"The Forests Are Forever!" The Politics of Conservation and Use in Central Himalayas, India by Shubhra Gururani Department of Anthropology Syracuse University Concern about widespread environ- mental degradation and fast depleting natural resources have given rise to a critical examination of the environmen- tal crisis in India. A large body of lit- erature (Shiva 1988, Guha 1989, Guha and Gadgil 1992, Banuri and Marglin 1993) has implicated extractive colo- nial policies, state-oriented develop- ment in the post-independence period, market economics, and patriarchy as the major factors responsible for the collapse of otherwise stable ecologies. This interpretation of environmen- tal destruction in India holds the mod- ern ideology of growth and progress re- sponsible for the exploitation of nature. For scholars and activists with this viewpoint, colonial forestry and min- eral use policies are singularly respon- sible for the present environmental con- ditions. In their opinion, colonialism marks the significant break in India's ecological history as it disrupted the ecologically balanced environment of the pre-colonial period. Although such critiques highlight the contradictions embedded in the modern discourse on "nature," they present a romantic picture of India's past and of its rural and indigenous populations. "Traditional" people with their "indigenous" environmental wis- dom are presented as repositories of an ecologically balanced ethic. Among these it is the women who are often depicted as embodiments of the con- servationist ethic. My research in the Central Himalayas of India, however, suggests that this glorified "native" does not exist. By examining the case of a people from Uttarakhand, this ar- ticle reassesses the relationship of the Pahari (mountain dwelling people) with their forests. 1 I argue that although the focus on indigenous systems of knowledge highlights the contradictions between competing ideologies, it celebrates tribal peoples, forest dwellers and women in a way which essentializes them and which perpetuates and inten- sifies the supposed dichotomy between traditional versus modern, and West versus non-West. Although those who depend on the forest are not indiffer- ent to the losses incurred by tree-fell- ing and overgrazing, their relationship with the forest is not one of reverence. In analyzing the transformation in the ecological landscape in terms of con- testing knowledges, we face the dan- ger of perpetuating a monolithic under- standing of ecological conflict by blur- ring the multiple elements of material survival and adaptive strategies which contribute to the crisis. In this article, I demonstrate how local forest practices contradict the ro- manticized representation of the Pahari people, especially the representation of women (Shiva 1988, Bahunguna 1985). There is no unison in the dis- cordant discourse of environmental degradation—the problem is under- stood and experienced differently by different people depending upon their caste, village, and gendered position- 13 ings. I suggest, by using the example of Reserved and Communally owned village forests, that we should focus our attention on particular forest and land management practices observed in Central Himalaya. 'The Environmentalist Ethic 9 Increasingly, ecological conflicts are portrayed not as conflicts over natural resources alone but as struggles en- meshed in relationships between dif- ferent classes, genders, castes, ethnicities, rural versus urban, state versus non-state, local versus global, and, more integrally, modern versus traditional (Alvares 1992, Banuri and Marglin 1994, Sachs 1993, Parajuli 1991). In depicting ecopolitics as a "new arena of political conflict," atten- tion has shifted toward regarding eco- logical issues as contestations between different systems of knowledge and action (Sachs 1993:4). The ecological knowledge of "indigenous" people, as opposed to industrialized people, has come to be privileged and is consid- ered as a model of a harmonious rela- tionship between people and their en- vironment. Third World peasants and forest dwellers the world over are seen as providing a panacea for creating a more ecologically safe future. Shiva (1988) talks of an u aranya sanskriti" (forest culture) which existed in ancient India before the destructive and menacing onslaught of a modern- izing, masculinized, and scientific ide-