AN important aspect of Mountain Studies in the 1970s and 1980s was the articulation of an environmental orthodoxy about Himalayan degradation. Formulated in terms of a growing concern about Limits to Growth, it was also the theme of the first major environmental conference at Stockholm. This position is best represented by Eckholm’s neo-Malthusian prognostications about erosion and deforestation.¹ He argued that the central threat to the future of mountains was the burden of burgeoning human numbers. This approach influenced and continues to influence research and policy on the Himalayan mountains. This ‘myth’, created orthodoxies wherein Himalayan peasants became part of global agendas, which did not necessarily recognize their role and agency.

Given this context, the Chipko movement (initiated in 1973 by Gaura Devi), attracted world wide attention because it placed the hill peasant at the epicentre of the mountain economy and revealed that mountain communities were not only aware of environmental problems but would resist outside interventions for exploitation and use of their forest resources. Ramachandra Guha’s pioneering work,² which studied Chipko and resistance to forest policy in Kumaun in the 1920s, located the movement in the larger politics of antagonism to imperial governance and its takeover of the forests for conservation and for commercial purposes. It clearly implicated the colonial and post-colonial governments for heavy usage of timber and other forest resources but did not dent the argument of overpopulation and erosion, but rather affirmed it by linking deforestation to landslides and floods.

The problem with early research on environmental issues in South Asia was the focus on intensification of forest product use by a combination of industrial capital and imperial interests during British rule. The tragedy of the commons was seen as the prime mover, not only in the context of the modern world but even in the context of the Himalayan mountains. As studies proliferated, more scholars pointed out the need to look at peasant communities in the hills and their use of forests and commons. The basic premise, however, was that forests have to be conserved, regenerated and even created to preserve the ‘ecological integrity’ of the Himalayan environment.

 

Interestingly, the peasant was now considered a stakeholder in the mountain ecosystem; in the process the role of groups (herders, pastoralists, foragers), not part of sedentary agricultural activities, was obscured. The standpoint of this perspective is that peasant movements like Chipko were not merely a defence of the little community and its values, but also an affirmation of a way of life ‘more harmoniously adjusted with natural processes’ (emphasis added).³ The argument that mountains were populated from time immemorial in the manner that they were at the onset of British rule and that this was the ideal to be reverted to became the new orthodoxy. The pre-modern/pre-colonial stretched out as a limitless undifferentiated expanse and was the point of equilibrium one could return to by conservation and afforestation.

Gradually, however, scholars started questioning assumptions about the linkage between population growth, deforestation, soil erosion and disruption of the hydrological cycle. Scholars like Michael Thompson, Michael Warburton and Tom Hatley interrogated this hypothesis and suggested that crisis was only one possible interpretation.⁴ Jack D. Ives and B. Messerli’s contention was that the Himalayan region is so varied in its geomorphology of agricultural landscapes that simple generalizations are counter-productive.⁵

In this fresh appraisal, the most enduring idea was that mountains consist of biotic regimes which are organized around and dependent on differences in altitude. It echoed the Unesco Man and Biosphere Programme of 1973 declaration that man’s way of life, his habitat and land use and exploitation patterns are vertically differentiated. Studies of the Alps, Andes and the Himalayas noted similar cultural adaptations based upon an exploitation of multiple, attitudinally different production zones.

 

The concept of a mixed mountain agriculture system suggested that the key to the success of agro-pastoral transhumance in Himalayan valleys was the vertical oscillation of cultivators, herders and beasts following the vicissitudes of climate in an effort to exploit niches at several altitudinal levels. Thus adaptation to mountains is invariably premised upon multiple use of altitudinal niches or specialized use of one eco-zone. The concept of altitudinal zonation, better known as verticality,⁶ helped in explaining the dynamic of mountain communities.

The intricate web that characterized the mountain economy in the Central Himalayas of the early 20th century was the product of a long historical process, which not only knit different altitudinal zones into an integrated economic unit but also accommodated various kinds of lifestyles and a variegated use of natural resources. During the 1930s, the settlements in the central Himalayan region, longitudinally located between the Yamuna and Sharada rivers, reveal atitudinal interactive networks spread from the Tibetan plateau in the trans-Himalaya, across the greater Himalaya with passes into Tibet and the use of alpine pastures in the upper Himalayas in the summer.⁷ Immediately below the snow clad glacier region, where only one harvest was possible, crop rotation was practiced. The inhabitants were traders and pastoralists who migrated to higher locations of the alpine grasslands with animals in summer and to sub-Himalayan residences for trade in winter. They connected Tibet in the north to Kashipur in the south through trade in salt, grain, cloth and wool.

