Humanscape Features Dec 2002-A valuable book for those trying to understand the science and politics of our

degrading environment 9/25/07 9:18 AM

Home Humanscape Magazine Humanscape News Voluntary Organisations Message Board

Weblinks Manavta Kendra About Us Chat Recommend HumanscapeIndia
Women and their environment VOL. IX ISSUE XII DECEMBER 2002

The truth about eco-feminism by Pankaj H Gupta

Other articles in this issue of Myths and Movements by Haripriya Rangan

offers an interesting insight into how the ecology-
Tilted scales women link has been turned into bankable rhetoric
Sumi Krishna
Women in the villages of ‘underdeveloped’
economies like India are the primary managers of
Women in the fields the natural resources available to them. They do
Virendar S Khatana & J most of the work on the farm and in taking care of
Jangal the livestock. This “living environment” of soil,
water, forests and energy form the patterns of
Engendering development
organisations
their daily lives from sun up to sun down. In
addition, women also participate in buying and
Malnourished women in selling of agricultural produce. The raw materials
Maharashtra they use in their crafts and tool making also come
Seema Kulkarni from nature and are vulnerable to environmental
degradation. As farmers and traders, women
Seeing through the dam experience environmental problems directly
Sucheta Dalal undermining the basis of their lives.

The women of Idukki This link between environment and women is

Shwetha E George obvious, but rarely acknowledged. It has been of
little scholarly interest, and other than an of Myths and Movements, rewriting
Education: rights and wrongs occasional conference paper here and there, it has Chipko into Himalayan History by
Kathyayini Chamaraj been undeservedly ignored. of Myths and Haripriya Rangan (Verso, 272
Movements, rewriting Chipko into Himalayan pages, $20)
Across the borderline History by Haripriya Rangan is not about this
Rukmini Datta subject either – it is primarily a brilliant account of
the journey of the Chipko movement from fact to
The plight of Dalits myth, but it offers an interesting insight into how
the ecology-women link has been turned into a
Refractive Index bankable rhetoric.
Human Index
The book has a vast sweep as it unravels the
fascinating ecological history of Garhwal, linking
the Chipko movement to pre-British history and
Click here to subscribe to the Uttarakhand agitation, and describing the roles
Humanscape print magazine played by some of the now most famous names in
India’s environmental pantheon, like Chandi
Prasad Bhatt, Sunderlal Bahuguna, et al. The
Editorial Humanscape author is herself “amazed by how Chipko has found
Features a niche in the imaginations and memories of
numerous scholars” in the West and “appears,
Back to Humanscape without fail, in conversations that centre on
Magazine sustainability, the Himalayas, deforestation in
India, or social movements in poor regions of the

http://www.humanscapeindia.net/humanscape/new/dec02/thetruthof.htm Page 1 of 3
Humanscape Features Dec 2002-A valuable book for those trying to understand the science and politics of our degrading environment 9/25/07 9:18 AM

Click to advertise here world.” Chipko is, in fact, almost a metaphor for
this country’s environment on the world stage.

Even in India, the idea of Chipko has been clung

to as tenaciously as supposedly did the original
tree-huggers, by many activists, scholars,
journalists and academicians. One of these
players who brought the story to world audiences
was Vandana Shiva, who gave Chipko her own
twist of eco-feminism.

Of Shiva, Rangan says, “It would be fairly

accurate to say that her recognition as the
spokesperson of Third World women and their
relationship to nature derives, in large part, from
her repeated and widespread narration of the
Chipko story to environmental audiences in the
English-speaking world. Shiva’s narratives of
Chipko centre on women. She draws the village
women of Garhwal into her narratives by binding
them to the Himalayan forests and nature…Nature
is feminine; the Earth is Mother”.

Rangan then goes on to explain Shiva’s elaborate

feminist logic. Women in India are an intimate part
of nature both in imagination and in practise. At
one level, nature is symbolised as the
embodiment of the feminine principle, and at
another, she is nurtured by the feminine to
produce life and provide sustenance.

According to Vandana Shiva, even the legendary

Bishnoi love for nature is a feminist environmental
action, when, 300 years ago, they were led by a
woman called Amrita Devi to cling to trees to
prevent them from felling. Embodying the same
feminist principle, the Garhwal women clung to the
trees to prevent their economic exploitation by the
patriarchal elements of society (like the British
colonisers, timber merchants in independent India,
etc.). In Shiva’s own words: Peasant women
came out, openly challenging the reductionist
commercial forestry system on the one hand, and
the local men who had been colonised by that
system, cognitively, economically, and politically
on the other.

Rangan concludes that it is precisely by this

constant insertion of “Chipko women” into Shiva’s
narratives that she is able to reinforce her own
authenticity as an eco-feminist in contemporary
environmental discourse.

of Myths and Movements, while outlining the

details of the so-called movement, does so with
an objective detachment. This, however, does not
fail to convey to the reader the thought that
Shiva’s concept of eco-feminism seems to be just
a convenient rhetoric with little basis in fact. This

http://www.humanscapeindia.net/humanscape/new/dec02/thetruthof.htm Page 2 of 3
Humanscape Features Dec 2002-A valuable book for those trying to understand the science and politics of our degrading environment 9/25/07 9:18 AM

is true of a lot of other rhetoric we are at times fed

by environmentalists: Were the British ruthlessly
mining the Garhwal forests of its timber? Were
Garhwali women dead against the economic
exploitation of their forests, while their men were
insensitive predators? To Rangan, it is not
important whether these myths are based on fact,
but the motives that perpetuate them.
Nevertheless, she examines these ‘givens’ in-
depth, and reveals to us the truth in its
complexity. Fortunately, Rangan has the
advantage of distance; as a researcher in an
Australian University, she is not burdened by the
politics and counter-politics that often govern the
local environmental discourse.

It is always a challenge to bring science to those

not possessing that specialist knowledge, but
Rangan has written an eminently readable book. In
fact, the book is unputdownable. The strength of
the book is not just its impeccable research, but
its gripping style. Both academics and laypersons
– not to forget the activists – will find it invaluable
in understanding the science and politics of our
rapidly degrading environment.
Pankaj H Gupta works with video for development,
and is an occasional documentary filmmaker and
writer. He can be contacted at
[email protected]
Click here to subscribe to Humanscape print
magazine

Give online comments for this article

Send this article to your friend

Click here to view comments given by readers

Back to Humanscape Magazine

Print this article

Click to advertise here

Copyright © Foundation for Humanisation. All

Rights Reserved

http://www.humanscapeindia.net/humanscape/new/dec02/thetruthof.htm Page 3 of 3