Godwin Vasanth Bosco reports on extreme precipitation that has fallen on the Nilgiri plateau of southern India the last few years. These extreme and unprecedented rain events have led to massive landslides and other ecological damage. Little has been done to address the crisis. Featured image: A massive landslide in one of the largest sholas in the Avalanche region of the Nilgiris, with hundreds of native trees and the stream ecology washed away.
Crumbling Ancient Mountain Ecology
Written and photographed by Godwin Vasanth Bosco / Down to Earth
Thousands of trees lay dead and strewn around the western parts of the Nilgiri Plateau in southern India.
Deep gashes scar ancient mountains slopes, standing a stark contrast to the lush green vegetation that they otherwise support. As conservationists, activists, and concerned people in various parts of India are fighting to protect forests and wilderness areas from being deforested, mined, and diverted to `developmental’ projects, there is another level of destruction that is happening to our last remaining wild spaces. Climate change is causing the widespread collapse of ecosystems.
Carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere have just hit record-breaking levels of 417 ppm in May 2020. It has never been so high in the last 3 million years. Along with global warming caused sea-level rise and the melting of polar ice caps and glaciers, the steep increase in greenhouse gas concentrations has led to a surge in the frequency of extreme climate events. A region of the earth where climate change caused weather extremities are exceedingly apparent are the coastal plains and the Western Ghats regions of southern India. In the last four years, this region has been affected by eight tropical cyclones and consecutive extreme rainfall events during the southwest monsoon periods of the last two years.
These bouts of intense storms have been interspersed with periods of severe droughts, heatwaves, deficient, and failed monsoons.
On August 8, 2019, the Avalanche and Emerald valley regions, which are part of the Kundha watershed, received an unprecedented amount of over 900 mm [2.9 feet] of rainfall in 24 hours.
It broke the record for the highest rainfall ever recorded in Tamil Nadu, by nearly twice the amount. Over four days, this region experienced close to 2500 mm [8.2 feet] of rainfall. To put this in perspective, the nearest city (100 km east) in the plains of Tamil Nadu, Coimbatore, receives around 600 mm of rain annually. The Kundha watershed bore a deluge that was four times the annual rainfall amount, over just four days.
The upper watershed of the Kundha River is a complex of several peaks above 2400 meters and broad deep valleys. The Kundha River, which is a primary tributary to the Bhavani that feeds into the Cauvery, is fed by numerous streams and rivulets at the headwater sections.
With the barraging downpour, nearly every stream and rivulet burst its course. Vast tracts of precious soil and shola ecology slipped away on either side of the watercourses. Gone are the rich black soil layers topped with spongy humus that line the streams; washed away are dark moss and wild balsam covered rocks that shaped the flow of every stream; lost are the thousands of shola trees, dwarf bamboo and forest kurinji that guarded the streams, saplings, ferns and orchids of the forest floor. In place of these are deep cuts of gauged out the earth, revealing the red underlying lateritic soil layers, and lightly shaded freshly exposed rocks.
Numerous large landslides have occurred on intact grassland slopes too.
Uprooted and washed away trees, and dead Rhododendron arboreum ssp nilagiricum trees in a broad valley near the Avalanche region.
Native shola trees and stream ecology completely washed away on either side of tributaries of the Kundha River
Shola-grassland mosaic in danger
The cloud forest ecology, known as sholas, is specialized in growing along the folds and valleys of these mountains. They are old-growth vegetation and harbour several endemic and rare species of flora and fauna. These naturally confined forests are already some of the most endangered forest types, because of habitat loss and destruction.
The recent episode of extreme precipitation caused landslides, have dealt a telling blow on these last remaining forest tracts. What is even more shocking is that montane grassland stretches have also experienced large landslides.
The montane grasslands occur over larger portions of the mountains here, covering all the other areas that sholas do not grow in. Together, the shola-grassland mosaic is the most adept at absorbing high rainfall amounts and releasing it slowly throughout the year, giving rise to perennial streams. Over a year they can experience an upwards of 2500 to 5500 mm of rainfall, which is intricately sequestered by complex hydrological anatomy that carefully lets down most of this water, using what is needed to support the ecology upstream.
The native tussock grasses especially are highly adapted to hold the soil strongly together on steep slopes. However, even this ecology is now giving way under pressure from extreme weather events. The shola-grassland mosaic ecology cannot withstand the tremendously high amounts of rainfall (over 2400 mm) that occur in significantly short periods (over 4 days). Worsening climate change is driving the intensity and frequency of extreme weather events, resulting in a level of ecosystem collapse, never witnessed before.
An example of intact shola-grassland mosaic in the hills of the Nilgiri plateau, with the sholas growing in valleys and grasslands covering the slopes.
In the southwest monsoon season of 2018, similar events of unusually high rainfall occurred over the highland districts of Idukki, Wayanad, and Coorg, causing hundreds of landslides. A predominant view was that this was primarily because of the indiscriminate construction of roads and proliferating concretization of the hills.
However, even within the highly stable shola-grassland ecology, a large number of landslides have occurred in spots with no apparent forms of disturbance such as roads and pathways cut through them. This signifies that climate-change has reached a level that is beyond the capacity of the ecosystem and land resilience.
What is causing the collapse of the last remaining wild spaces is the culmination of every action that has contributed to the climate crisis.
These actions invariably stem from places that have long lost their plant ecological cover—urban-industrial-agricultural complex. There is fatally no time to keep ignoring this primary cause. Even if we ignore this and look to safeguard the last remain wilderness areas from being deforested or `developed’, they are vulnerable to climate change-related destruction.
Threats closer to the last remaining ecological spaces must be also curtailed. For instance, despite the consecutive years of extreme precipitation over short periods, in the Nilgiri Biosphere region, there are hardly any steps being taken to address ecological security. Building regulations stand to get eased and road expansion works continue in full swing.
However, worryingly similar to what happened in the last two years when much of the annual rainfall was concentrated over a few days later in the monsoon period, this year too, 2020 has be no different. The onset of the monsoon was delayed, and large parts of peninsula experienced a significant deficiency well into the monsoon period. This year’s monsoon has brought intense, short bursts of extreme rainfall, not only in the Western Ghats regions and southern India, but all across the Indian subcontinent.
Destruction by dams and tunnels
Neela-Kurinji or Strobilanthes kunthiana flowering in the grassland habitats of the Nilgiris. This spectacle takes place only once in 12 years
The Kundha watershed region can be broadly divided into two sections – the higher slopes and the descending valleys. Hundreds of landslides occurred in both these sections, with shola-grassland ecology dominating in the higher slopes, and various types of land-uses such as tea cultivation, vegetable farming, villages and non-native tree plantations dominating the descending valleys. The descending valleys are also studded with several dams and hydroelectric structures.
The Kundha Hydro-Electric Power Scheme is one of the largest hydropower generating installations in Tamil Nadu-with 10 dams, several kilometers of underground tunnels, and a capacity of 585 MW. In addition to this, this system is now getting two more dams and a series of tunnels, to set up large pumped storage hydropower facilities. The claim is to generate 1500 MW, of electricity during peak demand hours, but while using almost 1800 MW in the process.
With the level of destruction that extreme precipitation events are bringing to the Kundha watershed, it is disastrous to add more large dams and tunnels. The intensity of floods has turned so strong that even the largest dam complexes in the world, face threats of being breached.
An Aerides ringens orchid growing on a shola tree.
