“Forests are renewable resources and contribute substantially to economic development of a country. They play a major role in enhancing the quality of environment. Between 1700 to 1995, the period of industrialisation, 13.9 million sq km of forests or 9.3% of the world’s total area was cleared for industrial uses, cultivation, pastures and fuel wood.”
Advantages of Forest:
The things that come from forests are the paper in the book we are reading, desks and tables, doors and windows, the dyes that colour your clothes, spices in your food, the cellophane wrapper of your toffee, tendu leaf in bidis, gum, honey, coffee, tea and rubber, oil in chocolates, which comes from sal seeds, tannin used to convert skins and hides into leather, the herbs and roots used for medicinal purposes.
Forests also provide bamboo, wood for fuel, grass, charcoal, packaging fruits, flowers, animals, birds and many other things.
In the Amazon forest or in the Westem Ghats, it is possible to find as many as 500 different species in one forest patch.
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.
A. Land to be improved:
In 1600, approximately one-sixth of India’s landmass was under cultivation. Now that figure has gone up to above 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 –
The British directly encouraged the production of commercial crops like jute sugar, wheat and cotton.
The demand for these cropes increased in 19th century Europe where food grains were needed to feed the growing urban population and raw material were required for industrial production.
In the early nineteenth century, the colonial state thought that forests were unproductive.
They were considered to be wildemess that had to be brought under cultivation so that the land could yield agricultural products and revenue and enhance the income of a state.
Thus, cultivated area rose by 6.7 million hectares between 1880 and 1920.
B. Sleepers on tracks:
By the early nineteenth century, oak forests in England were disappearing.
This created a problem of timber supply for the Royal Navy.
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.
To lay railway lines sleepers were essential to hold the tracks together.
Each mile of railway track required between 1760 and 2.000 sleepers.
From the 1860s, the railway network expanded rapidly.
By 1890, about 25,500 km of tracks 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 started disappearing.
C. 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 off forests, and planted with tea or coffee.
The Rise of Commercial Forestry:
A. Dietrich Brandis:
In the previous section we have seen that the 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 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 punished.
It was by the initiaive of Brandis that the Indian Forest Service was set up in 1864 and the Indian Forest Act of 1865 was enacted.
The Imperial Forest Research Institute was set up at Dehradun in 1906.
The system they taught here was called ‘Scientific Forestry’.
B. Scientific Forestry:
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.
C. Forest Act:
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.
Reserved forests
Forests were permanently marked for production of timber and the forest products.
Grazing of animals and any form of cultivation were generally not allowed in these forests. They are best forest
Protected forests
In these forests, grazing of animals and cultivation was allowed but these were subjected to some restrictions.
Village forests
These forests were unclassed forests; villagers had open access to these forests Villagers could not take anything from reserved forest, even for their own use.
For house building or fuel, they could take wood from protected or village forest.
D. How were the lives of people affected?
Foresters and Villagers:
Foresters and villagers had 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 remoted and others were cut.
Uses of Forest:
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 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.
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.
Hardship for villagers:
The Forest Act meant severe hardship for villagers across the country.
All their everyday practices – cutting wood for their houses, 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 fuel wood were especially worried.
It was also common for police constables and forest guards to harass people by demanding free food from them.
E. How did forest rules affect cultivation?
One of the major impacts of European colonialism was on the practice of shifting cultivation or swidden agriculture. Shifting cultivation as a system of agriculture has the following features.
Parts of forests are cut and burnt in rotation.
Seeds are sown in the ashes after first monsoon rains.
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.
Shifting cultivation has been practiced in many parts of Asia, Africa and South America.
In India, it is known by different names, such as tavy in Africa, Chena in Srilanka lading in southeast Asia, Milpa in Central America, dhya, panda, bewar, nevad, jhum, podu, khandad and kumri.
The colonial government banned this practice of shifting cultivation.
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.
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 habitats in the forests.
Some had to change occupations, while some resisted through large and small rebellions.
F. Who could hunt?
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.
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 would civilise India.
They gave rewards for killing big animals on the grounds that they posed a threat to cultivators.
Over 80,000 tigers, 150000 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 shot1,157 tigers and 2000 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, new employments and new services:
After the forest department took control of the forests, some people benefited from the new opportunities that had opened up in trade.
Many communities across the world left their traditional occupations and started trading in forest products.