 

The middle mountains (with forests of oak and pine) also did not have fully sedentary peasant populations. Cattle maintained for manure had to be moved to places where fodder was available, resulting in high mobility. Millets were cultivated on the slopes and rice in hot malarial valleys. Human habitation avoided the valleys and homes were built on slopes. Terracing helped retain moisture for a system of agriculture primarily based upon monsoon rains and some canal irrigation from rivers. Below the middle mountains was the Bhabhar, a dry patch where the water disappeared into the shingles. This was inhabited in winter when entire populations moved to the Bhabhar to feed their cattle and produce a crop. Below the bhabhar was the Tarai, a little lower than the Bhabhar and the plains further south, where the water resurfaced producing heavy undergrowth. This was hot and malarial, and inhabited only in winter, except by the Tharus.

The burning of grasses for luxuriant growth was a well established practice in the Tarai and provided livelihood possibilities in winter to traders, herders from the upper Himalayas, and peasant cowherds from the middle mountains. It was apparent that a change in one facet was linked to the other. Integrating this into an ecological narrative of the central Himalayas required a deeper insight into the warp and woof of this society. The breakdown of the sense of community in the colonial period was as important as the cultivation of the commons and the story of the people was larger than that of mere forest cover and natural habitats.

 

Anthropological research and ethnographic studies of Himalayan communities also furnished information about indigenous knowledge and land management strategies of agro-pastoral regimes. As detailed studies of the Himalayas proliferated, they attempted to integrate different disciplinary perspectives on nature, society, economy, ecology and environment. In this context Bruno Latour’s suggestion that an asymmetrical approach regarding nature’s influence upon society be replaced by an approach that is symmetrical, which documents changes in nature but considers society as the key factor in identifying how these changes are identified as problems, was of great significance. This opened up fresh perspectives on environmental issues.

For example, Arun Agrawal coined the concept of ‘environmentality’; his work, based upon a growing genre of political ecology, argued that the government of nature had facilitated the birth of the idea of the ‘environment’. Thus, by the late 1990s we find a growing realization about the manner in which historical agendas shape environmental paradigms. It was apparent that environmental problems were the result of long-term bio-physical processes and that long-term environmental histories were required to reveal the ever changing adaptive strategies of humans over long-term contexts because they illustrate a problematic relationship between man and nature, even prior to the onset of the modern epoch.

 

One of the important issues raised by environmental histories was how to define wilderness, and how to understand the constitution of pristine environments. The idea that pristine is untouched nature was difficult to sustain. The assumption that forest conservation and afforestation was simply about re-growth in degraded forests and a return to nature was now questioned and the search for pristine habitats revealed that even in forests and grasslands the ‘hand of man’ was visible in myriad ways. For example, wilderness was explained as a historical construct by William Cronon and the notion of sacred groves was also understood as an ecological object cum social construct by many South Asian scholars. In neither instance do we find any evidence of pristine environments.

An appraisal of wilderness is therefore an important point of entry for clues about changes in environment, and can open up a completely new way of looking at resource use. For example, the sacred deodar daru ka vana groves of Jageshwar appear to have been planted and nurtured, not only because of particular belief systems, but also for retention of water essential for the mining of borax, an important ingredient for metallurgical operations. In the case of the Uttarakhand Tarai, considered the most formidable wilderness from the early medieval period till the middle of the 20th century, folk memory refers to its habitation and depopulation nine times.

Historically, we have ample archaeological evidence to show habitation in the Tarai during the Mauryan ascendancy (3rd century BC), its relapse into the wild by the 9th century and its halting reclamation from the 15th century onwards. The Tharu settlements in the Tarai followed a pattern of bunding/damming of water channels, cultivation for a short period and then abandoning it for another site. Like in the Columbian forests, evidence of clearance would be obliterated by the fast growing thick and lush vegetation. Similarly, the annual burning of the grasses by herders was an important intervention in the trans-formation of the Tarai landscape and clearly suggests that it was not pristine.

 

Another point that environmental history foregrounds is the changing nature of connections with contiguous regions. In the early 20th century, Tibet was important for the central Himalayas because it provided salt, but as the connection with North Indian economy strengthened due to British rule, salt could be imported from the plains. At the same time, salt traders who also traded in wool found markets as far as Kanpur. It is interesting to find that the trans-Himalayan connection may be traced back to the 1st century BC when it started with gold mining and after the development of agriculture (from the 9th century) its commodity composition changed when salt was exchanged for grain (according to S.C. Das salt was mined from the 6th century), and it continued in an attenuated form even during British rule till as late as 1962.