Safeguarding the last remaining zones of ecology and biodiversity from threats of direct destruction is crucial. Concurrently, the larger world-wide urban-industrial-agricultural complex, from where the climate crisis stems from needs drastic change. The constant incursions into more and more ecological spaces in the form of new dams, roads, and buildings, are also connected to this complex.
Whether it is the landslides in the grasslands of the high elevation plateaus in southern India; the melting glaciers of the Himalayas in northern India; the dying coral and rising sea levels elsewhere in the planet; the global coronavirus (Covid-19) pandemic that has brought about unimaginable changes – we have to understand the interconnectedness of these dire effects and learn from nature.
Godwin Vasanth Bosco is an ecologist working to restore shola and grassland ecology in the Nilgiri Biosphere. He is the author of the book Voice of a Sentient Highlandon the Nilgiri Biosphere.
This piece was first published on Down to Earth. All the photographs were taken by the author himself.
In this piece, Salonika explains how this culture prioritizes economic gains over human and natural welfare. She describes how series of toxic accidents in India (of which the Vishakhapatnam gas leak is one example) lays testimony to this fact. In such a culture, is it possible to hold the responsible actors accountable for their actions?
Vishakhapatnam Gas Leak: Who do We Hold Accountable?
On 7th of May, 2020, a gas leak on the outskirts of Vishakhapatman (R. R. Venkatapuram village) has killed 12 people, including 2 children, and injured 1000 others. Vishakhapatnam is one of the largest cities of Andhra Pradesh, the eastern state of India.
LG Polymers, along with other similarly damaging industries, were established in the outskirts of Vishakhapatnam in the late 1950’s and early 1960’s. Within the five decades since then, urbanization has moved the city nearer to the industries.
Many fled their homes in the middle of the night. Some were fortunate enough to reach a place of safety, while others fell unconscious on the streets. At least 3 of the deaths were due to people falling unconscious under unfortunate situations: two people crashed a bike while fleeing the area; one woman fell off her window. Many more were found unconscious on their beds.
The gas, Styrene, caused itchiness in the eyes, drowsiness, light-headedness, and breathlessness. In severe cases, the gas causes irregular heartbeats, coma or death. A district health official stated that the long-term health effects of this accident is yet unknown.
The gas leaked from an LG Polymers plant around 2:30 AM, and spread around a 3 km (2 miles) radius. Workers reportedly failed to alert the local residents after they found out about the leak. The police were informed around 3:30 AM, and went to the scene, but had to retreat for fear of being poisoned.
It took hours before the situation could be stabilised. LG Polymers did not have any mechanisms in place to prepare for emergencies like this. This led the local youth, local police and personnel from National Disaster Response Force to act as first-respondents.
Who caused the leak?
Speculations have arisen suggesting that chemical reactions occurred during the lockdown in the plant due to inactivity, clogging the cooling systems, which caused the tanks to heat up eventually causing a leak. No inhibitors were found on the plant to slow the process in cases of emergency. The leak occurred after the operations on the plant restarted following the lockdown was eased in India.
LG Polymers (a South-Korean company) stated that it would be investigating the cause of the incident. It has also offered apology for those affected and promised support to affected and their families.
Meanwhile, the state Industries Minister, Goutam Reddy, stated that it appeared as if the plant did not follow proper procedures and guidelines during its reopening, and that legal action would be taken against the company. Investigators have also found that safety precautions had not been followed, calling it a “crime of omission“.
An official statement from LG Polymers itself suggests that management were aware of a possible disaster. Industries Minister Reddy has placed the burden of proof on LG Polymers to prove that there was no negligence on its part. A negligence and culpable homicide complaint has been lodged against the management of the plant.
LG Polymers have also admitted that it had expanded operations without due consent from regulatory authorities. On top of that, no preparatory mechanisms (a mandatory rule in India) were in place to handle an emergency state.
Contrary to this, other governmental and investigation authorities have issued statements that might suggest an act of compliance between the company and the authorities. The Director General of Police (Andhra Pradesh) claimed that all the protocols were being followed. Similarly, Chief Minister of the state stated that the company involved was a “reputed” one.
The gas leak in Andhra Pradesh was one of three similar accidents within the same day in India. A paper mill in Shakti Paper Mill, Chhattisgarh (a state bordering Andhra Pradesh) hours before Vishakhapatnam accident, due to which seven workers were hospitalized. Similarly, later the same day, a boiler exploded at Neyveli Lignite Corporation in Tamilnadu (southernmost state of India), killing 1 and injuring 5.
These leaks comes just weeks after the coal plant accident in Singrauli. The coal plant leak itself was third of its kind in the past 12 months in the same area.
The new gas leak has also reminded some of the tragic Bhopal gas leak in 1984. More than 40 tonnes of deadly chemicals used in the manufacture of pesticides were released, resulting in an estimated fatalities between 16,000 and 30,000. After 35 years, the effects of the gas leak is still being felt among new born babies. The maximum charges faced by the perpetrators of the “world’s worst industrial disaster” was a two-years’ sentence in prison, and a fine of ₹5,00,000, sentenced 25 years after the incident.
Where do we place the accountability?
Perhaps the gas leak was a result of the Indian government’s premature decision to reopen the economy despite increasing cases of Covid-19 infections.
Perhaps the regulatory agencies are also at fault for failing to ensure that proper procedures were followed by the management while reopening the plant. In a place where enforcement of regulations have always been lax, the temporary closure of plants during the lockdown only exacerbated the problem.
Or perhaps, the plant’s management are a fault for not following the procedures and protocols, especially given that they were aware of the potential hazards and still failed to act on them.
Where we place the accountability for this gas leak often follows directly from who we believe is responsible for the leak in the first place. Given the frequency of industrial ‘accidents’ in India, would it be fair to place the accountability of this particular leak based on closely weighing which actor is most at fault for this isolated event? Or should this event be viewed as only the latest in a long series of industrial “accidents” occurring in India?
Certainly the government and the management could be held accountable for their negligence.
But where do we place the responsibility of opening a potentially toxic-gas-leaking plant in a residential area in the first place? Toxic chemicals like Styrene have always been a risk to the health and lives of humans and nonhumans. This, however, does not stop new plants (with inherent risks of fatal accidents) from being built in close proximities to natural communities.
The corporations and the elite classes that reap the benefits from these plants, after all, do not have to live anywhere near to these plants. The ones who are the most vulnerable to the risks of such accidents (both human and nonhumans) do not have a say in any operation of the plant. This is a classic example of ‘privatization of profits, externalization of costs and risks‘ notion upon which the current globalized, imperialist, capitalist system is based.
Corporations, by their very definitions, are created to maximize profits for their shareholders, disregarding any concerns for morality or compassion. When a corporation’s actions harm others, but maximizes its own profits, should it be blamed for acting in a way consistent with its design, or should we blame the culture that came up with this design in the first place?
In this case, the corporation failed to abide by the regulations and protocols in its jurisprudence. Even this is not a novel behavior for a corporation. In some cases, corporations have challenged, or even modified, laws of a nation.
As much as the corporation could be said to be acting in a way consistent to the rules of its creation, the same could not be said for the government. Ideally, a government should give precedence to the greater good of the (human) society over the selfishness of an individual (or in this case, a legal entity). The government failed to do so in two ways: by allowing the plant to open in the first place, and by reopening the plant without consideration of the risks involved. In both instances, economic gains were prioritized over the wellbeing of the human and natural communities.
Eventually, the burden of responsibility has fallen on the ones most vulnerable to these risks. Initially, the local people have organized protests to permanently shut the plant, after which LG Polymers began transporting 13,000 tonnes of Styrene gas back to its parent company in South Korea. Statements from authorities indicate a “revamping” of the plant. Closure of the plant seems to not have been discussed.
