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- [00:01]
A
Welcome to the new books network.
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B
This is the nordic asia podcast.
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C
Welcome to the Nordic Asia Podcast, a collaboration sharing expertise on Asia across the Nordic region. My name is Mette Helskorf Hansen. I'm a professor of China Studies at the University of Oslo. Today we ask why the Catholic Church in India has become so engaged in environmental initiatives. And what does the wider Indian political context, defined by an assertive and aggressive Hindu nationalism, mean for the ability of church actors to pursue their environmental agendas? These questions are at the very heart of new research by Kenneth Bo Nilsen and Neha Gokal. Together, they have examined these questions in the Indian state of Goa, and they have in particular focused on church activities and outreach in the domain of sustainable agriculture and agroecology. They wrote an article together which has just been published in March 2026 in an edited book titled Religion and Ecological Responses from Asia. It's published by Leiden University Press. Kenneth and Nihar join us today to shed light on the relationship between Christian environmentalism, agroecology and Hindu majoritarianism. Niha and Kenneth, welcome to the podcast.
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B
Thank you.
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A
Thank you so much.
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C
So both of you have a longer connection to the state of Goa as observers and chroniclers of contemporary environmental challenges and conflicts, but what drew your attention to what we might call an agricultural turn in Goa environmentalism?
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B
Well, first of all, thank you for having me here. I have followed the podcast for quite some time, so I'm really glad to be here today. So I went to Goa in 2016 as a journalist. I was then based in Delhi, the capital of India, and I was reading a lot of news from Goa about land conflicts and protests against these mega infrastructure projects. There were ports, resorts, gated housing communities. And so that was really my entry point into Goan environmentalism. When I got there, it became clear that the major point of contention were the traditional livelihoods and the traditional ways of life of Goa. Farming was one of those, one of the important ones, I mean, as was fishing, cashew plantations, grazing lands, and so on. And the late 2010s, as many observers of Goa would also agree, it was a very active period in the state. You could, I mean, just go to any part of Goa and find a local movement against a project. And there was almost no farming going on in most parts of the state. So you could just drive through a village and find barely a few fields being actively farmed. Most of the land was just vacant. And the activists were certainly worried about this because land which was left untilled would become targets for land shark and it also became easy to justify the takeover of such land, saying that it could now be put to more productive uses. And so, I mean, we can say that the agricultural turn came about in this moment of crisis as a response. It was a way of opposing these land use changes and also trying to bring these fallow fields back into cultivation. And this is also a time when Goa, and I think it probably still does, it imports most of its vegetables from nearby state. And so, I mean, of course this is not to say that environmentalism in Goa as a whole has taken this agricultural turn because there are still many important struggles around the coastline on forests and plateaus. But agriculture is certainly an important and an interesting aspect of it. And any observer of the state would not miss its importance.
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A
Yeah, I mean, first, I will say that it's actually nice to be a guest on this podcast. As you know, I've hosted quite a few of these episodes myself, but it's not so often that I sit in the opposite chair in the role as a guest. But like Nihar, I've also been following this local struggle against land grabbing in Goa for some time. And for me, this engagement with Goan issues actually began when I was doing research in West Bengal, actually on the very opposite side of India, on a peasant movement that was fighting against the land dispossession. And this is now nearly 20 years ago. And sitting in Bengal, I remember reading in the papers about a very strong popular movement in Goa protesting against land grabbing for special economic zones. And there was also a movement that went by the name of Save Goa movement that was protesting against other kinds of land grabbing coming out of land use planning practices that were corrupted and so on. So when I started working more actively on Goa, I also began with a focus on land grabbing and popular resistance to it. I looked at airport construction, but also at different other land struggles. But then one day I read in the newspapers about one of these community farming projects that we write about in the article you mentioned in the beginning. And the person who was leading this community farming project was interviewed and he was upset for all the reasons that Nihar has talked about now. I mean, much of Goa being turned into concrete road expansions, high rise buildings, gated housing, coming up, destroying the green Goa that he knew and that he had sort of not only grew up with, but also was very attached to. So for him, the sort of resurrection of agriculture and also rooting it in local communities was a kind of land defense movement, you might say a way of claiming the land for green purposes and Also for future generations, you might say. And I found this sort of proactive strategy of thinking about agriculture as land defense very intriguing, but also, I must say, very, very inspiring.
