Beasts in the Garden: Human-Wildlife Coexistence in India's Past and Present

Abstract

Human-wildlife encounters are characterized by a diverse array of engagements located on the continuum between the negative and the positive. In India, protracted conflict with wildlife is reflected in violence across a range of rural and urban ecologies, but is only one aspect of the multiple facets of ongoing human-non-human encounter. Within these shared spaces, there are often equally significant elements of acceptance, tolerance and reverence. Together, these are dependent on context, and can be explored via lived experiences and worldviews, and a moral economy of human-wildlife and human-human relationships. Historically, though hardly static, such relationships have been mediated by the ontological positioning of traditional societies and their embedded rules and practises. In recent years, these tenuous equilibria have been disrupted by top-down catalysts, including universalist conservation agendas percolating from the state and the global arena. This study aims to explore the changing nature of coexistence by using several historical and contemporary vignettes in relation to key species that routinely “transgress” from their primary natural habitats into the “garden” spaces of human cultivation and habitation. The study will argue that insights at the intersection of environmental history, political ecology and anthropology can improve our understanding of human-wildlife coexistence in India as well as across the world.

Coexistence for Whom?

“…In parallel with recent developments in human-wildlife conflict studies (Pooley et al, 2017), there is an increasing reaction against anthropocentrism, albeit from different directions, e.g., strong ecocentrism based on ideas about universal principles and the rights of animals (Vucetich et al, 2018), and recognition of different cultural frameworks for valuing and interacting with the natural world (Chua et al, 2020;Nijhawan and Mihu, 2020;Nair et al, 2021;Oommen, 2021). There is some tension at the heart of human-wildlife interactions studies, then, over how to reconcile an increasing commitment to recognizing and protecting the rights of the natural world, with a commitment to equity and recognition of local and Indigenous human ways of being in the natural world.…”

“…Ideally, future studies will include a focus (not exclusively) on particular positive interactions and relations. This will extend beyond direct impacts of wildlife on humans and vice versa, and negative interactions, and look harder at nonrational factors influencing decision-making, including cultures and histories of human-wildlife interactions (see Pooley, 2016;Nijhawan and Mihu, 2020;Pooley et al, 2020;Agnihotri et al, 2021;Nair et al, 2021;Oommen, 2021).…”

“…Some societies do not distinguish between cultural and natural worlds, and so lack a conservation ethic-but not environmentally-friendly approaches and attitudes to land use and interactions with wildlife. It is not that nature is socially constructed for them; rather, the entire landscape is one of human agency and interaction, and within the realm of ethical consideration and reciprocity (Dwyer, 1994;Appiah-Opoku, 2007;Ingold, 2012;Datta, 2016;Oommen, 2021). Does this matter?…”

“…Further, cultures are dynamic, and do not provide static timeless ways of relating to and interpreting the natural world (Dickman et al, 2014;Bobo et al, 2015;Agnihotri et al, 2021;Oommen, 2021). What of people who abandon their traditional beliefs and practices (willingly or through force of circumstance), or hybridize them with other practices, in ways inimical to conservation (Nadasdy, 2005;Dickman et al, 2014)?…”

“…One conception of coexistence emerging from the environmental humanities and ethnographic research focuses on humans and wildlife as co-constitutive communities (Lestel et al, 2006;Van Dooren, 2019). For example, considering how human individuals and groups' commitments to particular animals, species, and landscapes are co-produced through interactions with those non-human actors, in particular places (Nijhawan and Mihu, 2020;Oommen, 2021). This includes an acceptance that wild animals learn, have cultures, and adapt to particular scenarios of interaction with humans, which is belatedly being recognized in mainstream ethology (Brakes et al, 2019).…”