More recently, the demands have been modified to take a more moderate stance: including free ration for the villagers for 2 months, and that the workers previously employed on a contract basis be provided with a permanent job.
Salonika is an organizer at DGR South Asia and is based in Nepal. She believes that the needs of the natural world should trump the needs of the industrial civilization.
Are indigenous people backwards? Do they really need to be ‘rescued’ from their primitive way of life and introduced to this wonder of human civilization? Or is this a racist simplification?
In this piece Chris challenges the notion that civilization is the ultimate way of life — a notion that has been used to justify genocide against indigenous people for a long time.
By Chris Straquez
The Woe-nders of Civilization
Civilization: the pinnacle of human progress and ingenuity, a myriad of machines and buildings transforming landscapes as proof of MANkind superiority.
Do you need water, food, energy? We got it! For a price, a modest price, these are accessible for everyone (restrictions will apply). You know you want to be here with us—and who wouldn’t? Just ignore the trail of blood and corpses that lie behind of it all and you can reap the benefits of the civilized; everything will be fine and dandy.
We, the civilized humans, are being honest here, no exaggeration, just facts, alternative yet still facts: we are so great, even people from the countryside and indigenous reserves dream of living in our super modern skyscrapers, our theme parks, and especially our humongous and incredible malls.
Are you looking for sneakers with heel lights, fake dog vomit, or a hundred different flavors of whatever shit you want to inhale, inject, eat or consume in whatever fashion you feel like… Guess what? We’ve got it!
Are you lost? Do you feel lonely? An impending feeling of being misunderstood drowns your existence? Are you worried about your physical appearance? Does your skin color have a pesky pigmentation? Should I go on or do you know what we are talking about? You do not have to be particularly smart to understand; as the great poet Axl Rose said: “if you got the money, honey, we got your disease.”
Tell your local shaman or whoever prepares those funky herbs to stop using mumbo-jumbo whatchamacallits because civilized humans have the meds backed up by science done scientifically by scientists who do scientific and technological stuff. We can bring this to you, you can be civilized, just like us, and I do hate being repetitive but are we not great, unique, awesome?
Now, stand-up comedy aside (along with credits to the late, great George Carlin), let me ask you: how many times as a city-dweller have you seen or heard advertisements, politicians or even neighbors not only expressing but embodying such ideas? This is a long-standing, well-oiled propaganda machine to makes us constantly think that being civilized is the best of the best and any other lifestyle is a mistake that must and will be rectified right away. Using force if needed, no hesitation whatsoever.
Are Indigenous People Backwards?
Over generations, tribal peoples have developed complex systems to live well, together, on their land. They may be poor in monetary terms but tribal people living on their own lands are rich in other ways. They have good reason to be proud of their communities and their way of life. Such is the case of the Dongria Kondh tribe whose homeland is in the Niyamgiri hill range in Odisha state, India.
Niyamgiri is an area of densely forested hills, deep gorges and cascading streams. To be a Dongria Kondh is to farm the hill’s fertile slopes, harvest their produce, and worship the mountain god Niyam Raja and the hills he presides over, including the 4,000 metres Mountain of the Law, Niyam Dongar.
On 19 March 2003 Vedanta Alumina Limited applied for environmental clearance from the Indian Ministry of Environment and Forests (MoEF) to construct an alumina refinery project in the eastern Indian state of Orissa.
Vedanta Resources is a London-listed, former FTSE 100 mining company founded by Indian billionaire Anil Agarwal, who remains its Chairman and owns more than 50% of the shares. Had the mine gone ahead, the Dongria would have suffered immeasurable loss; their present good health, self-sufficiency and, identity as a people would have been damaged. The detailed knowledge of their environment would have been destroyed. A large proportion of the benefits would have gone to one man: Anil Agarwal.
For a decade, the 8,000-plus Dongria Kondh lived under the threat of mining by Vedanta Resources, which hoped to extract the estimated $2 billion-worth of bauxite that lies under the surface of the hills. The company planned to create an open-cast mine that would have violated Niyam Dongar, disrupted its rivers and spelt the end of the Dongria Kondh as a distinct people.
All the above in the name of ‘progress and evolution.’ However, whose progress and evolution is seldom directly addressed. I notice it is easy to understand that anything that deviates from this direction tends to be labeled as ‘backwards’ a word we tend to use to disqualify and minimize subjects and matters. One of the meanings of such words implies something ‘towards the direction that is opposite to the one in which you are facing or opposite to the usual direction.’ Do you oppose companies and governments that exploit your land? That is certainly not in the direction we are going so we might as well force our way through.
Another meaning goes like this: ‘returning to older and less effective ways.’ What calls my attention is not returning to older, say, traditional ways, but rather calling it ‘less effective.’ Effective at what? According to who? Looking through the lens of Industrial Civilization means that mountains cannot be exploited fast enough. This is what Civilization has done for most of its existence: perfecting exploitation for the benefit of an elite group of people.
Deviate and We Retaliate
The Dongria Kondh tribe inspired millions when they won a ‘David and Goliath’ battle against mining giant Vedanta Resources. The tribe vowed to save their Niyamgiri Hills and their self-sufficient way of life.
They believe that their right to cultivate Niyamgiri’s slopes has been conferred on them by Niyam Raja, and that they are his royal descendants. They have expert knowledge of their forests and the plants and wildlife they hold. From the forests they gather wild foods such as wild mango, pineapple, jackfruit, and honey. Rare medicinal herbs are also found in abundance, which the Dongria use to treat a range of ailments including arthritis, dysentery, bone fractures, malaria and snake bites.
These people have detailed knowledge of the land they are deeply connected to, like many other indigenous people, such as the Jarawa who have detailed knowledge of plants to eat and use for medicinal properties. However, Jarawa’s neighbors, the Great Andamanese, were brought into the ‘mainstream’ by the British and robbed of their land. They were decimated by disease and are now completely dependent on the government. Alcoholism and diseases such as tuberculosis are rife. These are illnesses that come from a civilized setting not from indigenous ways of life. Go figure!
Are these people “backwards”?
Now the Dongri Kondh lands and lives are under threat again. Their leaders are being harassed by police and imprisoned under false charges. The Dongria feel the government is trying to destroy their community in order to allow mining.
We don’t want to go to the city and we don’t want to buy food. We get it free here. – Malari Pusaka, Dongria Kondh
The Dongria Kondh grow over 100 crops and harvest almost 200 different wild foods, which provide them with year-round, rich nutrition even in times of drought. Life expectancy now is around 60 to 65 years.
Before it was 80 to 90 years. It’s because before [our access to our forest was restricted] we ate tubers, fruits, and other forest products, whereas now the Soliga diet is bad. –Madegowda, Soliga
The Soliga people are another ethnic group of India. Its members inhabit the Biligiriranga Hills and associated ranges in southern Karnataka, mostly in the Chamarajanagar and Erode districts of Tamil Nadu. Many are also concentrated in and around the BR Hills in Yelandur and Kollegal Taluks of Chamarajanagar District, Karnataka.
The Soliga people are one among the few remaining forest-dwelling tribal people in and around the forests in southern India. The forests of BR Hills have held people for time immemorial. Burial sites excavated from several areas nearby date back to 3000 years ago to the Megalithic period. These sites characteristically consist of Dolmens, a circular arrangement of large stones with a central pit, walled off by granite slabs. Although, it is not known if these belong to the ancestors of the present Soliga tribe, having lived here for generations, the Soliga people have an intricate understanding of the flora and fauna.