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C
So in this particular research, of course, you focus mostly on Christian environmentalism and within that, the topic of agroecology as just one such form of Christian environmentalism. But it would be really interesting to also hear a bit more about this church and the wider role that the church plays in Goan society.
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B
Well, I mean, to answer in a nutshell, the church is a very significant entity in Goan society, much, much more than in the rest of India. And this is tied mainly to Goa's colonial past and also post colonial developments, which is over the last 50, 60 years. So the church in Goa is predominantly the Roman Catholic Church. It was introduced there by the Portuguese, came to rule Goa in the middle of the 16th century. And I mean, during this time you see that Goa emerged as a major center of the church and it was even known as the Room of the East. And sort of the eastern realms of the church were headquartered in Goa. And so this continues for almost 500 years until the time that the Portuguese left Goa in 1961. And so when they left, it was a very important institution. Its parishes and churches were spread across the state and they had vast properties which they continue to have. And as anybody who has visited Goa can attest that there are churches and chapels everywhere. And these are not small, but these are like large, imposing buildings. Some of the most iconic architecture of Goa are the churches there. And Christians are also a very sizable part of the state. No longer a majority, but they're a very important part of the state's demography. But then it's interesting that the nature of the church itself had to change a lot after the end of colonialism. It had to take up a completely different role in Goan society, which, as an author has put it, you know, it went from being a church of the rulers to being where the laity is. And so you see this after 1961, you see that senior positions in the archdiocese, they began to be occupied by Goans and not Portuguese or not by Europeans. And then the church also starts taking up on this mission of social justice. And this is a really interesting turning point in the church. And it also coincided with the, what's called the Second Vatican Council, which took place also in the 1960s. It started a little after the end of colonialism, obviously not connected to it. But the Second Vatican Council basically decided that the Catholic Church has to reframe its position and its theology into one that focuses more on social justice and social action. And so when this happens, the Goan Catholic Church took this up with great zeal. In fact, when we were interviewing respondents for our chapter in the Goan Church, almost everybody mentioned Vatican ii, which is how also we came upon this particular council and also what impact it had on the Goan Church. And so after that, the Church started running a number of social initiatives. I mean of course it always had its schools, it has a large number of orphanages, old age homes and so on. So one is this part the sort of the, the traditional social welfare part, but also began intervening in social issues and environmental issues especially, which affected its own laity. And it sort of started supporting these populous movements and started appearing more often in these conflicts over land use changes.
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A
Yeah, I think it's also important just to mention that Christianity in Goa is somewhat different from the rest of India. As Nihar mentioned now, Catholicism is dominant in Goa, but at the all India level, Catholics are a minority among the Indian Christians in India in general, most Indian Christians actually belong to Dalit or Adivati communities, that is to the lowest caste groups or tribal communities who are among the poorest and most marginalized communities in the country. For Goa, this is quite different. I mean, in Goa you see Catholicism in a way replicating the entire system of castes, creating a kind of full fledged Catholic caste society from top to bottom, as the anthropologist Alexander Henn has called it. And of course also we find historically within Goa that upper caste Goan Catholics have very much been part of the social elite, not just in the colonial period, but also in the period following Goa's integration with the rest of India. And of course they've also been very important within the Goan clergy.
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C
So social justice became a very sort of important topic and an important part of their work. But can you also say a little bit more about when exactly did this, if we can call it that, the environmental turn, when did that start? And also what was it that really triggered this kind of turn into more environmental activities?
