The Unquiet Woods: Ecological Change and Peasant Resistance in the Himalya, Expanded Edition

by Ramachandra Guha

Expanded Edition

This new, expanded edition of The Unquiet Woods , Ramachandra Guha's pathbreaking study of peasant movements against commercial forestry, offers a new epilogue that brings the story of Himalayan social protest up-to-date, reflecting the Chipko movement's continuing influence in the wider world. A new appendix charts the progress of environmental history in India. The bibliography and index have been revised and updated.

Genres: Nonfiction, History, Environment, Nature, India, Ecology

265 pages, Paperback

First published August 4, 1990

About the author

Ramachandra Guha was born in Dehradun in 1958, and educated in Delhi and Calcutta. He has taught at the University of Oslo, Stanford, and Yale, and at the Indian Institute of Science. He has been a Fellow of the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin, and also served as the Indo-American Community Chair Visiting Professor at the University of California at Berkeley.

After a peripatetic academic career, with five jobs in ten years on three continents, Guha settled down to become a full-time writer based in Bangalore. His books cover a wide range of themes, including a global history of environmentalism, a biography of an anthropologist-activist, a social history of Indian cricket, and a social history of Himalayan peasants.

Guha’s books and essays have been translated into more than twenty languages. The prizes they have won include the U.K. Cricket Society’s Literary Award and the Leopold-Hidy Prize of the American Society of Environmental History.

Reviews

[Revanth Ukkalam · Rating 5 out of 5]

How tables have turned, I thought as I read this book. Guha in an academic style and much more humble at the same time. No wonder this book has turned into a classic! The scholar places immense focus on archives and statistics; and anecdotes. The study benefits a lot from the nuance. Guha's admiration for the rare Gandhian grassroot level movement; and also a subaltern environment movement does not take away his discomfort with the essentialising and romanticising of Chipko. Guha also makes a decisive shift away from what he calls a Structural-Organisational Framework (S-O) where much of the culture and events become incidental (influenced obviously significantly by Marxism in academia) towards a fair understanding of the value of religion, politico-cultural motifs and so on. Guha has also recounted several times that it was Chandiprasad Bhat who in fact "cured" him of his Marxism. The book aces at building a long term history of the Chipko. It was not born from thin air but had over a century of history - of struggle between peasantry and the "dandaks" and the British, which was in fact, in the early stages, quite charitable. This book is a lesson not just in history but also historiography. How do you accommodate various sources? And how do you write about the past meaningfully and do not say what you do not really?

[Dan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Thorough retelling and critical analysis of the relationship between environment, state and economics since pre British times in Uttarakhand.
Incredibly informative in explaining what factors shaped the Chipko Movement but it would have been nice to have a little more analysis of the Chipko Movement itself, no doubt Guha's characteristic nuanced analysis would have added greatly to existing scholarship pertaining to the movement. Shame to see a lack of emic accounts from Chipko demonstrators (or those from earlier demonstrations) despite a heavy use of quotations and paraphrasing of powerful individuals relating to the state (especially in the context of the British era) which, whilst reflecting the power dynamics in the area did somewhat take away from the book's role in documenting peasant resistance.
Nonetheless this is still a great book which ties in a huge diversity of literature in its sources and has some great analysis. Definitely well worth reading.

[Sookie · Rating 3 out of 5]

Chipko movement was a long time in the making. There have been skirmishes in the past and not just the decade it came to its head but for decades before. Guha takes through history and narrates the background. The book comes with a long introduction with Guha opining current day about the book written more than two decades ago. This makes a very interesting read since a lot has changed since then, Indian forestry has gone through multiple changes over the years. But the disputes of the land, resources though not largely covered by mainstream media, still exists. In the modern context, The Unquiet woods serves as cautionary tale.

[EstelleLiterature · Rating 5 out of 5]

My favorite chapter in this book is 'The Mountains and Their People.' The attachment the mountain dwellers feel to their land is universal: you can see that in the French Alps and the Pyrenean Range, where the landscapes are being progressively destroyed by summer- and winter-tourism money.

[Pramod Pant · Rating 3 out of 5]

Honestly written !

A subaltern history-peasant movements relating to control and usage of forest and land resources- about Uttarakhand in India. And there’s an evident shift in the tone as the author grows in age - from a young man critical of governance , and sentimental about the innate wisdom of the peasants to an older person who understands that right and wrong do not belong exclusively to such opposing categories. Bringing out the twentieth anniversary edition has given the book that character - the young man starting off passionately in the mould given to him and the older man concluding it more sedately. And that puts history in perspective. After all, a historian’s job is about looking back and scanning the scenario. About lying down as one ages, and chewing the cud. And trying to spell out the ‘laws’ that , perhaps, govern our past and ,by extension, our future too.

Just trying to state that the facts of the past would reek of banality. And that Ramchandra Guha is a good man. :)

[Mayank Bawari · Rating 5 out of 5]

An exceptional book, that follows the nature of grassroots activism in Uttarakhand, the unique nature of a movement of the people, spontaneous collaboration and will of the collective. Ram Guha, spends some time to explain and understand what’s in common with any and other eco movements around the world and summarily comes to the conclusion about the unique nature of Chipko.

The largely homogeneous unstratified society of the Garhwal and Kumaon hills, a resource rich state that has been plundered for babus and corporates sitting in far off regions. The region also plays a significant role in controlling the national weather and the monsoons, and this haphazard plundering will eventually lead to downstream issues of catastrophic effect.

A must read, and can be paired with books by Shekhar Pathak and CP Bhatt

[Nitin Pant · Rating 4 out of 5]

An approachable account of forest movements and peasants resistance in Uttarakhand, most easily available too.