“You keep talking about this primitive people but I see no development, progress or superiority whatsoever. They think an invisible being gave them the right to rule over land. Isn’t that just backwards?” I’m glad you ask yourself that. It is not like the civilized worship Gods… Well, we do, but it is usually the imported kind because we do love foreign products like that.
No techno? No bueno!
Tribal people’s lives are not static or ‘stuck in the past’ – they adopt new ideas and adapt to new situations just as we all do. It is prejudice to think some peoples are ‘modern’ whilst others are ‘backwards’. This prejudice is used to justify displacing indigenous peoples and push them into the ‘mainstream’ – on the assumption that ‘experts’ know what is best for them.
It’s crazy when these outsiders come and teach us development. Is development possible by destroying the environment that provides us food, water and dignity? You have to pay to take a bath, for food, and even to drink water. In our land, we don’t have to buy water like you, and we can eat anywhere for free. –Lodu Sikaka, Dongria Kondh
Different paths of “development”
One of the wonders of North-East India is an innovative technique developed by villagers to construct bridges and other useful structures out of living aerial roots of rubber (Ficus Elastica) trees. For dozens of years, they train and manipulate the growth of aerial roots, such that with time, they thicken and stiffen and become structural members. Most bridges and structures can be found in Meghalaya state, and lately root bridges were discovered in Nagaland state as well.
In summary, labelling people ‘backward’ or ‘primitive’ is a propaganda strategy. A striking example of this was the argument that mining company Vedanta Resources used to defend the impact that their mine would have on the lives of the Dongria Kondh. The Dongria are united against the mine, they distrust and reject Vedanta’s claim that the company will bring development. Instead the Dongria choose to live their own way of life on their land.
A Vedanta spokesperson said:
‘As enlightened and privileged human beings, we should not try to keep the tribal and other backward people in a primitive, uncared-and-unprovided-for socio-economic environment.’
“In (theft) exchange of their resources we will install our marvelous industrialized food system that provides everyone products with (few) nutrients and (poor) ingredients our body does (not) need?” Sound market logic.
Indigenous peoples’ lands are still being stolen, their rights violated and their futures destroyed. Vital laws protecting their land rights are in constant threat under the flag of progress, the mark of Civilization. Only indigenous people should decide and control what, if any, changes they want in their lives. If living in harmony with the land is ‘backwards’ or ‘primitive’ then perhaps we should step back, listen and observe what is happening around us. We might be surprised what we will find when we look back on the destruction left behind by the “progress of civilization.”
In this piece, Suresh discusses the impact of civilization on endemic communities and their right to live in isolation. Suresh tells us how these indigenous people have had their land, rights and identities stripped by encroaching industrial civilization.
In a world characterised by information, there are issues that have been made so invisible that the great majority of people do not even know that they exist. This is the case of the ethnic communities living in voluntary isolation. Most are not even aware that some of these people have not yet been contacted by the predominating society and in other cases, have resisted integrating it in spite or as a result of having been contacted.
To this ignorance is added a second one: that the very existence of these people is seriously threatened by the destructive advance of ‘development’. Roads penetrating into the forests to extract timber, oil, minerals or to promote land settlement for agriculture and cattle ranching, can be labelled ‘inroads of death’ for these people. They bring unknown diseases their bodies are incapable of coping with, destroy the forests that provide for their livelihoods, pollute waters, where they drink, bathe and fish. There are encounters with those who intend to take over their territory, the death of their millennia-old cultural heritage.
To understand the problem we need to divest ourselves of our ‘truths’ and try to put ourselves in their place.
All of us live in territories with precise limits. They do too. All of us are jealous custodians of our frontiers when faced with potential or real external aggression. They are too. All of us have our feelings of nationality, with a specific language, culture and wisdom. They have too.
What would we do if a group of armed foreigners entered our territory without our permission? The same as they do; we would resist in every possible way, including armed resistance. However, while we may be considered to be ‘heroic patriots’, they are classified as savages. Why is this? Simple, because we are the ones to legitimize resistance (violence).
It is important to emphasize that these people were never asked if they wanted to be Indian, Asian, African, American or European. Each government – colonial or national – simply drew up a map of straight lines and determined that all the territories included within its frontiers ‘belong’ to the corresponding country or colony – irrespective of these people having been there much before the very idea of even the concept of state. They have been ‘nationalised’.
Again this begs the question: what would we do if we had to face a similar situation? Would we accept the imposed change of nationality or would we resist it ?
Surely, we would do everything possible to continue being what we are and what we want to be. The difference, of course, is that these people are in no position to, ultimately, resist the devastating advance of modernisation (industrialisation). For this reason, all of us who believe in justice and dignity, have an obligation to provide them with the support they need– although they do not ask for it– to defend their liberty and rights, and, finally, prevent the silent or invisible genocide that they are being subject to.
We should not be surprised thatthere are people who do not want to either assimilate or integrate into the kind of life that we live; a system that pauperises millions, destroys whole ecosystems – land, water, forests, fisheries, space and atmosphere. These people are neither poor nor ignorant. They are most certainly different and have demonstrated the most uncommon wisdom, whose history is a mystery even today.
When the first ‘conquistadores’ travelled down the combined drainage basin of the rivers Amazon and Orinoco, in the 16thcentury, they found populous settlements, hierarchical chiefdoms and complex agricultural systems all along the two rivers. The ‘Indians’, they reported, raised turtles in ponds/freshwater lagoons, had vast stores of dried fish, made sophisticated glazed pottery, and had huge jars, each one capable of holding a hundred gallons. They also noted that these people had dug-out canoes and traded up and down the Andes. Behind the large settlements, they noted many roads leading to the hinterland. These stories were later discounted as the puff of promoters trying to magnify the importance of their ‘discoveries’, as the banks of the rivers have been almost devoid of people since the 18thcentury. All through the 20thcentury, the archetypal Amazonians were ‘hidden tribes’, hunter-gatherers and jhum cultivators, who lived mostly upstream, at the headwaters, away from even the settlers within.
With the benefit of hindsight and new insights from history, social anthropology and archaeology, we can nowsee that these two opposing perceptions of Amazonia are strangely and tragically related. Archaeology now teaches us that lowland Amazonia, even in areas of poor soil and brackish water like the upper Xingu, was indeed once quite densely populated. Regional trade and dynamic synergies among and between the Amazonians had led to the sub-continent being thickly populated by widely differentiated, but inter-related groups or communities, who specialised in local skills to both work and use their unique environs in diverse and subtle ways.
The onslaught of modern/western societies brought about much of this complexity/diversity to an end. Warfare, conquest, religious missions, and the scourge of old world diseases reduced whole populations to less than a tenthof the pre-Columbian levels. Slave raids, by European invaders traded the ‘red gold’ of enslaved ‘Indians’ for the goods of western industries, stripped the lower rivers/reaches bare of any remnant groups. Raiding, enslaving and competition for trading opportunities with the whites created turmoil in the headwaters. The myth of the empty Amazon became a reality as the survivors moved inland and upstream to avoid these depredations.
In the late 19thcentury, overseas markets and advances in technology created new possibilities of exploitation/extraction. In particular, the discovery of the process of vulcanisation, led to a global trade in non-timber forest produce, such as, rubber and other plantations almost exclusively for military-industrial-commercial use. The onerous task of bleeding the climax vegetation and the land rich in deposits, linked to global trade and finance, yielded fortunes for entrepreneurs prepared to penetrate the headwaters and enslave local communities to serve the global marketplace.