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B
Yes. So as I was saying earlier, the Church was already involved in social action following the Second Vatican Council. And so it, it, so it started participating in these popular movements against industries, you know, special economic zones, like Kenneth mentioned, and other, these mega projects which, which started around the 1980s, late 1980s. And I mean the church's approach was that it's, it saw these as threats to Goa and to the social life in Goa. And it also, of course it was supporting its laity Essentially when it was opposing these projects, because a lot of these actually came up either in the coastal areas where the church is very dominant, and also, like Kenneth mentioned, like they have all castes, they represent all caste and communities, including like fishermen and other marginalized groups who are also often the most affected by these projects. And so essentially through its mission of social justice, the church became involved in the more sort of environmental aspects of these problems. Like a very interesting example is when villagers were against the first five star hotel that came to Goa. The church was supporting the villagers and actually to help them, it ended up commissioning a hydrological study to understand how this hotel would impact the local water resources. And that's something that somebody mentioned from the church, that it was a major turning point for the church to commission a study like this and to sort of understand these issues from a quote unquote environmental angle and not just, you know, people's issues and social issues. But then, I mean, in 2002 there was this diocesan synod which is essentially like a decision making group of the church, which recognized like six challenges that were facing Goa and which the church should focus on. And it listed environmental concerns as one of these six challenges. So if you have to go by the archives, then definitely this is one big turning point where they explicitly talk about the environment. And then with the late 2000s, as all these movements pick up in Goa, we see that the church started intervening in them. So movements against mining, coastal degradation, pollution caused by large scale tourism projects or resorts. And so this environmental turn essentially started from there. And the biggest change happened of course, in 2015 with the publication of Laudatusi. As many listeners would know, this was an encyclical issued by Pope Francis which famously drew attention to the global environmental and climate crisis and positioned the church as a, as an institution that should address these crisis. And with, I mean, with Laudatosi, we see the Goan church almost, you know, like how it happened after the Second Vatican Council. Now it has taken up Laudato Si with a zeal. So environment becomes like a major part of church communications and their discourse. They, they have like set up a diocesan commission for ecology which is among the first in India to be set up. Everything, all the speeches are about environment and they took up initiatives on mangroves, on coastal ecology. And as I hope we'll discuss, this also then includes agricultural and agro ecological initiatives.
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C
And then of course we also have the wider political context in India. That is also something that you even refer to in the title of your work. And that is the context of Hindu majoritarianism. So can you also tell us a bit about what, in which way do you find this particular context important?
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A
Yeah, I mean, we think it matters a lot. And as you say, we make quite a bit of it in the analysis of the Goan material. I mean, sort of the broader Indian picture is over the past decade or so that we've seen this quite significant rise in hostilities and violence against Indian Christians. And this has occurred under the current BJP government that is on a mission of turning India into a Hindu nation in which so called foreign religions actually really have no place. And this of course hits Indian Muslims but also Indian Christians quite significantly. So church institutions also face various forms of direct and indirect pressure from state and governments in the form of surveillance. Individual priests or individual believers may be monitored. They may be suspected of carrying out illegal conversions of Hindus to Christianity and so on. And violent attacks on Christian communities and also on church buildings and so on by some of these Hindu nationalist vigilante groups actually occur on quite a significant scale in some parts of India, with both the police and also often the courts turning up a blind eye to this kind of violence. The situation in Goa is not as bad, but there is certainly some degree of pressure felt there as well. As I've written about also in other work with Nihar as well, and in very many subtle and not so subtle ways. Some limits are imposed, we think, on what the church as an institution can say and do in public without inviting reprisals or retribution of some kind. And this of course in our reading, but this is also confirmed by people we have spoken to. This shrinks the space for the kind of public outreach and social engagement that is actually a very central part of the work and the mission of the church as a whole. But the argument we make is that environmentalism is somehow an exception to this shrinkage. There are very many Goans, irrespective of religion or faith, who are genuinely concerned about the destruction of Goa's forests, rivers and fields and the environment. It's an issue that will engage a number of Goans and it's not seen as a sectarian issue at all. So we think that in the field of environmental engagement there's actually a legitimate avenue for the church to play a public role in matters that are of importance to go in society. And of course within this broader environmental turn, the issue of promoting sustainable agriculture will also, we think appear as a relatively uncontroversial issue. But we're not saying of course, and that's quite important, we're not saying that the Church is just using these things, environmentalism, agriculture, as some kind of Trojan horse to retain this social position. I mean, that's not what we are trying to say. It's simply that the present political context throws up some conditions of possibility. It makes some forms of action more appealing and more feasible than others. And here, of course, this environmentalism aligns also extremely well with these internal changes in the Church itself in the same direction as Nihar spoke about just now.
