Caste, Dalit and Indian Environmentalism

About the Speaker

Mukul Sharma is a Professor at the Indian Institute of Mass Communication, New Delhi. He has a multidisciplinary and diverse background in academics, research, development and media. Combining the disciplines of development, environment and media studies, he has published sixteen books and booklets in English and Hindi, the latest being Caste and Nature: Dalits and Indian Environmental Politics (OUP, 2017) and Green and Saffron: Hindu Nationalism and Indian Environmental Politics (Permanent Black, 2012). His other publications include Human Rights in a Globalised World: An Indian Diary (2010) and Contested Coastlines: Fisherfolk, Nations and Borders in South Asia (co-authored, 2008). He is presently working on eco-religion, sacrality and politics in South Asia.

Abstract

My talk will attempt to see Dalit and caste conceptions of environment in modern India, by focusing on three broad themes: first, an apologist and recuperative Brahminism, manifested in a stream of environmentalism; second, Dalit environmental thought -- mythological, anecdotal, theoretical and rational; and third, Dalit activism, with its certain embedded conceptions of ecology, such as the new commons. Taken together, they highlight how Dalit meanings of environment have counter-posed themselves to ideas and practices of neo Brahmanism and to certain dominant strands of environmental thought. They underline that with all its ambiguities and multiplicities, Dalit thought represents an attempt to produce a new conception of environment as spatial equity, and build a case of environmentalism, free from burdens of caste.