An environmental history of the central Himalayas then helps depict major mutations and changes. The firing of the forests for grass inaugurates pastoral activity around 2000 BC; we can surmise that bands of foragers probably also worked the forests from an early period. Studies by anthropologists J. Reinhard and J. Fortier of these foragers, known as Ban Rajis and Rautes in Kumaun and far western Nepal, help document a lifestyle now falling into disuse.⁸ The early period begins with exploration of mineral resources followed by the development of coinage for trade leading to metallurgical skills and the development of tools and metal statuary. Historically, we find early evidence of mining of copper and iron from the Himalayan mountains. Copper anthropomorphs and other artifacts found in the lower and middle Himalayas have been conjecturally dated to second millennium BC, but we have a definitive date for Uleni. (Uleni, 8 kms north of Dwarahat at a height of 1200m AMSL, lies on a small rivulet in the upper Ramganga basin.) Heaps of slag and many iron objects were found in Uleni. Slag was also found in a rock shelter in the area known as Tamakhani. Uleni was an iron smelting and working site with a calibrated date range of 1022-826 BC.

 

The history of the central Himalayas reveals an interesting pattern from this period. Ranihat (on the Alaknanda) near Srinagar, Garhwal has three continuously inhabited occupational periods – first, from 600-400 BC, iron and copper smelting; second, from 400-200 BC, burnt brick varieties of pottery; third from 200 BC-200 CE, floors using stone with expertise in iron smelting and manufacture of iron tools. The people of Ranihat, it appears, specialized in smelting of iron from locally available ore and manufactured iron tools for hunting and fishing. (In the 19th century, iron mines were worked in the neighbouring areas of Chandpur, Belugh, Bichan and Cholah.)

 

Ranihat was not the exception and copper bangles found in Thapli on the banks of the Alaknanda are dated to the 1st century BC. Another site in the mountains is Purola on the left bank of the Kamal river (Yamuna) that yielded the remains of pottery assignable to circa 1st century BC to 2nd century CE, along with a copper coin of the Kunindas, and a thin gold leaf impressed with a human figure. We, therefore, have evidence for use of copper, iron and gold (from Himalayan rivers and Guge in western Tibet). The importance of copper, gold and iron technology has to be understood for the significance of the Kuninda economy, whose coins, silver and copper, have been found in different parts of North India and in the central and western Himalayas. The large range of Kuninda coins suggest trade networks not only in North India but also in the trans-Himalaya. The use of copper and iron of the western and central Himalayas and gold of the upper Himalayas and trans-Himalaya in the period from 100BC-300 CE indicates a significant development of metallurgical skills (even using lead and tin) and established use of mineral resources.

By the 3rd century CE, the Kuninda kingdom was in decline and the large network that it established broke up leading to the development of smaller polities practicing metal technology for local use. Interestingly, some trade networks were disrupted and in others the commodity composition changed. New habitations started around the 4th century which now constructed naulas or water bodies. Iron tools were used for making stone floors and by the 7th century stone was used for temples and dwellings as well. Metal technology also expressed itself in beautiful statuary and tridents from the 6th century onwards. The temple at Jageshwar, with its beautiful statue of the Pon Raja, is an outstanding example.

 

The rise of the Tibetan empire in the 7th century and its break-up in the 9th century probably generated heightened activity in contiguous regions in the central Himalayas. As a matter of fact, the Katyuri kingdom emerges at Pandukeshwar in the upper Himalayas, near the pass to the Tibetan plateau, around the break-up of the Tibetan empire. The 9th and 10th century copper plate grants suggest intensification of agro-pastoral activity. Later, with the further diffusion of agricultural activity, the middle Himalayas were populated and copper and iron technology was now applied for making agricultural implements and copper utensils. Mining of copper and iron and manufacture of tools and utensils was an important activity, and in the Mughal period the region was known for its exports of these goods. This continued till the early 20th century, when import of copper and iron from England rendered mining unviable.

Interestingly, around the 8th and 9th centuries, the Tarai lapsed back into wilderness, coinage disappeared, trade with the south ceased but trade with trans-Himalaya continued. Yet, it is important to remember that this region was on the Pasupata Lakulisa pilgrim circuit, which entered the Himalaya from Kathmandu in Nepal and went on to Kedar; another pilgrim circuit went to Kailash Mansarovar and nurtured the trans-Himalayan connection. The pilgrim route brought into prominence peripatetic ascetic groups such as the Nathpanthis and Dasnam Gosains, who sustained long distance trade with the rest of the subcontinent.

 

A detailed analysis of historical documents interrogates an important fallacy regarding the development of agriculture in mountains, which is that cultivation begins from below, along the banks of rivers, and extends uphill as the population increases. Even S.D. Pant, otherwise an astute observer of hill cultivation, suggests that agriculture begins from a series of irrigated fields on the river bank, spreads to patches of alluvial and unirrigated areas above the river bed, and finally reaches the gentle slopes and ridges, which do not admit of cultivation without terracing. This is echoed in a large number of Brahman genealogies, which claim that knowledge of cultivation (particularly rice) came with them from the Indo-Gangetic plains.

