Page:Pitting People Against Nature - Madhav Gadgil.pdf/15

 opposed continuation of shifting cultivation. They said that unless shifting cultivation is forcibly stopped, they will never get any labour for their estates. These estate owners wanted labour that would be made to work pretty much like slaves; after all in 1860 their kith and kin in North America were prospering by ruthlessly exploiting huge armies of black slaves on cotton plantations. Overall, the economic interests of the British lay in rendering people resourceless, and dedicating forest tracts to grow timber for their military and construction needs. So, they outlawed shifting cultivation, as well as community ownership and, overruling Brandis, took over all community land as state propertyii.

Bombay Natural History Society

E P Gee and R C Morris, the former a tea planter from Assam and the latter a coffee planter from South India were two very influential members of the Bombay Natural History Society and close friends of Salim Ali who played a prominent role in shaping the forest and wildlife management policies in independent India. Both were first-rate naturalists whose writings I had read with much interest as a schoolboy in the Journal of Bombay Natural History Society. In 1975 I visited the B.R.T. hills in Mysore district of Karnataka for a glimpse of the famous Doddasampige, Michelia champaca, a grand old 118 ft tall tree sacred to tribal solligas on one its peaks. Salim Ali’s cousin Zafar Futehally arranged for me to stay in the Guest House of the coffee estate owned earlier by Morris. Since the new Indian manager had absolutely no interest in the beauty and the wildlife of