Page:Pitting People Against Nature - Madhav Gadgil.pdf/12

 prevent landslides and floods. The forests should continue to provide water and soil for the nation and environmental security and livelihoods for the people.

British experience To appreciate the stand of the Chipko activists and the actions of the Government of India trashing their demands one must look at the antecedents of forest and wildlife management in India. Britain had lost most of its forests and the bulk of its wildlife many centuries before it conquered India. The process began with William the Conqueror’s rein in 1066. William the Conqueror, who loved to hunt, established and enforced a system of forest law. This operated outside the common law and served to protect game animals and their forest habitat from hunting by the common people of England. Henceforth hunting of game in royal forests by commoners, now labelled poaching, was punished by death by hanging. In 1086, he parcelled all of the country’s lands to various feudal lords. These landowners followed the lead of William the Conqueror appropriating common lands, enclosing them and thereby depriving commoners of their ancient rights of cultivation of community lands, of grazing their animals and of hunting. Britain thus created a regime that recognized only private holdings treating any community control as illegitimate. The strong peasant protests against this injustice over the next two centuries were forcibly suppressed. The result was disastrous, Britain lost most its forests and wildlife by 14th century.