BOOK REVIEW. Indira Gandhi, the naturalist

This is the centenary year of Indira Gandhi and congressman and Parliamentarian, Jairam Ramesh, has produced a book on the former Prime Minister, looking at just one aspect of her personality—that of a naturalist and nature conservator. (The book, incidentally, is Ramesh’s fifth in three years — the author says he does it to keep his “intellectual batteries charged when in the Opposition”.)

Between ‘A First Word’ and ‘The Final Word’, the book, from the first and seventh chapters of Indira Gandhi: A life in Nature, leaves the reader in no doubt that the country’s only woman prime minister was not only a great lover of Nature, but also personally responsible for laying the foundation of the environment and renewable energy policies of the government.

It is indeed a little known aspect of Indira Gandhi that her passion for conservation spawned a quiver-full of legislation. Ramesh tells Business Line that “She personally spearheaded the four laws for wildlife protection, forest conservation, control of water pollution and control of air pollution” and the book substantiates the claim well. “These were not bureaucracy-driven, but driven by her personally,” says Ramesh.

The author says he came face-to-face with Indira Gandhi’s work in connection with India’s environment protection and nature conservation during his years as the environment minister. In what he calls “an unconventional biography”, Ramesh takes the reader through various stages of Indira Gandhi’s life, looking at each stage through the prism of her love for Nature. The ‘prism’ is the mass of letters she wrote, her speeches, articles, forewords she provided to others’ books and even her observations on files put up to her. “The idea is to have a biography which allows Indira Gandhi herself to do much of the talking.”

In the initial chapters, the reader is taken through dozens of letters written by (or to) Indira Gandhi with references to her bird-watching, animal-spotting hobbies. In one such, there is a funny exchange between her and her father, Jawaharlal Nehru, where she writes to him describing a bird she got a glimpse of as one that has “a bit of beige, a bright tail in two dazzling shades of blue, a long dull red curved beak” and asks her father to name it for her. The country’s first Prime Minister replies to his daughter: “You give me a vague description of a new bird you saw and want me to name it from here! This faith in my extensive knowledge is very touching but it has not justification.”

The love for, and the knowledge of, flora and fauna and the passion to protect them would manifest themselves in the form of many, many notes and policy interventions, some peremptory, in her Prime Ministerial years. The book (which, Ramesh says is “a diary of her environmental activities”) provides dozens of instances when Indira Gandhi would get pretty worked up over the prospect of a project damaging the environment.

The best of them is perhaps the stern and didactic one she wrote to the then Assam Chief Minister, Sarat Chandra Sinha, on March 20,1977, in which she said: “It is no longer possible to regard forests primarily as a revenue-yielding resource. The long-term benefit to climate and water management is equally important. Monocultures do not have the same capacity to hold and regulate water supply as do primary forests which have evolved over ages. Before any more primary forest is cut, the Assam Government should re-examine its working plans in order to ensure that environmental benefits are not overlooked.” The letter is remarkable less for its rich contents, more for its timing – it was during the thick of elections of 1977, on the counting day, at a time when it was becoming clear that she would lose.

Ramesh has structured the book well. Each sub-chapter would start with a narrative of the context. For example, the one titled “1975” gives a sketch of factors leading to the Emergency. Thus, we know the background to a number of controversial projects, such as the Mathura refinery, Silent Valley, or the Tehri dam, and how Indira Gandhi fussed about these endlessly, and not always having it her way. Her ‘saves’ include the Guindy deer park in Chennai and the Borivali National Park in Mumbai.

The book is also a cornucopia of interesting nuggets. From that we know that Salim Ali, the famous ornithologist and a close associate of Indira Gandhi, who helped shape environmental legislation, was against the peacock being named India’s national bird (he wanted the Great Indian Bustard), that Indira Gandhi thought of herself as “meek and mild” and said her son, Sanjay’s support was more like that of an elder brother, that Indira Gandhi had set up a cow protection committee to examine the demand for a ban on cow slaughter (the committee never submitted its report and was ultimately disbanded in 1979 by Morarji Desai), and that wind and solar power were discussed in the Cabinet as long back as in November, 1980.

Despite being in the Congress party, Jairam Ramesh has refrained from eulogising Indira Gandhi and even admits that her clearing of the Mathura refinery was “a mistake”. Yet, the book is the work of a Congressman. For instance, the author is at pains to explain that Indira Gandhi was not an authoritarian, he tries to apportion the blame for the Emergency also to Jayaprakash Narain, and takes a sympathetic view of the manner in which the railway strike of 1974 was stubbed out by Indira Gandhi. Further, the book could have done just as well with fewer examples of Indira Gandhi’s love for Nature, but Ramesh explains that saying the book is meant to be a year-by-year diary. In sum, the ‘unconventional biography’ makes for a good weekend read.

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