

Oil for cooking and to light lamps can be pressed from the fruit of

the mahua tree.

The Forest Act meant severe hardship for villagers across the country.

After the Act, all their everyday practices – cutting wood for theirhouses, grazing their cattle, collecting fruits and roots, hunting and

fishing – became illegal. People were now forced to steal wood

from the forests, and if they were caught, they were at the mercy of

the forest guards who would take bribes from them. Women who

collected fuelwood were especially worried. It was also common for

police constables and forest guards to harass people by demanding

free food from them.

FOREST RULES (AFFECT ON CULTIVATION)

People were affected with forest rules

One of the major impacts of European colonialism was on the practice

of shifting cultivation or swidden agriculture. This is a traditional

agricultural practice in many parts of Asia, Africa and South America. It

has many local names such as lading in Southeast Asia, milpa in Central

America, chitemene or tavy in Africa, and chena in Sri Lanka. In

India, dhya, penda, bewar, nevad, jhum, podu, khandad and kumri

are some of the local terms for swidden agriculture.

In shifting cultivation, parts of the forest are cut and burnt in rotation.

Seeds are sown in the ashes after the first monsoon rains, and the crop is

harvested by October-November. Such plots are cultivated for a couple

of years and then left fallow for 12 to 18 years for the forest to grow

back. A mixture of crops is grown on these plots. In central India

and Africa it could be millets, in Brazil manioc, and in other parts of

Latin America maize and beans.

European foresters regarded this practice as harmful for the forests. They

felt that land which was used for cultivation every few years could not

grow trees for railway timber. When a forest was burnt, there was

the added danger of the flames spreading and burning valuable timber.

Forests were burnt

Shifting cultivation also made it harder for the government to calculate

taxes. Therefore, the government decided to ban shifting cultivation.

As a result, many communities were forcibly displaced from their

homes in the forests. Some had to change occupations, while some

resisted through large and small rebellions.


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WHO CAN HUNT

VILLAGERS CAN HUNT BEFORE THE FOREST LAWS

The new forest laws changed the lives of forest dwellers in yet another

way. Before the forest laws, many people who lived in or near forests

had survived by hunting deer, partridges and a variety of small

animals. This customary practice was prohibited by the forest laws.

Those who were caught hunting were now punished for poaching.

While the forest laws deprived people of their customary rights to

hunt, hunting of big game became a sport. In India, hunting of tigers

and other animals had been part of the culture of the court and

nobility for centuries. Many Mughal paintings show princes and

emperors enjoying a hunt. But under colonial rule the scale of hunting

increased to such an extent that various species became almost extinct.

The British saw large animals as signs of a wild, primitive and savage

society. They believed that by killing dangerous animals the British

Hunting in the colonial period

would civilise India. They gave rewards for the killing of tigers, wolves

and other large animals on the grounds that they posed a threat to

cultivators. 0ver 80,000 tigers, 150,000 leopards and 200,000 wolves

were killed for reward in the period 1875-1925. Gradually, the tiger

came to be seen as a sporting trophy. The Maharaja of Sarguja alone

shot 1,157 tigers and 2,000 leopards up to 1957. A British

administrator, George Yule, killed 400 tigers. Initially certain areas

of forests were reserved for hunting. Only much later did

environmentalists and conservators begin to argue that all these species

of animals needed to be protected, and not killed.

NEW TRADES EMPLOYMENT AND SERVICES

While people lost out in many ways after the forest department

took control of the forests, some people benefited from the new

opportunities that had opened up in trade. Many communities left

their traditional occupations and started trading in forest products.

This happened not only in India but across the world. For example,

with the growing demand for rubber in the mid-nineteenth century,

the Mundurucu peoples of the Brazilian Amazon who lived in villages

on high ground and cultivated manioc, began to collect latex from

wild rubber trees for supplying to traders. Gradually, they descended

to live in trading posts and became completely dependent on traders.

In India, the trade in forest products was not new. From the medieval

period onwards, we have records of adivasi communities trading

elephants and other goods like hides, horns, silk cocoons, ivory,

bamboo, spices, fibres, grasses, gums and resins through nomadic

communities like the Banjaras.

With the coming of the British, however, trade was completely

regulated by the government. The British government gave many

large European trading firms the sole right to trade in the forest

products of particular areas. Grazing and hunting by local people

were restricted. In the process, many pastoralist and nomadic

communities like the Korava, Karacha and Yerukula of the Madras

Presidency lost their livelihoods. Some of them began to be called

‘criminal tribes’, and were forced to work instead in factories,

mines and plantations, under government supervision.

