Indira Gandhi was less authoritarian than Narendra Modi, says Jairam Ramesh

Congress leader talks about a little known aspect of Indira Gandhi's life - conservation of nature

Congress leader and former environment minister Jairam Ramesh talks to Nitin Sethi about a little known aspect of Indira Gandhi’s life — conservation of nature.

You have just completed a book, Indira Gandhi: A Life in Nature. Did her passion for nature make her and India any different from how they are usually understood?

As far as Indira Gandhi as a politician is concerned, she was indisputably far ahead of her times. Of course, she was a naturalist. She had a personal passion for nature to which she had come after a long love affair with birdwatching. 

She also took some decisions with which environmentalists were unhappy. I have written about them at length in the book, such as the location of the Mathura refinery close to the Taj Mahal. Environmentalists were unhappy. But then she took remedial action. She flip-flopped multiple times in setting up the navy club at Chilka. She gave the go-ahead for Kudremukh mining in Karnataka, which environmentalists believed opened up the Western Ghats.

But did her centralisation of power through wildlife and forest laws cause a lot of pain and trouble for tribals in the country? Retrospectively, do you find it problematic?

Gandhi’s record here is mixed. She was often defied. She did not win every time. For example, I write of how Arjun Singh, then chief minister of Madhya Pradesh, defied her to put up eucalyptus plantations. H N Bahuguna defied her on the Dudhwa sanctuary. There are a large number of instances when she did not get what she wanted.

Also, I remember the Water Pollution Act took about six years, where she followed all democratic procedures. Let’s talk about the Wildlife Protection Act. On that she followed constitutional processes and got resolutions from the state government. She circulated a draft of the law. There was debate in Parliament. There was a lot of consultation. The ordinance she got was for the Forest Conservation Act, 1980. There she was peremptory. She was criticised in Parliament for bringing in an ordinance and it eventually became a law. The Forest Conservation Act is the only time, I believe, she asserted her personal authority.

But her Wildlife Conservation Act, 1976, turned tribals into encroachers of their own lands.

First of all, what it did was save whatever wildlife patches we have today. She went beyond tigers. She started Project Lion before that and worked to protect species beyond the megafauna. I think Gandhi’s position evolved. By 1980 she talked about how foresters must be more concerned about wood for fuel and small timber for the poor. This is something she was not concerned about earlier. The Indira Gandhi of 1960 and 1970 was a naturalist. But by 1980 her view had begun to shift and she started stressing the people aspect of forests much more than she had done before.

Your United Progressive Alliance government tried to undo some of the injustice done to tribals through the passage of the Forest Rights Act. 

I could see in the early 1980s — in her internal noting on the social forestry programme — that she was beginning to get heavily concerned about the issue of local communities. But, in fact, it took 25 years for the Forests Rights Act to become a reality. Even today, if you talk to foresters, they will tell you that if there is one danger to the protection of forests it is the FRA. I don’t agree with this. 

Do you think she was swayed by royalty around her in her world view of the environment? 

I won’t use the word “swayed”. They had access. And not all those who influenced her understanding of nature were royals. Look, there is no running away from the fact that in the 1950s, 1960s and the 1970s, the big conservationists were ex-royals. You know one species was missing way back in 1952 from the endangered list. And that was the tiger. And the reason why it was not there was because they (the royals) were shooting them. They were running away from the fact. But I don’t think she was swayed... From what I have seen and tried to document, from the 1930s onwards, I think she was a child of nature. It’s not me who is saying this; it was she who saw herself that way. However, I think she was acutely conscious of the fact that she was in a poor country, in a country that needed to grow fast and that she had multiple objectives to pursue. That’s the sense I get. I think the Stockholm Speech, for example — which, to my mind, is her greatest speech — actually shows the two leg theory. She is walking on the environment with one leg , which is the natural leg. She is also conscious of the fact that there are developmental challenges. You have to judge her in the context of her time, not retrospectively. 

Did she understand the difference between the environmentalist of the poor — a phrase Anil Agarwal coined later — and the Western and colonial understanding of pristine nature? 

Environmentalism of the poor is a nice phrase. But what does that actually mean? She believed in pristine nature. Let’s not beat around the bush. She believed in pristine nature, but I think she also became conscious by the mid-70s that a pristine nature at times can give rise to conflict. I think the discourse begins to change in the noting that I have seen and also in the decisions that she begins to take.

Was Gandhi then similar to Prime Minister Narendra Modi today — authoritarian, concentrating powers in her hands and determinedly pushing whatever she believed in?

No. I think she was far more concerned, judging purely from the records of what I have seen and I have seen primary materials insofar as her life in nature is concerned. She was far less authoritarian than Modi. As I said, her victories were few and far between, her defeats many. She was defeated by Shyama Charan Shukla at times; she was defeated by V P Naik at times; she was defeated by Bahugana at times. She was defeated by Arjun Singh at times. Yes, she had Silent Valley. Remember, her biggest victory was Silent Valley. It took three years for her to say no to Silent Valley (hydroelectric project).