Jungle Government: Forestry, State-Making and Development for the Van Gujjar Pastoralists of Uttar Pradesh and Uttarakhand, India
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JUNGLE GOVERNMENT: FORESTRY, STATE-MAKING AND DEVELOPMENT FOR THE VAN GUJJAR PASTORALISTS OF UTTAR PRADESH AND UTTARAKHAND, INDIA PIERRE-ALEXANDRE PAQUET Department of Anthropology McGill University Montreal, Quebec, Canada March 28th, 2018 A thesis submitted to McGill University in partial fulfillment of the requirements of the degree of the degree of Doctor of Philosophy (C) PIERRE-ALEXANDRE PAQUET 2018 to Mohammad Kasam Table of contents *** Table of contents i List of acronyms v List of illustrations vii Abstract xi Résumé xiii Acknowledgments xv CHAPTER I – Introduction: Forestry Regimes and Van Gujjar Politics p.1 Who are the ethnic Gujjars of India? p.9 What's in a name? The struggle that distinguished the “Van” Gujjars p.12 Van Gujjar living arrangements, residence patterns, and access to the forest resources p.15 Environmental knowledge and ecological degradation for the Van Gujjars p.24 The setting of the research: four ideal locations across an invented political geography p.25 Amnadi: a river of the Shivaliks p.27 Gaureiyaghar nested in Rajaji National Park p.32 Gaobasti, the resettlement colony p.37 Squatting Khetiwala: between fields and forests p.41 Justifications for a new narrativization of Van Gujjar history p.45 Data analysis p.51 Against it, along it: learning to feel the archival grain p.52 The politics of interviewing: recruitment, performance, and subversive langage p.55 Organization of the chapters p.58 CHAPTER II – Unnatural Powers: Engaging the State, Communities, and Forests p.63 Failed schemes: what they hide, what they reveal p.67 Jungle governmentality p.74 Furthering state-making as an effect of failure p.82 An anti-essentialist approach to the Indian Community p.84 Natural communities and cultures of nature p.86 Conceptual Issues of Subalternity p.91 Subaltern subjects' participation in state-making p.94 Elementary aspects of the state p.96 i The cracks in the building: internal conflicts within state bureaucracies p.97 States of paper p.105 Conclusion p.114 CHAPTER III – A Genealogy of the Indian Forest Acts 1865-2006: Policy-writing and Forest Territorialization p.117 Conventional narratives and the choice to write a genealogy of Indian forest policies p.117 Aspects of forest territorialization in Asia: law, science, and society p.124 The age of timber: premature “conservancy” and market controls in Madras (1806-1823) p.129 Initial views of the Raj on an uncivilized landscape (1815-1857) p.134 The birth of the forests: timber requirements and colonial anxieties (1850-1865) p.138 The age of regulation: a first forest policy on timber extraction (1865-1878) p.142 The age of legal conformity: tighter rules and yet more ambiguity (1878) p.144 The age of techno-scientific refinement: nineteenth-century forestry beyond the forest law p.151 The age of nation-building and modernization: the first National Forest Policy (1952) p.155 The age of environmentalism: nature's protection through the 1970s and 1980s p.165 Indian environmentalism: fear of the poor at the Man and Environment Conference (1972) p.166 New concerns within old boundaries: the Wildlife Protection Act (1972) p.167 The age of social forestry: the National Commission on Agriculture (1976)p.169 Forest oversight further centralized: the Forest Conservation Act (1980) p.171 The age of participation: Joint-Management Forest and the National Forest Policy of 1988 p.173 The age of reparation: victims of state conservation and the Forest Rights Act of 2006 p.181 Conclusion p.191 CHAPTER IV – The Lambardar's Gift: Resource conflicts, traditional leadership, and nineteenth century theories of environmental degradation p.195 The night I saw a seven-foot tall man by the Kalsi Bridge: a tale of marginalization p.195 Leasing princely forests: re-territorialization, displacement, and new governmental formations p.209 The spirit of the law, not its letter: the inherent paternalism of jungle governments p.223 The costs of a paternal government: “paying double” and gifting p.230 The emergence of the Van Gujjar “lambardars” (headmen) under the lease system p.238 Discourses of environmental degradation: a justification to increase cattle controls p.250 The long legacy of desiccation theory: keeping people out of the jungles p.251 A nineteenth century inquiry in the causes of floods: the Van Gujjars as likely culprits p.260 Cattle restrictions against the Van Gujjars: an affordable, legally enforceable way out p.270 Conclusion p.274 ii CHAPTER V – Lopping Rules and Regulations: Knowledge Production, Racial Profiling and Van Gujjar Criminality p.279 Lopping rules and authority claims p.285 The specification of lopping through territorial, technical and racial technologies p.287 From exclusive territoriality to “overlapping” zones: rendering lopping flexible p.288 Rendering lopping technical: specifications relating to its practice p.296 The development of jungle anthropology: racial constructions of “Gujjarness” and lopping