Friday 26 July 2013

Plants, Politics and Society - Past and Present


Dr.Narasimhan’s lecture was on Plants, Politics and Society, and how plants have been used as economic and political tools in the past as well as in the present. Excerpts from his speech:


There’s an interconnection that exists between every field of study. However, we don’t have the eye to see this interconnection among the various subjects of study.

A holistic approach is very important today but unfortunately it is missing in our present curriculum, because we have the habit of looking at subjects as water-tight compartments. If we look at history even Before Christ, plants have always been resources for building kingdoms and empires. Wars, especially Kalinga Wars, and Alexander’s were fought mainly to access land resources, especially fertile lands to feed the growing population and vast armies of their countries. And, whenever they went for a war, they also took along with them a section of people as slaves. Hence, agreement and slavery are inseparable. In India, our slavery system is caste-based.

Colonisation period right from 16th century onwards, had a new dimension – it perfected the art of politicking with plants. Colonisation brought a very focussed approach to plant migration, which is otherwise called human-aided plant migration. Like Tamarind a variety of tree, originally from Africa was brought to India and planted all over.

Colonisation is a planned activity. They selected the plant resources and selected new economic modes for trading them. Moreover, they had very meticulous documentation, which was done mainly with a political and economic motive. The first documentation was by a Dutch colonial administrator van Rheede in the Malabar Coast. His work on the plants of the Malabar Coast of Kerala contained ethno-medical information. He also drew pictures of the plants along with the documentation in India, even before Carl Linnaeus, the father of taxonomy did that in America. Even Linnaeus relied extensively on his book Hortus Malabaricus.

At this time, a Dutch physician from Europe landed in Goa, and he visited the Malabar coast also. He was documenting experiences from the Brahmin physician who followed Ayurveda, but since he found out that their knowledge was limited, he went to the tribals for extensive knowledge. Politics of knowledge was also witnessed. A Dictionary of the Economic Products of India by George Watt, provided information for all those who wanted to exploit these resources. Yet another compilation titled, A Manual of Indian Timbers: An Account of the Structure, Growth, Distribution and Qualities of Indian Woods, published 150 years ago, gave Britishers a clear-cut idea on how to exploit the resources. These documentations thus provided ample resources for knowledge to be exploited.

Joseph Dalton Hooker, a famous botanist, travelled extensively in the Himalayas and documented a very rare variety of Blue Orchid, Vanda Caerulea, one of the most important horticultural plants. If he had seen the plant from a botanist’s point of view, he should’ve taken the pains to preserve it. Instead, he wrote to Britain about it to exploit it. This is how colonialism operated.

These capital gains also brought along with it a lot of social changes. Case studies on how plants have changed the world, influenced the economy and brought about social change:

Coffee: Coffee is an economically important drink. It’s also considered an elite drink. The social class of coffee drinkers are a class above the rest, whereas tea drinkers were categorised as common people. Coffee is native to Ethiopia, and due to their proximity to Arabs who were very shrewd business people, they monopolised coffee trade – and Europe for centuries did not know how a coffee seed even looked like, since the Arabs dipped the coffee seed in boiling water, killed the embryo and then sold it over to them. But a Dutch traveller stole a seed and planted them in glass houses.

The latitude and longitude of Ethiopia prompted the Dutch to plant them in East Indies – Java, and then in Sri Lanka (where it was a huge failure, as tea was thriving there). So, West Indies took a shipload of coffee seeds along with them from the East Indies and within a year all of the place abounded with coffee bushes, and from there it went over to Brazil, which is now the largest coffee producer in the world... to be contd...

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