Decolonising or recolonising forests? A study of colonial and post-colonial North-East India

With Sengsilchi Marak, University of Nottingham.

Joint Cultural and Historical Geography and Environment and Society Seminar Series.

Abstract

The establishment of scientific forestry in India is a colonial enterprise that failed to recognise the customary rights of the indigenous tribes in India. My current PhD study encompasses historical and contemporary analysis of forest policies in Northeast India from 1874 to the present day with the objective of decolonising forest policies in the region.

Emphasising on the contemporary forest regulation such as Timber Ban of 1996 and Forest Rights Act 2006, this study approaches the ‘decolonial’ by prioritising the indigenous ways of interpretation and comprehension about their land, forests and policies. Acknowledging that indigeneity is contested in the Indian context, the concept of indigeneity by Shaw et al is incorporated in this study that perceives indigeneity as having ancestral and spiritual ties to their land. Foucault’s concept of governmentality has been adopted to present historical examples of forest governmentality traversing across identity construction and indigenous power structures.

The study seeks to draw upon historical examples of forest regulation and their explicit resistance and resilient forest lifestyles as means to explore how forest dwellers were always decolonising forest policies.