p.303 Van Gujjars as outsiders p.305 Van Gujjars as childlike p.306 Van Gujjars as criminals p. 308 The science of lopping today p.314 Disciplining the loppers p.316 Asserting rights: Van Gujjar perspectives on lopping p.321 Lopping as historiography: the moral divide between the British Raj and the postcolonial state p.322 Lopping as subsistence and narratives of persuasion p.324 The pedagogy of lopping: Law, knowledge production, and care p.328 A Van Gujjar Counterpoint: Divergent views on lopping p.336 Conclusion p. 339 CHAPTER VI – Nurturing Desires for a Sedentary Life: The rehabilitation of one's animal nature and the development of the Van Gujjars p.341 Anthropological and policy perspectives on human mobility p.348 Bathakana, int. verb, “to be caused to roam”: a Van Gujjar perspective on mobility p.353 From lambardars to pradhans: Van Gujjar authorities in transformation p.361 Working towards rehabilitation: new political channels and new silences for Van Gujjars p.372 Forging opinions on relocation: comparing the case of Gaobasti and the recent surveys p.380 Thinking with, behaving like, and caring for animals p.387 Conclusion p.403 CONCLUSION p.407 Methodological considerations and theories of state-society interrelations p.412 Forestry’s genealogy p.415 Van Gujjar marginalization p.420 A will to resettle? p.427 Bibliography p.433 iii List of acronyms *** AIUFWP All-India Union Forest Working People BJP Bharatiya Janata Party CAMPA Compensatory Afforestation Management Program Authority CFR Community Forest Rights CR Community Reserve DFO District Forest Officer DM District Magistrate EIC East Indies Company FAO Food and Agriculture Organization FD Forest Department FRA Forest Rights Act G.O. Government Order GIS Geographic Information System GOI Government of India H.P. Himachal Pradesh ISFR India State of Forest Report J&K Jammu and Kashmir JFM Joint Forest Management MFP Minor Forest Product MGNREGA Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act MoEF Ministry of Environment and Forests MoTA Ministry of Tribal Affaires NCA National Commission on Agriculture NCDNT National Commission on Denotified, Nomadic, and Semi-Nomadic Tribes NFP National Forest Policy NGO Non-Governmental Organization N.W.P. North-West Provinces OTFD Other Traditional Forest Dwellers RFD Royal Forest Department of Thailand RLEK Rural Litigation Entitlement Kendra RNP Rajaji National Park SC Scheduled Castes SDM Sub-District Magistrate ST Scheduled Tribes TEK Traditional Environmental Knowledge U.P. Uttar Pradesh UN United Nations UPA United Progressive Alliance WII-ENVIS Wildlife Institute of India – Environmental Information System v List of illustrations *** CHAPTER I Illustration 1: Map of North India overlaid by satellite imagery (insert) showing forest cover in Uttarakhand state and Saharanpur District, U.P. p.7 Illustration 2: Map showing the three districts of Dehradun, Haridwar, and Saharanpur, the Rajaji National Park, as well as northern hill areas including Rohru, Chopal, Yamunotri, and Uttarkashi where Van Gujjars spend the warm season; New Delhi is shown at the very bottom (southern end) of the map. p.8 Illustration 3: Picture showing the broken Shivalik landscape and a Van Gujjar hut on a tappar deep inside the Saharanpur jungles of the Shivalik Forest Division. p.19 Illustration 4: The main rivers of the Shivalik Division are ten to twelve kilometer long; the watershed line, easily identified on this map, divides the two states of U.P. and Uttarakhand. p.29 Illustration 5: A Van Gujjar guides me through jungles to his dera which is remote even by Shivalik standards. p.35 Illustration 6 and 7: Pathri village cluster and, below, a section of Geindikhatta showing the houses which are more scattered. p.40 vii CHAPTER II Illustration 8 – “Dietrich Brandis, The Founder of Forestry in India”, 1884 p.69 Illustration 9 – Organizational Flowchart of the FD (Division Office and below). p.97 Illustration 10 – Inside the FD’s district office. p.110 CHAPTER III Illustrations 11 & 12 – Folios showing imperial hunts. Left, The Chronicles of Akbar (Akbarnama), late 16th century; right, the Mahabharata, 1800-1850. p.119 Illustration 13 – Originally called the Imperial British Forest School, the Forest Research Institute in Dehradun was the biggest brick building in the world at the time of its construction. It building covers 2.5 hectares and is set in a 450-hectare estate. p.129 Illustration 14 – Hunting tigers in the Doon Valley, 1858. p.138 Illustration 15 – Indian Foresters at Work. p.154 Illustration 16 – Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru partake in the festivities of the Van Mahotsav. p.157 Illustration 17 – The Rajaji National Park. p.168 viii Illustration 18 – State departments rarely publish photographs showing the participatory process of JFM, but when they do, these look like a show of official power and expertise. p.178 Illustration 19 – The FRA has been an opportunity for political mobilization but also a cause of discouragement among the Van Gujjars. p.191 CHAPTER IV Illustration 20 – A narrow passage along the migratory path up the hills in April 2014.