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C
So let us stay a bit with the topic of agroecology, which is obviously very, plays a very important part in your work and for the people that you work with in Goa. And in your work you distinguish between two kinds of Christian ecology. So one is where the Church takes a leading role directly and then another form where the Church plays a more diffuse and backgrounded role. So maybe you could, could you please tell us a little bit more about these two different types of, or these two different modalities of agroecological engagement?
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B
Yes, and this is an important distinction. So I'll talk about the leading role part of it. So this is something that the Church is doing which is connected to what we were discussing earlier, the publication of Laudatusi in 2015, the Pope's encyclical, it made the environment a central part of the Church's agenda. But as Kenneth just mentioned, I mean, this coincided with the rise of Hindu majoritarianism, the BJP, which was elected to power in 2014. And thus began the Church's difficulties, right. In speaking out or supporting environmental movements increasingly so. And as we mentioned, the Church also relies a lot on foreign funds and it runs all these schools and these institutions that rely on state funding as well. And so all of these contribute to the Church's difficulties in speaking out or supporting these popular movements openly. And so the Church sort of began reflecting on how it could best carry forward this new environmental agenda in this context. And farming and agroecology came up as a solution to this. So as one of the priests told us that the Church realized that encouraging farming could actually be a meaningful and a long term solution to the crisis that Goa was facing over land and environment. And it's also one that would not seem too anti establishment because I mean, who is against farming, right? Especially in a country like India. And the Church also saw like a vast potential in its own properties, its vast properties across the state, as I mentioned earlier. And so it really started explicitly having these initiatives and movements centered around farming. So for example, on their seminary in Saligao, which is like this beautiful, large, imposing estate, very old Portuguese era, where they train priests. So now it has this sort of a demonstration organic farm where they use household waste compost and drip irrigation techniques to grow various sort of fruits and vegetables there. And anybody can just walk in there and learn about these techniques. And they can even buy these saplings at low prices. They even accept waste from households nearby and they compost it. They also engage with school children in sort of their own schools. They teach them how to grow food and they take them on these field trips around the state to talk about, you know, different environmental issues or attributes there, like mangroves. They have these initiatives on biodiversity loss which are becoming quite big. And so I mean, to sum up, this sort of, this direct involvement in agroecology includes initiatives located within the church, and I mean, sometimes physically so, like in the seminary. And it also presents an interesting way of engaging with the environmental crisis in this sort of hostile context.
- [23:22]
A
Yeah, and, but then the, I mean, the second form of Christian agroecology that we discuss is actually, it's quite different from what Nihar is sketching here. And in some ways I think it raises some conceptual and maybe even theological issues about what we actually mean by Christian environmentalism in the first place. I mean, how and when would some kind of environmentalism qualify as Christian? And conversely, when, when do they stop being Christian and just become environmentalism, plain and simple. But, but actually, I'd much rather talk about, I mean, be a little bit empirical here and talk about the case of community farming that we write about and that I mentioned just briefly earlier. I mean, this is a kind of project where a group of villagers who were led by this very energetic and resourceful person decided to come together to revive agriculture in a part of Goa where it had actually collapsed many, many years ago with the fields being largely fallow, and where actually agriculture had to be re. Established almost from. From scratch. So unlike the examples that Nihar gave just now, the church actually played no visible role in, in all of this. The, the initiative, the drive, the momentum came from the community and in particular from this one resourceful and very determined person. But what we found interesting in this case, in any case, is that if you look at all these many practicalities that are needed to somehow be dealt with to get this kind of farming project off the ground, both the personnel, but also the institutions of the church actually popped up and played a role here and there along the way, but in quite discreet ways. I mean, for example, the local priest in the village Church. He would use his morning sermons from time to time to worship, as if they could go home and find old documents or land records that could somehow be used. And he would make weekly announcement during mass also about this agricultural initiative and encourage people to come forward and to be a part of it. And also to cost down labor costs, which is actually a huge challenge for agriculture in many places. The cost of agricultural labor. The local farmers, they got assistance from the Society of St. Francis de Sales. Some listeners might know them as the Silesians in Goa. The Silesians, they have a quite unique experience with mechanized rice farming, both for germination and transplantation, and harvesting, the whole process. And this was a technology that could be made available to this local farming community also. And there are many other examples that we offer. And we found this interesting because we don't really see any kind of formal church leadership here. And it's not really a case of individuals being particularly motivated by Christianity to do this or that. And it's not even about people invoking Christian theology or Christian teachings to justify what it is they do. It's in a sense, much more sort of mundane. It's about people tapping into institutional networks within the church, the kind of knowledge and expertise that can be mobilized through these church networks. And also sort of the communicative flows within the church that allows information and knowledge to travel. I mean, we could have maybe called this a case of the church as infrastructure, because this is kind of the role we see the church playing here.