For example, with the growing demand for rubber in the mid-nineteenth century the Mundurucu peoples of the Brazilian Amazon cultivated manioc began to collect latex from wild rubber trees for supplying to traders.
Gradually, they descended to live in trading post and become completely dependent on traders.
In India, the trade in forest product was not new.
From the medieval period onwards, we have records of adivasi communities trading elephants and other goods like hides, homs, 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 oportunities of work did not always mean improved well-being 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 Chottanagpur or Alluri Sitarama Raju of Andhra Pradesh are still remembered today in songs and stories.
The people of Bastar:
Bastar is located in the southernmost part of Chhattisgarh and borders of Andhra Pradesh, Odisha 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.
The tribal people had formulated strict rules and regulations about how to manage and use the forests.
They believed 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.
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 food from the forests of another village, they pay a small fee called Devsari, Dand or Man in exchange.
Some villages also protected 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.
The fears of the people:
In 1905 the British Goverment proposed to reserve two-thirds of the forests, to stop shifting cultivation, hunting and collection of forest produce, the people of Bastar were very worried.
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.
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, chilies and anows, 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.
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 for the British to regain control.
However, they never managed to capture Gunda DhurIn 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 revolt also inspired the other tribal people to rebel against the unjust policies of the British Government.
Forest transformation in Java:
Java is now famous as a rice producing island in Indonesia, where the Dutch started forest management.
Like the British, they wanted timber from Java to build ships.
In 1600, the population of Java was estimated 3.4 million.
There were many villages in the fertile plains, but there were also many communities living in the mountains and practising shifting cultivation.
The woodcutters of Java:
The Kalangs of Java were a community of skilled forest cutters and shifting cultivators.
When the Dutch began to gain control over the forests in the eighteenth century, they tried to make the Kalangs work under them.
In 1770, the Kalangs resisted by attacking a Dutch fort at Joana, but the uprising was suppressed.
Dutch scientific forestry:
The Dutch enacted forest laws in Java, restricting villagers access to forests.
Now wood could only be cut for specified purposes only from specific forests under close supervision.
Villagers were punished for grazing cattle in young stands, transporting wood without a permit, or travelling on forest roads with horse carts or cattle.
As in India, the need to manage forests for shipbuilding and railways led to the introduction of a forest service.
In 1882, 280,000 sleepers were exported from Java alone.
However, all this required labour to cut the trees, transport the logs and prepare the sleepers.
The Dutch first imposed rents on land being cultivated in the forest and then exempted some villages from these rent on land if they worked collectively to provide free labour and buffaloes for cutting and transporting timber.
This was known as the Blandongdiensten.
Later, instead of rent exemption, forest villagers were given small wages, but their right to cultivate forest land was restricted.
Samin’s challenge:
Around 1890, Surontiko Samin of Randublatung village, a teak forest village, began questioning state ownership of the forest.
He argued that the state had not created the wind, water, earth and wood, so it could not own it.
Soon a widespread movement developed.
Amongst those who helped organise it were Samin’s sons-in-law.
By 1907, 3000 families were following his ideas.
Some of the Saminists protested by lying down on their land when the Dutch came to survey it, while others refused to pay taxes or fines or perform labour.
War and Deforestation:
The First World War and the Second World War had a major impact on forest.
In India, working plans were abandoned at this time, and the forest department cut trees freely to meet British war needs.
In Java, before the Japanese occupied the region, the Dutch destroyed sawmills and burnt piles of giant teak logs so that they would not fall into Japanese hands.
The Japanese then exploited the forests recklessly for their own war industries, forcing forest villagers to cut down forests. (Scorched. and Earth Policy)
Many villagers used this opportunity to expand cultivation in the forest.
After the war, it was difficult for the Indonesian forest service to get this land back.
As in India, peoples, need for agricultural and has brought them into conflict with the forest department’s desire to control the land and exclude people from it.
New developments in forestry:
Conservation of forests rather than collecting timber has become a more important goal.
The government has recognised that in order to meet this goal, the people who live near the forests must be involved.
In many cases, across India, from Mizoram to Kerala, dense forests have survived only because villages protected them in sacred grooves known as sammas, devara.kudu, kan, rai, etc.
Some villages have been patrolling their own forests, with each household taking it in tums, instead of leaving it to the forest guards.
Local forest communities and environmentalists today are thinking different forms of forest management.
