Murali Sivaramakrishnan

MURALI SIVARAMAKRISHNAN– poet, painter, professor and literary critic–is the author of The Mantra of Vision (1997), Learning to Think Like Myself(2010), Communication, and Clarification: Essays on English in the Indian Classroom(2014) Strategies and Methods: Relocating Textual Meaning (2018) and a number of critical essays and seven volumes of poetry.  An acclaimed artist and poet he is also a committed environmentalist. His paintings have gone on display at several major exhibitions. He has held several solo exhibitions of his paintings. He was Fellow at the Nehru Memorial Museum and Library, Teen Murti, New Delhi, and Associate of the Indian Institute of Advanced Study, Shimla. He is member and coordinator of research of the Herman Hesse Society of India. He is also member of editorial and advisory boards of many acclaimed journals. Dr S Murali is the founder President of ASLE India. Murali’s Nature and Human Nature: Literature, Ecology, Meaning (2009) is a pioneering work on Indian ecocriticism. Its sequel, Ecological Criticism for Our Times: Literature, Nature and Critical Inquiry (2011) –ASLE India’s second book—has also received high accolades. He was awarded a Fulbright Postdoctoral Travel Grant to teach and do research in the University of Nevada at Reno (2006), and was invited to read his poems as part of the inauguration of the International Conference on Poetic Ecologies, held in the Universite Libre de Bruxelles, Belgium, in May 2008.   In 2018 he was invited to deliver a plenary lecture at the ASLE Brazil Conference in the Federal University of Amazonas, Manaus, Brazil.

The other books he has authored include: South Indian Studies (Ed) (1998); Figuring the Female: Women’s Discourse, Art and Literature (2005) Tradition and Terrain: Aesthetic Continuities (both co-authored with Dr. Usha V.T.); Ecological Criticism for Our Times: Literature, Nature and the Critical Inquiry (2011); Under the Greenwood Tree: Reading for Pleasure and Comprehension.(Ed) (2011);Image and Culture: The Dynamics of Literary, Aesthetic and Cultural Representation(2011); Inter-Readings: Text, Context, Significance. Ed. (2012); Communication, and Clarification: Essays on English in the Indian Classroom (2014); Sri Aurobindo’s Aesthetics and Poetics: New Directions (2014); Strategies and Methods: Relocating Textual Meaning (2018); Losing Nature: Narratives of Forest and Water –Environmental challenges in Brazil and India (with Zelia Bora Lexington Books, 2018); Roads to Nowhere (2020) ;Sri Aurobindo or the Poetics of Hope (2022) and

Post-Green: Literature, Culture, and the Environment (Lexington,2023)

Two of his books have been translated into the Malayalam.

Awards include the Life-Time Achievement Award for Poetry by GIEWEC, Guild of Indian English Writers, Editors and Critics, 2014. And IMRF Excellence Award, 2015

Poetry volumes: Night Heron (1998); Conversations with Children (2005); Earth Signs (2006); The East-Facing Shop (2010); Selected Poems (2014) Silverfish (2016) and Notebook of a Naturalist (2020)

*He can be reached at smuraliartist@gmail.com; smurali1234@yahoo.com; smurals@gmail.com