- [27:03]
C
And this case study of community farming that you were just talking about now and which is also a case study that you present in your work, that is really one very intriguing and interesting activity that is going on. Do you think such initiatives have any role to play in environmental protection and restoration more generally? Can it be scaled up? How influential could it be if we think about the near and long term future?
- [27:33]
A
Yeah, the question of scale, I mean, in thinking about this, I think it might be useful just to brag it out, the question of religion for a while and to focus on community farming as a particular way of organizing cultivation, production, labor arrangements and so on. And I think it has potential, to be sure. I mean, we have a growing number of Goan consumers, but also consumers in many parts of India who are concerned about the food they eat. I mean, the excessive use of chemicals in agriculture, the presence of very many kinds of harmful contaminants in food and so on. I mean, there are studies that indicate that around 50% of food samples in India actually contain pesticide residues. Beyond safe limits. And this increases the risk of cancer and so on. So there's definitely a market also for the kind of sustainably grown food that can come out of this kind of community farming. But I think it's also clear that political and policy support is going to be crucial if this is to succeed at a broader scale. And this actually exists in goa. I mean there is a government assistance for community farming scheme that tries to promote this kind of agriculture as a strategy for ensuring a greener GOA and also to reduce the number of fields that are kept fallow across the state. It's a scheme which has a long list of subsidies for infrastructure, for inputs, guaranteed prices for outputs and so on. Been a little while since I checked the statistics, but it's been in effect now for five, six years. And I think the number of sort of farming communities using this scheme has actually increased so that we have a good number of these initiatives also getting state funding. But there are also challenges and I think for goa, I suppose we could call this policy confusion more generally. I mean GOA has any number of policies in place that somehow touch upon agriculture. And one of them is the agriculture export policy that's from 2022. And this is a policy that's focused on high value and value added agricultural exports. It's about creating export oriented agriculture, export oriented infrastructures, it's about upgrading supply chains and it's about big time private investments. And it's also a policy that actually complains about goa's small landholding pattern and low farmer awareness across goa and that would rather see large consolidated aggregated land holdings for export driven agriculture. Not really a good sign for community based farming. None of this. But I think, I mean there are enough examples of successful community initiatives to allow us to still be optimistic about the future also.
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C
So I think it's good to end on this at least somewhat optimistic note, especially in hard times with a lot of policy confusion. Also beyond goa. Canada. Niha, thank you very much for joining us. The research we have been discussing can be found in the book titled Religion and Ecological Responses from Asia. It's available in open access from Leiden University Press since March 2026. So in effect it's just a click away. Please look for the chapter which is titled Agroecology as Christian Environmentalism in a Hindu Majoritarian Context and you will learn more about this issue. My name is Mette Helskohansen. Thank you for joining the Nordic Asia Podcast showcasing Nordic collaboration in studying Asia.
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B
You have been listening to the Nordic Asia Podcast,
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C
Sam.