Tens of thousands of indigenous people perished as a result of forced contact, labour and disease.
This forced them to flee even deeper into the jungles, to break contact completely with a changing world that brought them death and destruction of life and ‘property’.
Of course, not all the indigenous people at the headwaters are environmental/ecological refugees escaping the brutalities of contact. However, the impact of the outside world on even the remotest headwaters is often underestimated. For many, not only in Amazonia, the search for isolation has been an informed choice – the logical response of a people who have realised that contact with the outside world almost certainly brings only ruin, not benefits.
This century’s industrialised societies are being further drawn into the last reaches of the Amazon, where these people now live in voluntary isolation, for timber, minerals, oil and natural gas. If we deplore the consequent horrors of the earlier invasions, can we now really say that the advanced industrial society is more civilised? Can we respect the choice (rights) of other communities to avoid contact and leave them alone in their homeland, undisturbed?
The ‘Last’ Frontier – The Case of the Negrito in the Andamans.
Outsiders are invading the reserve of the isolated Jarawas (Sentinelese, Onges and others) in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands of India. They are stealing the game on which they depend for their life and livelihood. Women and children, in particular, seem to face the brunt of this invasion. Despite a Supreme Court order to the local administration to finally close, for example, the highway which runs through the reserve, it remains open, bringing death, disease and dependency.
The Jarawa are one of the four Negrito communities who are believed to have travelled to the Andamans from Africa some 60,000 years ago. Two of the local communities, the Onge and Andamanese, were decimated following the colonisation of their islands – first by the British and later by India. The present population of the Andamanese is a ridiculous 40. Both the communities are now dependent on government handouts. The Jarawas resisted contact with the settlers from mainland India until 1998. The fourth, the Sentinelese, live on their own island and continue to shun all contact.
The Jarawas are hunter-gatherers and even their population size is far below the critical mass (270). They use bows and arrows to hunt small game. Today, hundreds and thousands of Indian and Burmese settlers and poachers are hunting along the coast, depriving the Jarawas of their vital game. The issue has become so acute that in many areas the once abundant game has almost become extinct. The same is true vis-à-visthe other communities as well.
The main highway which runs through the Jarawa reserve, known as the Andaman Trunk Road, has thrown open their homeland for exploitation and extraction. As a result, foreign or alien goods and exotics are being introduced into the region. Although the local administration is trying to restrict contact, which may be a step in the right direction, it is by no meanssufficient to secure the future of the communities at stake. All the same, opinion is still divided within the establishment to both assimilate and integrate the communities into the mainstream.
The Consequence ofImposed or Involuntary Contact – The Case of the Malapandaram in the Southern Western Ghats of Kerala.
The Malapandaram are a nomadic community numbering about 2000 people who live in the high ranges of the Southern Western Ghats along the south-west coast of the state of Kerala in South India. Early writers described them as the primitive tribes of the jungle and saw them as socially isolated in a pristine environment. But, the Malapandarams have a history of contact with the caste Hindus settled in the plains and have been a part of a wider mercantile economy. They are basically collectors of minor forest produce, such as, spices, honey and medicinal plants. They, therefore, combine subsistence food gathering –small game and birds – with the collection of other usufructs.
The majority of Malapandarams spend most of their life living in forest encampments occupied by one to four families. These encampments consist of two to four leaf shelters, made of mud (clay) and thatch. These ‘settlements’ are obviously temporary as they reside in a particular locality only for about a week before moving elsewhere.
The Malapandarams see themselves and are described by outsiders as ‘Kattumanushyar’forest people. They closely identify themselves with their living space, which is not only a source of livelihood, but also an environment where they can sustain a degree of cultural autonomy and social independence (inter-dependence). Hence, they tend to live and constantly move around the margins of the forest ecosystem. This enables them to engage in a barter system, while avoiding control, harassment/exploitation and even violence as a result of conflicting interests. In short, the verdant canopy is their only refuge.
With the establishment of colonial rule – the British (imperial) Raj – and the artificial creation/formation of the state of Travancore, the Southern Western Ghats became a property for the very first time. In the annuls of their history, owned and abused with impunity by the state through its extensive network of forest bureaucracy. Since1865, a number of Acts (laws) were enacted and enforced periodically in order to‘manage’the forests, as well as, its residents (biotic and abiotic), almost exclusively for politico-economic reasons (profit). A majoroutcome: the sedantarisation of the nomadic communities as fixed or permanent settlements. They were, thus, denied any rights, customary and/orotherwise, tolife and livelihood based on their renewable natural resource base. The ultimate manifestation of this involuntary transition has resulted in an identity crisis due to the economics of intimidation. That is, today, they are no more forest dwellers, but rather have been forced to become agriculturists (bonded, landless and marginal agricultural labourers/farmers).
’Independent’ India has only increasingly, ever more aggressively, moved from feudalism to neo-feudalism, colonialism to neo-colonialism and, now liberalism to neo-liberalism.
Suresh Balraj is an environmental anthropologist and social ecologist based in South India. He has been working in forestry, agriculture, and fisheries for several decades with a focus on community-based renewable management. He is a guardian forDeep Green Resistance.
Featured image: Cave of the Hands in Santa Cruz province, with indigenous artwork dating from 13,000–9,000 years ago, by Mariano, CC BY SA 3.0.
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How is the coronavirus crisis affecting Bangalore? In this piece, Suprabha Seshan considers the fragrances of lockdown, the clearing of beautiful skies in the heart of one of India’s biggest cities, and the brief halt to the concrete machinations of industrial living.
The streets of Jayanagar, a residential area in Bengaluru are strewn with spring flowers. Yellow copper pods, lilac crape myrtles, pink-and-white honges and orange gulmohurs blaze overhead and underfoot; vitality and senescence mirroring each other. The normally hard surfaces – kerb, pavement, road and concrete – are softened by fallen petals and the duff of stamens from rain trees. Every flower seems more brilliant, more beautiful now; the air is clear for the first time in decades. Jasmine has never been so scented; the breeze is free of fumes. Koels have never sung so loudly; the city isn’t blaring and grinding. Every thunderstorm clears the grime even more. My senses too, are unrestrained. The same world is even more lovely and I take in everything without resistance. Experience is heightened naturally.
I spend my lockdown time fantasizing forests out of the cracks in concrete.
It’s even more clear to me now that life so wants to live, that air can clear and waters can sparkle, and that breathing can happen without a struggle. I fantasize about human community forming around these petals, walking and talking with each other, playing badminton or cricket on a quiet street, without the screeching machines, without the danger of being overwhelmed by emphysema, cancer, diabetes, pneumonia, tuberculosis and atherosclerosis; and other ailments of the modern world. Wherever I see non humans, I see health. Even those classified as vermin are mostly just cleaning up human filth. Wherever I see artifacts of industrial civilization, I see ill-health and disasters. Everything from paper and cloth to metal, steel and plastic – everything fashioned in the furnaces of industrial scale machinery and delivered to people like you and me – has debilitated the planet as well as our bodies. Everything has had blood in its making. Meanwhile, here is the surge of life, in the cracks of this tar, up in the trees, swirling through the skies and in the water; a vitality surging to ease us of our misery.
It seems to me that civilization is the disease we need to rid ourselves and the planet of.
By we, I mean all humans, all life forms, all present and future members of the council of beings. Including viruses (inextricable members of our microbiomes). Perhaps Covid-19 is the evolutionary challenge that will mutate humankind from psychopathy and victimhood, to communities more compassionate, life-loving and planet-friendly.
