First, a disclaimer: I have spent all my time in India within the sheltered confines of an organic farm. My hosts fulminate against the for-profit farmers who pervade the agricultural industries in India (just as they do in any country, really). Therefore, my opinion is necessarily informed by very few sources and extremely narrow experiences.
The first thing to know is that Indians are not actually that different from Americans, culturally. Although we are now separated by thousands of miles, and before that by the Ural mountains, Indians and Europeans came from common ancestors. The Aryans (who provided so much stock for the European races of today) also invaded and had a very profound effect on the Indian subcontinent. Around 1500 b.c., Aryans from the Iranian plateau invaded India and retained the Hindu religions of the land they conquered.
This idea of common ancestry is by no means new: the British Raj used it to cultivate a sense of shared history with subject Indians.
Whether or not there is a shared culture between Europe and India (there are shared linguistic roots, at the very least), the objectification of nature is an idea which seems to persist in both Indian and European cultures. This seems to lend credence to the idea that nature is headed towards certain collapse: humans here, as they have in Europe, have taken an instrumental view toward it and therefore do not see any inherent value in preserving the 'status quo'.
After independence in 1947, land was parceled out to owners. All that remained became state land. Since the government was not robust and did not possess the same powers of force that the Raj did, this land was ransacked by locals who needed timber. On my trip to Siliserh this became obvious enough:
There is a reason for the barrenness of the land in Rajasthan, and it is not the recent drought.
Obviously, there is a lot of research and understanding required in order to think properly about the relationship between humans and nature in India (or in any country, even my own). But there is something about the sheer oldness of this place – that people have been living here continuously for as long as humans have been, well, human – that gives rise to interesting thoughts about the proper notion of nature. Except for the Himalayas, I cannot think of any statements of natural beauty and awesome power which compare to American National Parks like Yosemite or Yellowstone.
Humans have already had their chance to make their mark on the land, and they have done so. Is the environmental condition of India going downhill or up? Is this even a valid question?
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