Articles by Mukul Sharma

Sacred groves are widely recognised for their religious, cultural, and ecological value. They are an intrinsic part of traditional and indigenous practices of forest governance. However, the contemporary sacred forest system is not an autonomous world. Its sociopolitical landscape is not confined only to the village either. Based on extensive fieldwork in Jharkhand, this paper argues that sacred groves have evolved to be dynamic spaces of multilevel institutional interactions and contestations. Their conservation is contingent on the intersectional dynamics of indigenous, state, and institutional processes. Classical approaches of sacrality of the nature and forms of forest worship need to be combined with the concerns of the local environment, democracy, gender, caste, conservation, and culture.

Indian environmental paradigms and politics, frequently conceptualised and expressed in terms of India’s glorious past, often render questions of caste and dalits invisible. However, it needs to be recognised that caste is one of the central categories that frames environmental politics. Dalit thinkers, organisations and movements have had a wider perspective and critique of environmental articulations that require deeper investigation. On the one hand, we see a caste-blindness in current environmental politics. On the other, we see dalit views on Indian environmentalism, reflected in their works, words and movements in different parts of the country. This brings forth not only new dimensions on both environment and dalits, but also helps us in redefining certain key categories such as development, modernity, community, livelihood and social movements.

This paper focuses on the shifting contours of the anti-Tehri dam movement in the past three decades. It examines the changing declarations of environmentalists, especially Sunderlal Bahuguna and other leaders of the movement on the one hand, and the involvement of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad in the anti-dam politics on the other. Exploring the evocations of nature, religion and nation in different phases by these two groups of actors, it argues that through a regular use of certain mythical beliefs and simplified dichotomies, there was an inadvertent collaboration between green and saffron. The Tehri dam became a means of combining sacredness with impulse, gravity of high politics with solemnity of daily worship, and nature with nationalism.

Truth commissions as a means for justice and reparation for victims of severe human rights violations are being set up in a number of Asian countries. In Nepal, debate on the truth and reconciliation commission bill is throwing up many insights and concerns.

In November 1984, following the assassination of Indira Gandhi, almost 3,000 Sikhs were slaughtered and burnt to death in Delhi. Witnesses and survivors of these killings categorically indicted the Delhi Police and some leaders of the Congress (I) for permitting the mobs to kill with impunity.