New opportunities of work did not always mean improved wellbeing

for the people. In Assam, both men and women from forest

communities like Santhals and Oraons from Jharkhand, and

Gonds from Chhattisgarh were recruited to work on tea

plantations. Their wages were low and conditions of work were

very bad. They could not return easily to their home villages

from where they had been recruited.

REBELLION IN THE FOREST

In many parts of India, and across the world, forest communities

rebelled against the changes that were being imposed on them. The

leaders of these movements against the British like Siddhu and Kanu

in the Santhal Parganas, Birsa Munda of Chhotanagpur or Alluri

Sitarama Raju of Andhra Pradesh are still remembered today in songs

and stories. We will now discuss in detail one such rebellion which

took place in the kingdom of Bastar in 1910.

PEOPLE OF BASTAR

Bastar is located in the southernmost part of Chhattisgarh and

borders Andhra Pradesh, Orissa and Maharashtra. The central part

of Bastar is on a plateau. To the north of this plateau is the

Chhattisgarh plain and to its south is the Godavari plain. The river

Indrawati winds across Bastar east to west. A number of different

communities live in Bastar such as Maria and Muria Gonds, Dhurwas,

Bhatras and Halbas. They speak different languages but share

common customs and beliefs. The people of Bastar believe that each

village was given its land by the Earth, and in return, they look after

the earth by making some offerings at each agricultural festival. In

addition to the Earth, they show respect to the spirits of the river,

the forest and the mountain. Since each village knows where its

boundaries lie, the local people look after all the natural resources

within that boundary. If people from a village want to take some

wood from the forests of another village, they pay a small fee called

devsari, dand or man in exchange. Some villages also protect their forests

by engaging watchmen and each household contributes some grain

to pay them. Every year there is one big hunt where the headmen of

villages in a pargana (cluster of villages) meet and discuss issues of

concern, including forests.

FEARS OF PEOPLE

When the colonial government proposed to reserve two-thirds of

the forest in 1905, and stop shifting cultivation, hunting and collection

of forest produce, the people of Bastar were very worried. Some

villages were allowed to stay on in the reserved forests on the condition

that they worked free for the forest department in cutting and

transporting trees, and protecting the forest from fires. Subsequently,

these came to be known as ‘forest villages’. People of other villages

were displaced without any notice or compensation. For long,

villagers had been suffering from increased land rents and frequent

demands for free labour and goods by colonial officials. Then came

the terrible famines, in 1899-1900 and again in 1907-1908. Reservations

proved to be the last straw.

People began to gather and discuss these issues in their village councils,

in bazaars and at festivals or wherever the headmen and priests of

several villages were assembled. The initiative was taken by the

Dhurwas of the Kanger forest, where reservation first took place.

Although there was no single leader, many people speak of Gunda

Dhur, from village Nethanar, as an important figure in the

movement. In 1910, mango boughs, a lump of earth, chillies and

arrows, began circulating between villages. These were actually

messages inviting villagers to rebel against the British. Every village

contributed something to the rebellion expenses. Bazaars were looted,

the houses of officials and traders, schools and police stations were

burnt and robbed, and grain redistributed. Most of those who were

attacked were in some way associated with the colonial state and its

oppressive laws. William Ward, a missionary who observed the events,

wrote: ‘From all directions came streaming into Jagdalpur, police,

merchants, forest peons, schoolmasters and immigrants.

The British sent troops to suppress the rebellion. The adivasi leaders

tried to negotiate, but the British surrounded their camps and fired

upon them. After that they marched through the villages flogging

and punishing those who had taken part in the rebellion. Most

villages were deserted as people fled into the jungles. It took three

months (February - May) for the British to regain control. However,

they never managed to capture Gunda Dhur. In a major victory

for the rebels, work on reservation was temporarily suspended,

and the area to be reserved was reduced to roughly half of that

planned before 1910.

The story of the forests and people of Bastar does not end there.

After Independence, the same practice of keeping people out of the

forests and reserving them for industrial use continued. In the 1970s,

the World Bank proposed that 4,600 hectares of natural sal forest

should be replaced by tropical pine to provide pulp for the paper

industry. It was only after protests by local environmentalists that

the project was stopped.