Here is beauty bursting and then dying for more beauty. I have never been so happy in Bangalore, nor so long removed from the forest where I have lived for nearly three decades. But the ebullience of the air, light, birds, sky and the trees – make my skin and organs, limbs, senses and mind, its own. The natural world is here too, embracing and not alienating me, even if I hanker for the ancient biome that is my adopted home. Every being here, is part of the vanguard of something primordial; enlivening everyone and everything; grace appearing through light, leaves, flesh, feathers and fur. Here are baby forests, grasslands and thorny thickets waiting to spring forth, offering kinship and solidarity. I’m not so alone. There are many of us here in the frontline of dissembling the body of modern civilization. We’ll find room for all beings. Even the vermin who make sure humans don’t get too cocky in their pursuit of sterility.
I venture to the grocery store most days; little walking reprieves. I also perch often on the parapet top of my mother’s apartment complex; my own lockdown eyrie. Barring the trees, the sky, the birds, the winds, and human and other mammal bodies, all around and as far I can see, are the things of civilization. Every single one of these has been made by humans. With or without machines. Everything is made, assembled, glued together or welded – by people. Fashioned and fabricated with materials from the land, from the cratered bodies of non humans; from living communities around the living earth.
I also spend lockdown time, conjuring memories of the people who made this city, and continue to keep it going. I imagine the sweat-slick torsos and limbs of men and women who made this place – this culvert, this bridge, road, tarmac, and kerb. I walk around buildings of all sizes and shapes, buildings their creators are proud of. Every contractor, owner and resident considers each of these important and necessary. Also beautiful and profitable. I imagine the glistening, strong and slim bodies of the labourers who laid every brick, carried every cement sack, masoned every wall and floor and ceiling. I think of the lives that went into making these.
Concrete structures are the skeletal basis of modern existence.
Despite the technology, they are still built like the pyramids were, by millions of poor and displaced people brought in. Co-opted and tempted perhaps; driven by aspiration or just strife and despair, masses of poor people have built the monuments and neoliberal palaces of the 21st century. How many suffered to make the concrete jungle? How many organs, tissues, senses and minds died to make this drain, or repair it? How many lungs, livers, uteruses, guts, skins, kidneys, brains and gall bladders gave in to the cement, smog and steel died, so the elite could exalt in these?
Around the corner, are the vegetable vendors. Around another corner, the grocers (everywhere the security guards and the police.) All part of this way of life, men and women doing their thing so the city folks can live. Hauling, caring, cleaning, fetching and selling, each in their own way, so we can live. Almost everyone hailing from somewhere outside this city. I stop to pick up some essentials – onions, drumsticks, atta, eggs and milk. Again images arise in my mind, but they’re palpable. Just beyond the precincts of the metropolitan area, are the farmers.
Every floret and gourd; tuber and grain; fruit, seed and lentil in these shops is from the land, worked by brown bodies through the seasons, over decades.
By now millenia. The peasantry working so the citified folks can eat, and create civilization. Below their rural bodies is the brown, black or red earth, sometimes rich and fragrant, circling death into agro-ecological community. More often than not – the land is hardpanned, cracked, exposed, depleted and toxic with dangerous chemicals, dying there as I, here, pick and choose my next meal. Right now, I am indelibly classed as a consumer. Living in a rural area normally, and growing mutualistic bonds with farming and tribal neighbours, I have a sense of what it might be like simply to gather, or partake of the bounties of the earth more directly. But right now, I’m confronted with the fact, that behind these potatoes and tomatoes I buy today, are lands worked even harder than the bodies of the humans working them, who are worked by the rest of us, to fill the tables and larders of the city. The effects of this citified existence, have spread to every part of the planet.
There are no places—no island, nor mountain nor ocean trench—untouched by the egregious wastes of industrial civilization.
Migrant labourers number some 30 percent of the population in India. No one’s appalled by this it seems. People forced to leave home and work far away so that their families can have food and shelter, who enter inhuman conditions, breathing noxious air thick with pollutants, asbestos, cement, smoke, smog, polyurethanes and tar. They live in shanties, stacked up around each other, instead of their villages and forests. The agricultural economy has failed. Gargantuan industrial projects are taking over; special economic zones, highways, ports and landfills spread over vast areas of the land, asking no one’s permission. Meanwhile people are removed from those lands to build those same projects or come into the cities to build skyscrapers, malls, monuments, gated communities, theme parks and tower-block offices for wealthier people. No one is appalled by this. It’s taken for granted that all these have to be built. Upper-class people pay for their square footage of property, and all their accumulations inside, in denial that everything has been stolen. Besides, who’s to pay for the well-being of the poor, and especially of their bodies? Is there some natural law that governs the corpulence of apartment dwellers, and the emaciation of the people who built their buildings?
“For us to maintain our way of living, we must tell lies to each other and especially to ourselves. The lies are necessary because, without them, many deplorable acts would become impossibilities.”
The word that comes to mind right now is parasitism. But as a conservationist and neoforest-dweller, I have come to respect the parasites of the natural world. I’ve observed how they contribute to the resilience of the forest, and to the living community as a whole. What of these elite humans then? What of people like you and me? How do we contribute to the living community? Do we, at all?
Native American writer, scholar and political activist Jack. D. Forbes has another word for this. Wetikos. He has termed this condition of modern humans, as a form of cannibalism, or wetikos, which means sickness in Cree language. In his book Columbus and other Cannibals, he outlines disturbing examples that show how wetikos defines modern civilization and how it is spreading like a contagion across all cultures, a sickness whose symptoms are rape, greed, caste-ism, class-ism, arrogance, cruelty, warmongering, slavery, psychosis, and exploitation of another for one’s own profit.
Wetikos is a psychic disease, a virus of the mind and soul.
That humankind was sick, stressed, disordered and plagued in a million ways long before Covid-19 got out, is a point that few are in the mood to appreciate right now. That plastic microfibres have found their way into the flesh of every child being born, depressing all our beautiful bodies from their natural birthrights of vigour and vitality was a fact shrugged off long before the virus hit. That one-in-four persons suffers a mental illness, that this is a sign of insanity of the culture as a whole, had not been adequately dealt with at all. That one-in-four women worldwide risks being assaulted or raped, is on the backburner now. That the world was already in its death throes from the annihilation of the biosphere, long before December 2019, has become irrelevant. For this, the newreels din into all living rooms, is the mother of all pestilences, this Covid-19. This terrifying, raging disease is striking the elderly and the weak, those already suffering in areas of high pollution and cramming, burdened by compromised immune systems. Covid-19 is bringing modern civilization to a shocking halt, unleashing all kinds of psychological, social, political, ecological and tectonic forces. This way of life is dissembling quickly, so let’s not talk about how this way of life came to be.
Historian Arnold Toynbee wrote that civilizations are never murdered, they instead take their own lives.
Whether you agree or disagree with his analysis, it’s true that all civilizations have collapsed. A few got rebooted, but all have gone down. They had an average life span of 300-odd years and ended from a slew of causes: overshoot and drawdown being the most common. They were also top-heavy with large discontented serf populations. They were also broken by war, internecine conflict, natural disasters and diseases. Starting out with chieftains, little societies grew to kingships and empires with the birth of agriculture and militarized polities. They ended as civilizations, and almost all suffered tyranny or civil breakdown.
