IILM Founder's Day Lecture in memory of Smt. Indira Gandhi-2008
By Shri Wajahat Habibullah
Dr Kapila Vatsayan, Ambassador KV Rajan, thank you for your warm introduction. I’m a little overwhelmed at the rather distinguished list of persons who have come and spoken on this very important occasion and delivered the Indira Gandhi Memorial Lectures. I am afraid my only claim to be able to stand here is because I happened to work with the great person for a short period of time and had, therefore, the opportunity to observe what she attempted to do. Those were, of course, her last years. I was with her from 1982 to 1984. During that time, much of her thinking had crystallized and although her life ended in a major tragedy, the legacy that she left behind has been lasting and there are those who still look back at her time as a kind of golden age in many respects, in terms of stability, development and growth. I, as you rightly said, would like to highlight one particular issue and that is her commitment to the environment. I don’t only mean the natural environment but the environment in general—the cultural, the natural and the international environment in which she found herself. That is what Dr Vatsayan and I have in common because during that time and after when she passed away, the Indira Gandhi National Centre for Arts was being set up; we did happen to work together and try to understand the great legacy that she left in that area.
We are meeting today in the shadow of a major tragedy that has beset our country, a tragedy that has thrown many challenges. I was asked to appear on an Al Jazeera TV programme to talk about this and I said there that if these terrorists had hoped to destroy India, they will obviously fail. Anyone can tell them that. This is a useless exercise. They will not destroy our economy and our unity is likely to grow even stronger. Our diversity is going to grow richer and that kind of an assault brings us all together. It is not an assault that is going to, in any way, impair our progress or interrupt our leap into the future, which we are taking on the basis of certain strong foundations to which Mrs. Gandhi was a major contributor.
Coming to the area of our environment, where I’m talking about this dramatic progress that we can look forward to, that we are already in the process of, and that no danger of this criminal nature is ever going to divert us from. It is important to remember that she highlighted a particular area where she saw a major threat to our future. If you see the book written by her and published in 1984, Safeguarding Our Environment, published by New Age Publishers, you’ll find much in it. I could see because I used to draft all her speeches and messages at that time and none of the messages passed without her scrutinising every word, making changes all over the place and coming up with her own version. You can read her language in this book and this is how she starts the book, “I had the good fortune of growing up with the kinship with nature in all its manifestations —birds, plants, stones were companions, and sleeping under the star strewn sky, I became familiar with the name and movement of the constellations, but my deep interest in this Earth was not in itself but as a home fit for man…” This, I think. was the gist of her approach to the environment, the commonality between the evolution of human kind as a whole, specifically in relation to the cultural heritage, which grew out of that environment and which so greatly enriched us. She talks in this book of the great Emperor Ashok. She speaks of an emperor whose policies were imprinted forever on his rock edicts which showed that he considered himself as the protector, not only of human beings but of all life—animal, trees, flowers and forests. All these, in fact, she regarded as part of India’s heritage. Not only one area or one part; this made India as a whole in her view. Therefore, if India was ready to progress, then it must grow in all these aspects.
In this, her remarks were prescient: “In poverty, he — the mankind, is threatened by malnutrition and disease, in weakness by war and in richness by the pollution brought about by his own prosperity. We have transited from one through another to the third. Therefore, it is necessary to re-look at our foundations, to go back in search of our foundations. No matter how dramatic our progress — economic, scientific, military may be, the foundation requires to be strengthened.” This is something on which she was very strong and very deeply committed. I can say this from my own experience. I used to sit in number of meetings chaired by Mrs. Gandhi and the longest meetings were those that concerned the environment or culture. She never interrupted anybody, listened very carefully and contributed in the end. The other meetings were of the business type that did not last very long. This period brought us initially to Project Tiger, 1973. Project Tiger has something that all of us are very proud of. In 2007, there were more than 40 Project Tiger wildlife reserves covering an area of 37,761 kms and it helped to increase the population of tigers, which had been at the beginning of the century, estimated at about 40,000 but had come down to a little over 1,200. That went up over a period to about 3,500. Unfortunately, today, it is again under threat. Now, of course, the figure has apparently fallen to 141.
We are now rethinking the whole project, part of the reason why this reduction has taken place. The method of counting has become much more scientific. It was not so clear in the earlier days. The point is that this major project is under threat. This major project needs to be protected. But not only this, she repeatedly in her speeches, talked about the extinction of animal life and how that was in many ways diminishing India. She specifically spoke about the Cheetah several times as to how in her childhood she was brought up to regard the Cheetah as the symbol of India. That is no longer there. There is no Cheetah in our country. It is extinct. These were things of which she was very concerned. As a result, you had the Forest Conservation Act and the Wild Life Protection Act. During that time, in 1981, she had written a letter to chief ministers of all the coastal areas, particularly identifying the fragile ecology of our coastline and what needed to be done to conserve and restore it. We all know about the Silent Valley Project in Kerala and how she succeeded in protecting that. There are number of other examples of how she actually succeeded in protecting the environment. The direct result of this effort -- initiated in her time and culminated in her son’s time -- was the Environmental Protection Act. I do know that in Mr. Rajiv Gandhi’s time we had a particularly assertive secretary in the Ministry of Environment and Forests and this was Mr T N Seshan. The Ministry of Environment and Forests had become virtually the bureaucratic system of the government. Without the approval from that ministry you could not initiate any development programme.