*WEB SITE: https://www.muralis.co.in

OF CENTRE AND PERIPHERY: FIFTY YEARS OF CHIPKO Edited by MURALI SIVARAMAKRISHNAN


Action in the world is often steered by people who are in turn marshalled by environment or culture. However, echoes of certain local actions and movements serve to actuate several strands of awareness impacting larger issues in terms of political, social, environmental and spiritual dimensions of human existence. Taking off from a small village in Uttarakhand, where mainly women came to the forefront to take up issues of conservation the ideological expressions of the Chipko movement now spreads across multiple contexts. What set off from addressing a local issue in the Garhwal region of the Himalayas has impacted global environmental concern and the situation of the human being on earth. Environmental movements thus may not take off just like that in an organised manner, but they could evolve out of a whole lot of other factors. It was around the 1980-s that the environmental debate was at its most intense in India. As Ramachandra Guha points out:
The debate operated at many levels. It touched on the moral questions raised by the environmental crisis; on the changes required in the distribution of political power to promote environmental sustainability; on the design of appropriate technologies that could simultaneously meet economic as well as ecological objectives. The debate embraced all resource sectors – forests, water, transport, energy, land, biodiversity. The government was forced to respond, by creating, for the first time, a ministry of environment at the Centre and in the states as well. New laws and new regulatory bodies were forged. For the first time, scientific research on environmental questions found a place in our leading centres of learning. https://scroll.in/article/1046269/ramachandra-guha-50-years-after-chipko-environmental-movement-india-is-ignoring-its-vital-lessons
In the contexts of discussing these issues he had listed out three events which occurred in 1973, that facilitated debate on environmental issues in India.
First, in April, the government of India announced the launching of Project Tiger, an ambitious conservation programme aimed at protecting the country’s national animal……..Indian conservationists, encouraged and helped by the international agencies like World Wildlife Fund and International Union for the Conservation of Nature, were instrumental in bringing pressure on government to create a network of national parks and sanctuaries all over India to protect endangered wildlife. Second, the publication of an article in Economic and Political Weekly (March 31, 1973) entitled ‘A Charter for the Land’ authored by B. B. Vora, a high official in the ministry of agriculture, which drew attention to the extent of erosion, water logging and other forms of land degradation in the country. The author through this article called for the formulation of an effective policy by the state in this regard and also for the creation of government departments to monitor and manage environmentally appropriate land use patterns. This reflected first official concern relating to the environmental degradation, which subsequently led to the creation of a national Committee for Environmental Protection and Control later that year. The Department of Environment was established in 1980 and a full-fledged Ministry of Environment and Forests was created five years later. Third, on March 27, 1973, in Mandal, a remote Himalayan village, a group of peasants stopped a group of loggers from felling a stand of trees by hugging the trees. This event sparked a series of similar protests through the 1970s, collectively known as “Chipko” movement. This movement raised basic questions relating to the ecology, equity and social justice and promoted lively debate and action throughout the country. Ramachandra Guha (1997, 345-346)
CHIPKO DRAFT 1 Murali Sivaramakrishnan, 2024
2
Due to its long history, the Chipko movement is said to be “one of the most celebrated environmental movements in the world” (Bandopadhyay, Jayanta, 1999,881)
Five decades have passed since its inception and yet the ripples have not died out, however on the other hand, they have fanned the flames of environmental awareness and people’s active involvement in the movement to save nature and natural resources. We can now speak of the centre and periphery of environmental wisdom which has surfaced. The Chipko certainly was not an isolated movement—occurring in a land that had given birth to the Buddha and Mahavira, and where the reverberations of the Bhakthi revival raising the awareness of spiritual oneness had not yet petered out. The Bishnois inspired by Guru Maharaj Jambaji in the region of Rajastan too had taken environmentalism and conservation to the status of a religion in the 15th century. What Chandi Prasad and Sundarlal Bahuguna did was to organise and direct the people’s will toward an ecological wisdom, and like Gandhi, triggering an awareness of soil, earth, life and the collective human’s being. Just like Mahatma Gandhi marching to Dandi and holding forth a handful of salt symbolising the political resistance of the entire country, the Chipko activists hugged and protected the trees of Garhwal. In the wake of fifty years of this massive movement, we are planning to publish a volume commemorating 50 years of the Chipko Movement.
OF CENTRE AND PERIPHERY: FIFTY YEARS OF CHIPKO, proposes to re-examine the various aspects of this earliest long-standing people’s environmental movement. The proposed book would be a collection of essays that discuss the movement, its impact and its influence, and its afterlife in contemporary Indian environmental policies, movements and thought, from personal and critical/analytical perspectives.
As the publishers desired, their “aim is to bring together academic, popular and personal conversations that engage with these events” associated with the movement.
Prof. MURALI SIVARAMAKRISHNAN
smurals@gmail.com; smurali1234@yahoo.com

A Review of “Poacher”series

“Poacher”, directed by Richie Mehta, explores the crucial issue of poaching and “man’s” ambition to dominate every aspect of the world. Hunters assume that when they kill they are establishing their dominance. This series in Malayalam exposes the drastic impact of heartless poaching. It’s significant that the range officer is a woman who is relentless in her pursuit of the poachers. This film centers around elephant poaching. The merciless killing of these beautiful creatures for the sake of ivory is that which the film focuses on and this aspect the series continues to reiterate. In short the series is certainly worth watching. The theme is sensitively handled. There are visuals which might haunt you. The narrative merges many elements — hunting and the poachers, their tensions and traumas, the forest officials hot in their trail and their personal lives and relationships, the politics and economics of ivory trade, the presence of ubiquitous patriarchal power– these are among the many that are deftly knitted into the larger framework. The action for the most is located in Kerala and it moves in a pan Indian angle with the ivory trade spreading beyond the small state into the capital and even beyond. Apparently there is very little hope for these beautiful creatures in God’s own country what with forests shrinking rapidly and human encroachment spreading at an alarming rate. More than anything the film draws attention to the avaraciousness and greed of man. However at the same time the film’s language never despises mankind on the whole or point any accusing finger at humans. The Director really requires to be congratulated for making this come through directly via each episode and even frame by frame. The characters are living and alive in this gripping and fast paced drama. Sometimes one wonders if the editing could have been a little more transparent — the narrative falters at certain points on this account. The dialogues shift between Malayalam Hindi and English, but that’s ok in due consideration of the present day India. Either way, the series proffers hours of serious watching. It is entertaining, educative and evocative.The long and short of it is the deep desire to preserve what’s left in our forests. Large mamals have actually very little chance of survival until and unless they are protected drastically. The message is quite clear. The sleeper has to wake.

“Poacher” scores 9/10.