The culprit in the Covid-19 crisis, is globalization itself (that is, the modern industrial world with runaway capitalism dovetailing into fascism). Through its own interactions, materials, infrastructures, conduits, networks and arrangements, the 21st century civilization is the main vector of these diseases. Not some bat, rat, bird or virus alone. The precondition for the havoc caused by the virus is the destruction of the natural world through the predatory spread of a rapacious mentality fueled by extraordinary congregations of people in lethal conditions. Long prior to the arrival of the virus. Infectious diseases are now spreading faster than at any time in history. It is estimated that 4.3 billion airline passengers travelled in 2018; an outbreak or epidemic in any one part of the world is only a few hours away from becoming an imminent threat somewhere else.
Humans are not strangers to death or to suffering.
Even if they’re afraid of it, and the manner by which they will die, they are not strangers to it. No living being is. The world death clock tells us that per year: around 56,000,000 people die, and per month: 4,679,452 and per day: 153,424.7. Per hour: 6,392.7, per minute: 106.7. Per second: 1.8 persons die.
1.9 million people have died by April 20th 2020, due to cancer alone. 10 million children are in slavery today, as forced labour, sex traffickers and war soldiers. A Lancet Report from WHO-UNICEF says: “By 2030, 2.3 billion people are projected to live in fragile or conflict affected contexts. Climate change, ecological degradation, migrating populations, conflict, pervasive inequalities, and predatory commercial practices threaten the health and future of children in every country.” The WHO website also says that every year the lives of approximately 1.35 million people are cut short as a result of a road traffic crash. Between 20 and 50 million more people suffer non-fatal injuries, with many incurring a disability as a result of their injury. Why has this not caused panic, outrage and system shut down, as Covid-19 has? How has this virus attained god-like proportions, or the reverse, a devil-like stature?
Everyone knows the rules of the modern world – the victims, workers, farmers, indentured labourers, child workers, domestic servants, and also the elite. These can’t be spelled out this very moment, it seems. In this sensitive and vulnerable time for humankind, there’s a lot of resistance to history. Who is being victimized to serve whom, is not a hot topic. For who is there to listen? Everyone is only thinking Covid-19.
This is a time, when anything can happen.
And so it is a time when everything matters. Everything. So greater vigilance is required, not only against the virus, but against wetikos amassing power. In such times human psyches are even more vulnerable. Fear can make victims protect their abusers. It can make their psyches extremely suggestible.
The fear of death by Covid-19 has made the entire human race extremely compliant to authority. It has also unified a few in a bid against civilization, or its current avatar, capitalism. As the towers, pillars and edifices being built by migrant labourers stay silent, as the cement mixers stop, as the cement dust settles, as the black smog from land vehicles and planes disappears, some kind of cancellation is happening. Terror on the one hand, and resurgent atmosphere and hydrosphere on the other. Never before have despots and tyrants had such compliance, never before has human resilience and community been so compassionate and far reaching, The privileged and educated are shut in – skyping or zooming each other; the poor are corralled and shut out, in huddles with each other. Nobody lifting a finger in utter despair and outrage that this dream-of-dreams is falling apart, that this thing that everyone had aspired for is hollow, that this shiny, sterile, and smooth modern world is itself the bearer of death. Slap in the face from mother nature, some people say. The future does not exist anymore, a horror greater than slavery, war, patriarchy and climate catastrophe. Every person now hooked into the modern world, is already lonely and desperate, smogged out, concreted over, tarred and painted; in the vice of steel and super machines. Why are we not aghast at the betrayal, be we well-fed or poor? The Covid-19 horror, as portrayed by the mass media and the authorities and by every human alive, successfully erases all previous horrors.
The earth is breathing again.
Listen. Feel. Your skin and eyes and heart will tell you. Everyone’s lungs, barring the ones infected by Covid-19, are clearer and stronger again. Everyone’s bodies are freer of toxins and fumes, for just this moment. Immune systems are rallying. Everyone’s minds can take a break, get some kind of nervous system rehaul, for just this moment. While my heart (not yet locked down) goes out to patients who cannot access health care, and my arm (not yet locked down) rises in solidarity against the victims of domestic violence – right now – this is a situation that could turn for the better. If only we listen to the natural world, to human community, to air and sky and birds and stars, to the plants and animals near us, a more vibrant immunity could kick in. For just a moment, can we celebrate the freeing of all our lungs (every being that has lungs), and the breathing of our skins (every being that has a skin) and the opening of the arteries in our bodies (every being with arteries and circulatory organs), and the clearer blood flowing in and out of our hearts (every being with blood), and our livers (every being with a liver)? Can we feel the easing from overwork, of our organs being fed with clean blood that comes from clean lungs, and from cleaner air? Can we put our psychoses on pause, for just this moment? Is this not a moment to find some grit of sanity? Is this not the most extreme of ironies, the freeing of the earth while the canning of humans in the viral echo-chamber goes viral? But while we listen to our bodies, and pick up the strength and clarity to defend this new-found health-in-community, we still have to care, for the isolated, the sick and the hungry. Care of course, includes defence. For the land, for the hounded and the betrayed and ghetto-ized.
The looming threat of economic collapse, and of greater unemployment and the failure of food systems and the careening of currencies are all real.
Things will get worse. Tyrants will go even more ballistic. Systems will rupture. People will turn against each other. I say, let’s gather ourselves and listen to the earth. Let us align with health and vitality and each other. Let us lockdown the wetikos.
Those slim, taut, labouring bodies are getting a respite from the ugliest and most treacherous work in industries, roads and construction sites. Those very same bodies – that the modern world has yoked to serve its own ends – who had been driven in to something toxic and hollow, what do they really want? Or is this a typically privilieged question to ask sitting in a comfortable isolation chambers fretting about the future? I cannot presume what the poor want. I cannot presume what anyone wants. I can’t even presume what my body wants, it seems to say different things from my mind, tugging in mysterious ways. I can ask however. What do the millions who make this civilization at the cost of their own bodies and communities, want? Do they want to return to the construction sites, or do they want to return to their families and stay there? Millions of people who have been lost and lonely and desperate and overworked already. This should not be subsumed to the present horror.
The worry over money is real.
Money itself, the greatest and most treacherous trick has to be seen squarely for what it is. A con job, by con men, in a con system. Equating it to happiness, full bellies, happy communities and well being, is the result of centuries of systematic misdirection. And now it’s hooked us into the super-machine that’s destroying us all. Now it’s shown its true self. It does not care; it is a bearer of misery. It has wetikos embossed into its every molecule and meaning.
Covid-19 has unhinged the foundations of modern life, and shown it for how ridiculous and fragile it is. The horror of horrors right now is that the good life (the civilized life, the citified life with bright lights, fancy machines and endless iterations of things), is not what it was made out to be.
There is no longer any place to settle, feel well, or find any kind of security. Everything ferries the virus. Well, maybe not everywhere. Amazonian Indians rush back to their forests for they fear new infections; they can be wiped out as a people. The Zapatistas have cordoned off their caracoles and hills and valleys, in southern Mexico. They will take care of themselves they say, as bad governments are showing they cannot. The state of Kerala in southern India sealed itself off long before the others. Its people, local governments and the state government humanely and compassionately took care of each other, stayed home and observed all the protocol. Cuba and South Korea are models for not only how they’ve contained the disease, but for another kind of society. Why has the rest of the world not followed these models, why the spread of systems of despotism, tyranny, fascism, and authoritarianism that so-called liberal democracy has actually given birth to? Is this wetikos at work?
Eventually the most of the world locked down and as I write, the easing has also begun.