An important point about Himalayan river valleys of the middle Himalayas is that they were not conducive to human habitation because of the aul, Kumauni term for malarial fever. We noted earlier that invariably homesteads were in the middle reaches (not in the valleys with noxious vapours) facing the sun and used water springs below the forests. Terracing began from the upper reaches where the cattle were reared and followed the contours of the tracks made by animals during grazing. These tracks provided the cultivator with an assessment of the size of the field that could be carved out of the hillside. The terraced field that emerged from this process had to be shored up with a stone wall, which required constant repair. The terraces of this region are an answer to problems of cultivation in the ridges – retention of moisture and run-off of soil nutrients. This process appears to be similar to terracing in the Andes mountains where terracing also began from the higher reaches again because of malaria in the lower valleys.⁹

The development of terracing could sustain larger populations who could then be mobilized for clearing valley floors and for introduction of rice cultivation. Rice appears as an important crop from the 12th century onwards, we also have evidence about the use of the plough and irrigation channels. The attendant demographic increase (because of rice cultivation) was subsequently channelized into reclaiming the Tarai from the 15th century onwards. The colonization of the Tarai remained a patchy affair because of the ebb and flow of population caused by an unhealthy environment adding to its notoriety with the local population. In the 1960s, the advent of DDT and a huge influx of displaced persons from East and West Pakistan completely changed the scenario.

 

The many stories of changing landscapes in the central Himalayas reveal an inherent dynamism that counters the stereotypical image of unchanging mountain villages subsisting in a timeless pristine landscape, now unsustainable and degraded because of increasing population. The gradual extension of cultivation, on slopes and later valleys in the middle Himalayas and then the extension into the Tarai reveals a story of the mountains as inextricably linked to the ebb and flow of human populations. It may be useful to invoke here Ester Boserup’s response to the Malthusian predicament suggesting that increasing numbers could motivate cultural and technological innovation.¹⁰ This happened in the central Himalayas in the medieval period, evident in terracing, irrigation and introduction of rice.

 

We also need to recognize that agro-pastoral regimes in the mountains are not only interconnected vertically but are also part of subcontinental trade networks. In the early years of the 20th century, as the Kumaon Division was integrated into the Imperial economy, residents looked for opportunities southwards, outside the mountains. Increasing numbers and intensification of agriculture probably peaked around the 1960s. Over the years, as male out-migration increased, agricultural production was increasingly feminized and Chipko was, primarily, a women’s movement because the men were absent.

The agitation for Uttarakhand in the 1990s culminating in the formation of Uttaranchal (later Uttarakhand) in 2000, not only signalled the problem of agrarian decline but also reflected new aspirations. In the decade and a half old state of Uttarakhand, today, the general lament is about the unsustainability of agriculture and the need to innovate. Meaningful policy interventions need to move beyond anxiety about pressure on land and attempts to restore ‘subsistence’ agriculture and forest cover, to innovating novel ways of coping with resources, human and natural, which is the way of humankind.

 

Footnotes:

* This paper is based on research for a project at the Nehru Memorial Museum and Library, 2013-14, entitled ‘Environmental Histories of the Central Himalayas’ (unpublished manuscript).

1. Eric P. Eckholm, Losing Ground: Environmental Stress and World Food Prospects. Norton, 1976.

2. Ramachandra Guha, The Unquiet Woods: Ecological Change and Peasant Resistance in the Himalaya. Oxford University Press, 1989.

3. Ibid., p. 196.

4. Michael Thompson, Michael Warburton and Tom Hatley, Uncertainty on a Himalayan Scale: An Institutional Theory of Environmental Perception and a Strategic Framework for the Sustainable Development of the Himalayas. Ethnographica, Milton Ash Publications, London, 1986.

5. Jack D. Ives and Messerli Bruno, The Himalayan Dilemma: Reconciling Development and Conservation. Routledge, 1989.

6. John D. Murra, ‘An Aymara Kingdom in 1567’, Ethnohistory 15, 1968, pp. 115-151.

7. S.D. Pant, The Social Economy of the Himalayans. George Allen & Unwin, London, 1935.

8. Johan Reinhard, ‘The Raute: Notes on a Nomadic Hunting and Gathering Tribe of Nepal’, Kailash, A Journal of Himalayan Studies 2(4), 1974, pp. 233-271. Also, Johan Reinhard, ‘The Ban Rajas: A Vanishing Tribe’, Contributions to Nepalese Studies 4(1), 1976, pp. 1-22. www.johanreinhard.net/Home; Jana Fortier, ‘Reflections on Raute Identity’, Studies in Nepali History and Society 8(2), 2004, pp. 317-348.

9. Daniel W. Gade, Nature and Culture in the Andes. University of Wisconsin, 1999.

10. Ester Boserup, The Conditions of Agricultural Growth. Allen and Unwin, London, 1965.

 

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