Then, Mrs. Gandhi passed away. In Shakti Sthal, which is her samadhi, many of you have visited her. Those who have not and visit it now, please look out for the manner of its decoration. It has rocks all over: stones from every part of India, as far as the Andamans, all brought by the help of military trucks. She felt alarmed that economic development could become an assault on nature. In her view, the best form of development is one that would come in harmony with nature. I spoke in terms of animals, stones and others. What about human beings? She had a particular concern about tribals. Recently, of course, you have had the Scheduled Tribes Rights Act in the forests and this has created a lot of controversy. If the tribals are allowed to settle in the forests, it will lead to the decimation of tiger life. I happened to be in the ministry of the Panchayati Raj when this new Bill was under discussion.
The philosophy of Mrs. Gandhi was that human life, animal life and plant life have to live in harmony. Her deep interest was to make Earth a fit home for man. She was not one of those environmentalists who felt that to protect the environment it does not matter how much is the human cost. The purpose of protecting the environment was to enrich human life. That is, of course, one of the controversies regarding the Scheduled Tribes recognition of Forest Rights Act of 2005, where the tribal population will be one that will respect forest life. We do know that in 1865 when the British came up with their first Indian Forest Act, what they had done was they had expropriated the forestland from the tribals, stating that under the protection of the government, forests will be protected and conserved. But their intention was clear because the first time they interfered in forests was in 1806 where they actually took control of forests with the objective of being able to exploit Malabar teak. So, their interest was really commercial, clad with may be some nice sounding words. For centuries, tribals were the owners of forest produce and they respected forest produce and they never exploited them. Even today, if you go to the Andamans, you will find primitive tribes. They live with the forests and the forests live with them. They cannot do without each other.
The Government has decided to set up few islands and forests have disappeared from those islands. These huge rain forests that enrich that island territory and which enrich large parts of the world are now confined to very few areas. But, in the case of the Andamans again, when I was visiting her, the then Lt. Governor happened to tell her that, “Madam, look at these tribals, they are so backward.” First of all, he arranged a meeting in which all these ladies were forced to wear shirts. Normally, these ladies go about bare-breasted and since Mrs. Gandhi was the Prime Minister and a lady herself, the officials thought that she might feel offended to see the tribal ladies like that. The Lt.Governor first arranged a gathering and he had them all wear shirts. Mrs. Gandhi was extremely annoyed about that. But then he said to her, “Madam, all these tribals are most uncivilized. I will see that each one of them is wearing jeans by the time you come next.” Mrs Gandhi was furious. I would not name him, you can research that, but the poor LG was transferred very shortly thereafter.
The conservation of tribes was there and we can take great pride in this. We are one of the few countries in the world where primitive tribals have been able to conserve their ancient way of life even in the modern world despite assaults of what we may think is the civilized world — a civilized world, which brings disease, disruption of life, and conflicts in place of harmony and a disease-free life. But we have preserved it. It has disappeared in Australia; it has disappeared in New Zealand and many other parts of the world. But we still have it, may be in a small part of our country but still preserved. And a lot of that credit goes to the work done by Mrs. Indira Gandhi. Today, 20 per cent of our land mass is supposed to be forestland. In actual fact, the figures are about 7 to 8 per cent. If our forests go, our water will go, if our water goes, the great country of ours will become uninhabitable.
The vision that Mrs Gandhi had laid out for us is still very valid. She had tried to work in bringing about this vision not through imposition -- there was no effort at thrusting this. She tried to develop this as a part of her overall development scheme at the heart of which was the inclusion of all sections of our people in this great democratic movement towards the future. There has been criticism of her because of the imposition of the Emergency. We said that she was not committed to democracy; that she was by instinct an authoritarian. Having worked with her, I can vouch for the fact that repeatedly she sought to go back and sought the support of the people of all kinds because this idea of conservation of nature was deeply rooted in her idea that this is a part of India’s tradition out of which grew her culture. Therefore, it is important not only to conserve the basic roots but also the cultural diversity that has grown out of it. It is in her time that we saw the foundation of the Indian National Trust for Art and Culture Heritage that was something that I had worked on. She saw to it that this organisation was independent of the government. A grant was made but that was a one-time grant. So, the government could not dictate to INTACH.
It was to be an independent organisation working on its own on India’s art and cultural heritage and it still remains. All this taken together, what does this mean? It means, that the government has a certain role but the people have a more important role — the people in all their variety and the people who live in harmony with nature. So, we have had our evolution of our democracy, we have had the growth of an increasing reliance on our diversity to enrich us and of course now, as I regard as the flowering of that democratic process, the right to information. This is part of the legacy which we have and because of her concern of conserving the environment, Mrs. Gandhi has been described as India’s Green Prime Minister. This was repeatedly manifested in Delhi; part of the reason why you can thank yourselves that we have Green Delhi is for the very strong stand that she took. If the felling of any tree came to her notice, she took an extremely adverse view of it.
I was looking after the Environment when she was the Prime Minister and went on to do so at the time of Mr. Rajiv Gandhi. I was often making telephone calls to various people to know the reason why a certain tree had been brought down. The idea of the whole of India being one was strengthened by her in this way. India is not one because of its geographical entity. It is one because its people share a rich cultural heritage. Its people also share a very rich heritage of nature which our civilisation, our culture teaches us to respect. So, many of you will go out to create a life for yourselves in the future. When you go out, you must remain aware of what makes India great. What makes India unique? As we now move towards the future, it is bound to be bright, based on solid foundations. What has made us unique in the past and what will make us unique in the future, is to learn to regard our nation not only as a collection of human beings but as an entity which includes nature, culture and civilisation of heritage.
With these words I would conclude this discussion and I would welcome any questions that you may have in regard to this. Thank you.
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