There are other things afoot in many places, where lockdown presages uglier things, far more deadly than the virus. Millions are suffering not from the virus, but other dangers. Communalism, displacement, loneliness, fear, sealings-in, exile, lychings, PTSD. These are bound to continue. In fact, all humankind is struggling with PTSD right now, a symptom of which is the inability to see into the future. A perfect moment for wetikos, riding hot on the heels of the virus.
Global warming continues apace, it will take a few hundred years to turn that horror around, a few hundred years of the respite experienced in the last few weeks. But global warming is a symptom of modern industrial civilization in all its avatars; aka runaway capitalism, fascism, nation-states and corporate-military complexes. All these bear more viruses, more deadly plagues, together with floods and the droughts and the fires and the hurricanes. The legacies of the chaos and destruction wreaked by the men who drive the monster machines.
“It is no measure of health to be adjusted to a profoundly sick society.”
That this way of life is insane, disconnected from the natural world, from its own body and community, is still not recognized. The Dhaulagiri mountains becoming visible from towns in Punjab was not just a centennial miracle, but should be the absolute norm, the way things should be, on any day. The mountains are hidden by the smog of our excess, like lovers obscuring each other through cigarette smoke. The Ganga refreshed herself in the last two months. The waters of the Yamuna are sparkling again. The Cauvery is running cleaner even downstream of Bengaluru. All this without a single paisa being spent. Why are these not heralded in banners all around the land? That they are not, is a sign of how smoggy our own vision is, and therefore our thoughts and our experience. That the living world is still here, that it did not go away, and that the land blesses us if only we stayed at home, should be the moment to radically rethink community.
The way out of psychosis is to relate again, with humans and non humans.
The only thing I wish to defend right now, is this. The right to community. I’m fiercely protective of every living being. I daily vow to save each and all. I worship life, human and non human; every insect, bird, mammal, plant, cloud, river and mountain. The rewilding of the world will happen. Future forests are waiting, surging under the tar. From the mesh of petals becoming soil becoming weed, becoming verge, becoming community becoming safe zone for native trees, birds, squirrels and humans; community will happen. In time shrubs and climbers and creepers and trees will grow tall. Coming generations will breathe clean air. No. You and I will breathe clean air. The asphalt will crack and the roots of the thousand tiny pipal trees, I find in these alleys, will make way for the rest of nature. Pipal saplings growing out of compound walls, between pavement slabs, in the drains and culverts, on top of other trees, on tops of apartment blocks, on neglected balconies. Pipal roots will go through every artefact, every thing. In the cracks soil will form and grow fertile. Rain will sink into the ground to replenish underground springs and aquifers. I picture you and I walking through this wild land, picking herbs and fruit, enjoying flowers, birds and small animals, and coming home with a free meal.
Foraging costs nothing; there is no packaging waste.
The foods will be diverse, seasonal and delicious. Forage and forest seem to be connected words, and connected ways of being. How silly that humans are the only ones who pay for food. Instead of roads, cars, shops and malls, we could have food forests and little trails by streams trickling through cool, dappled hollows. Tall trees to climb and pick mangoes and jackfruit from. No gyms. No traffic, no honking. No rumbling cement mixers and screeching cranes swinging overhead. No drilling machines, no loudspeakers. Just us, people. Human people, dog people, butterfly people, bird people. Fish people in stream people. And pipal people
Leviathan is writhing.
It’s under assault like never before. Covid-19 has come just at the right time, to put it out of its misery. It had started to flail and turn upon itself quite a while ago. Leviathan has been afflicted by several diseases and problems, from being too large and too dependant and completely arrogant. It suffers from supremacy-syndrome. It hates its dependancy on us people. On life. It is narcissistic and cannibalistic. All its parts are plagued with wetikos, the disease of exploitation. Jack D Forbes writes that “the disease of aggression against all other living beings and the disease of consuming others lives and possessions, and people, are all the same”. Paul Levy, author of Dispelling Wetiko: Breaking the Curse of Evil writes: “we become bewitched by the projective tendencies of our own mind. People afflicted with wetikos react to their own projections in the world as if they objectively exist separate from themselves, delusionally thinking that they have nothing to do with creating that to which they are reacting. Over time this activity of endlessly reacting to and becoming conditioned by one’s own energy tends to generate insane behavior, which can manifest internally or in the world at large. As if under a spell, we become entranced by our own intrinsic gifts and talents for dreaming up our world, unknowingly hypnotizing ourselves with our God-given power to creatively call forth reality so that it boomerangs against us, undermining our potential for evolution.” Leviathan is projecting itself into Covid-19. And it will boomerang into itself. I have no doubts here.
I am done with this way of life.
Except for my friends and family, and the land and forests I’ve dedicated my life to support, I need little. I’ll leave this machine and never look back. I’ll eat ferns and forest fruit, and roots. I’ll eat less. If there’s nothing I’ll starve and fall. Perhaps I’ll die. Others can take life from me. I’m stepping away from the wetikos who champion this way of being. The only revolution that matters right now is the one that liberates earth mother and all her children. Including our bodies. And our minds. From wetikos. I’ll take my chances. When the oil-guzzling machines give way and the monoliths, monuments, highways, terminals, pipelines and cables freeze, decay, crumble, crash or powder and become dust, each particle will go home to the elements. Then, after some time, each will be taken into the arms of the waiting fungi and bacteria. and other beings who made this world possible in the first place. And that too, long ago. They still have all their secrets. Seeds will soon sprout and animals will come, and more trees will grow and rivers will run and the moon will shine through into our dreams unmarred by bright violent lights and the buzz of electricity.
The spirits will be back then, and we will be embraced by the land once more. And the whole world will come ablaze with flowers.
But wait a second. I’m in lockdown. Funny how the sight of petals can spin such fantasy. When the body is trapped, the mind travels far; a condition faced by all prisoners. And yogis. This is a comfortable prison, no doubt. Maybe yoga came out of some long-ago lockdown, trapped folks seeking release. I’m privilieged, of course. And have a nice yoga mat too. But right now, I’m not calling this by any other name. It’s a prison. I do my own limbering up in a few square feet, noting the air is sweeter. What’s happening out there? Events in the wider world appear not only through the media but in fresh wafts through the window. I go for the daily parole. Commune with the trees. I do as I’m told. But I keep vigilant. All my thoughts are focussed. On a full blown lockdown: of every wetikos-ridden soul and wetikos-engineered thing. I fantasize of the lockdown of Leviathan.
The liberation of the natural world, including human kind, has never been closer.
Suprabha Seshan is a rainforest conservationist. She lives and works at the Gurukula Botanical Sanctuary, a forest garden and community-based conservation centre in the Western Ghat mountains of Kerala. She writes occasionally. Her essay can be found in the Indian Quarterly and Journal of the Krishnamurti Schools and elsewhere. She is currently working on her book, Rainforest Etiquette in a World Gone Mad, forthcoming from Context, Westland Publishers.
This piece has been slightly edited from the original version published at Countercurrents. Featured image by Sebastian Horndasch, CC BY 2.0.
Whether you agree or disagree with his analysis, it’s true that all civilizations have collapsed. A few got rebooted, but all have gone down. They had an average life span of 300-odd years and ended from a slew of causes: overshoot and drawdown being the most common. They were also top-heavy with large discontented serf populations. They were also broken by war, internecine conflict, natural disasters and diseases. Starting out with chieftains, little societies grew to kingships and empires with the birth of agriculture and militarized polities. They ended as civilizations, and almost all suffered tyranny or civil breakdown.