Pankaj Sekhsaria Edited by Mahesh Rangarajan and K. Sivaramakrishnan Oxford University Press, New Delhi, 2014, pp. 308, £27.99 VOLUME XXXIX NUMBER 7 July 2015 History always offers rich pickings and an edited volume
of rigorous historical research seldom disappoints. Shifting Ground: People, Animals and Mobility in
India’s Environmental History is
an excellent example and one thing can certainly be said about it—that even
though a little unevenly, it shifts ground very effectively. And if I may add,
it also shifts boundaries, categories, even time in our understanding of the
environment and the changes that continue to take place here. If informing us
about the past is the key aim of historical writing, Shifting Ground does
a commendable job. It does more, in fact, and is a significant contribution
for that reason—it persuades, even convinces us to re-imagine the past and by
implication the present and future as well. The canvas it explores is wide (a
little too wide sometimes for one volume), the topics rich and diverse, the
details meticulous, and the writing generally has a good flow.
The eleven essays that make up the volume could be divided into three
broad categories, though the book itself does not identify or categorize them
in the way I am doing. There are two essays in the beginning that ‘lay the
ground’ for those that follow. Four essays, including the concluding one, are
focused on specific a wild animal species while the remaining five explore a
wide canvas of issues ranging from domestic animal breeding in 19th century
Punjab to deforestation in the Narmada valley in the 20th century. The essays
are broadly placed along a linear timeline—from the pre-historic in the case of
Shibani Bose’s account of the fate of the Great Indian Rhino, to the status of
and engagement with wild boars in the princely Indian state of Mewar by Julie
Hughes; issues of environmental management in late colonial India by Daniel
Klingensmith; through to the first decade of the 21st century with one essay on
animal sacrifice in the State of Uttarakhand by Radhika Govindarajan and the
other on the crisis of tiger conservation and local extinction as in the case
of the Sariska Tiger Reserve in the State of Rajasthan by Ghazala Shaabuddin.
The introductory essay by the editors,
Mahesh Rangarajan and K. Sivaramakrishnan, lays out what in my opinion is the
leitmotif of the volume—the sharp distinctions that past ... Table of Contents >> |
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