OF CENTRE AND PERIPHERY: FIFTY YEARS OF CHIPKO

Edited by MURALI SIVARAMAKRISHNAN


Action in the world is often steered by people who are in turn marshalled by environment or culture. However, echoes of certain local actions and movements serve to actuate several strands of awareness impacting larger issues in terms of political, social, environmental and spiritual dimensions of human existence. Taking off from a small village in Uttarakhand, where mainly women came to the forefront to take up issues of conservation the ideological expressions of the Chipko movement now spreads across multiple contexts. What set off from addressing a local issue in the Garhwal region of the Himalayas has impacted global environmental concern and the situation of the human being on earth.  Environmental movements thus may not take off just like that in an organised manner, but they could evolve out of a whole lot of other factors.  It was around the 1980-s that the environmental debate was at its most intense in India. As Ramachandra Guha points out:

The debate operated at many levels. It touched on the moral questions raised by the environmental crisis; on the changes required in the distribution of political power to promote environmental sustainability; on the design of appropriate technologies that could simultaneously meet economic as well as ecological objectives. The debate embraced all resource sectors – forests, water, transport, energy, land, biodiversity. The government was forced to respond, by creating, for the first time, a ministry of environment at the Centre and in the states as well. New laws and new regulatory bodies were forged. For the first time, scientific research on environmental questions found a place in our leading centres of learning. https://scroll.in/article/1046269/ramachandra-guha-50-years-after-chipko-environmental-movement-india-is-ignoring-its-vital-lessons

In the contexts of discussing these issues he had listed out three events which occurred in 1973, that facilitated debate on environmental issues in India.

First, in April, the government of India announced the launching of Project Tiger, an ambitious conservation programme aimed at protecting the country’s national animal……..Indian conservationists, encouraged and helped by the international agencies like World Wildlife Fund and International Union for the Conservation of Nature, were instrumental in bringing pressure on government to create a network of national parks and sanctuaries all over India to protect endangered wildlife. Second, the publication of an article in Economic and Political Weekly (March 31, 1973) entitled ‘A Charter for the Land’ authored by B. B. Vora, a high official in the ministry of agriculture, which drew attention to the extent of erosion, water logging and other forms of land degradation in the country. The author through this article called for the formulation of an effective policy by the state in this regard and also for the creation of government departments to monitor and manage environmentally appropriate land use patterns. This reflected first official concern relating to the environmental degradation, which subsequently led to the creation of a national Committee for Environmental Protection and Control later that year. The Department of Environment was established in 1980 and a full-fledged Ministry of Environment and Forests was created five years later. Third, on March 27, 1973, in Mandal, a remote Himalayan village, a group of peasants stopped a group of loggers from felling a stand of trees by hugging the trees. This event sparked a series of similar protests through the 1970s, collectively known as “Chipko” movement. This movement raised basic questions relating to the ecology, equity and social justice and promoted lively debate and action throughout the country. (Ramachandra Guha (1997, 345-346)

Due to its long history, the Chipko movement is said to be “one of the most celebrated environmental movements in the world” (Bandopadhyay, Jayanta, 1999,881)

Five decades have passed since its inception and yet the ripples have not died out, however, on the other hand, they have fanned the flames of environmental awareness and people’s active involvement in the movement to save nature and natural resources. We can now speak of the centre and periphery of environmental wisdom which has surfaced. The Chipko certainly was not an isolated movement—occurring in a land that had given birth to the Buddha and Mahavira, and where the reverberations of the Bhakthi revival raising the awareness of spiritual oneness had not yet petered out. The Bishnois inspired by Guru Maharaj Jambaji in the region of Rajasthan too had taken environmentalism and conservation to the status of a religion in the 15th century. What Chandi Prasad and Sundarlal Bahuguna did was to organise and direct the people’s will toward an ecological wisdom, and like Gandhi, triggering an awareness of soil, earth, life and the collective human’s being. Just like Mahatma Gandhi marching to Dandi and holding forth a handful of salt symbolising the political resistance of the entire country, the Chipko activists hugged and protected the trees of Garhwal. In the wake of fifty years of this massive movement, we are planning to publish a volume commemorating 50 years of the Chipko Movement.

OF CENTRE AND PERIPHERY: FIFTY YEARS OF CHIPKO, proposes to re-examine the various aspects of this earliest long-standing people’s environmental movement. The proposed book would be a collection of essays that discuss the movement, its impact and its influence, and its afterlife in contemporary Indian environmental policies, movements and thought, from personal and critical/analytical perspectives. The overall objective is to bring together academic, popular and personal conversations that engage with these events associated with the movement and their after effect.

Individual essays could be of around 5000 words each.

I am afraid we will not be able to make any payments to the contributors. However, the copyright of each individual essay will remain with the contributor of the essay.

Abstracts are welcome. Kindly write “Abstract for Fifty Years of Chipko” on subject line and mail to

Prof. MURALI SIVARAMAKRISHNAN at  smurali1234@yahoo.com

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for details regarding last date of submission of Abstract and complete text : write to smurali1234@yahoo.com

[The volume is being planned by Orient Black Swan as part of a series of commemorative volumes (titled Landmarks) that celebrates texts, events and personalities that have shaped societies, cultures and communities in India. The series is intended to include volumes focusing on iconic social and political events, literary texts, and films. The aim is to bring together academic, popular and personal conversations that engage with these events.]