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Mukul Sharma, "Dalit Ecologies: Caste and Environment Justice" (Cambridge UP, 2024)
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Professor Mukul Sharma
Experian.
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Welcome to the New Books Network.
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Abhilasha Jain
Hi and welcome to the New Books Network podcast. My name is Abhilasha Jain, your host for today and in this episode I am in conversation with Professor Mukul Sharma, who is a Professor of Environmental Studies at Ashoka University. His formal training is in political science, but he's also worked as a special correspondent with the leading news outlet in India and received 12 national and international awards for his environmental, rural and human rights journalism. Additionally, he has also been the Director of Amnesty International and the South Asia Director of Climate Parliament. His scholarly work has focused on environmental politics and discourses in India and explored some crucial intersections of ecology, caste, political ideology, and the development rhetoric. The specific work that I am discussing today with Professor Sharma is his latest book, Dalit Caste and Environmental justice, published by the Cambridge University Press in 2024. This book explores the ecological experiences, histories and perspectives integrated with Dalit writing, art and culture. The book delves into six major themes, most of which we shall try to touch upon today in our conversation. Some of these themes are caste and environment, Dalit autobiographies, folktales and novels, city waste, caste based industry and occupation and Black Dalit ecologies. Thank you Professor Sharma, for joining me today and welcome to the New Books Network.
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Professor Mukul Sharma
Thank you.
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Abhilasha Jain
So I think. First things first, if you could maybe briefly tell us a little bit more about yourself and why you decided to write Dalit Ecologies in the first place.
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Professor Mukul Sharma
About myself, you already mentioned. I teach at Ashoka University, India and coming from the background of political science, I focus on political and social ecology. I query the relationship between politics, political organization, political ideologies and nature. This is the framework in which I place my book Green and Saffron and its two editions, one being published last year, 2024 and Social Ecology for me mean that the roots of current ecological and social issues can only be traced to the hierarchical modes of our social organization. Social Ecology locates the roots of the ecological issues firmly in relations of hierarchy and domination. I think that ecological problems cannot be understood, much less resolved, without facing social issues. And this is the basis of my new research book, Dalit Ecologies, which is our focus today. You have already mentioned, for over three and a half decades I have worked extensively in the area of environment, energy, climate change as a development professional, writer, journalist and academics across India, South Asia and Southeast Asia. And of course I worked in Amnesty International, Henrik Paul Foundation, Climate Parliament, Times of India Newspaper Group, Indian Institute of Mass Communication and now in Ashoka University. Now the second part of your question that why did I write this book? Look, I wanted to seriously understand the environments Dalits and lower caste inhibit or endure or transform. For example, in this book I look at the tannery industry in Kanpur, Uttar Pradesh state where Dalits and Muslim historically worked. The polluted river and toxic leather work are not just occupational hazards, but lift ecologies of caste. Similarly, in that book, Bricklins often stopped by Dalit migrants reveal how labor, land and caste intersect in ecological degradation in Dalit ecologies. I also wanted to understand Dalit creative responses in environment. For example, the folktales of Dinabhadri in Bihar and Uttar Pradesh Estate or the Rock Garden in Chandigarh demonstrate how Dalit actually reimagined their landscape or how west is remade into culture. So many examples actually remind us that ecology is not only pristine nature, but is shaped by the histories of caste oppression, displacement and resilience. So I wanted to engage. And that's why I decided to wrote this book with newer themes of environmentalism such as industry, technology, climate change, Anthropocene big capital and the market. In these areas, I wanted to examine how caste shape the experiences of Dalit and other marginalized communities. And how they try to articulate their environmental concerns and struggles in newer and newer frontiers of our environment.
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Abhilasha Jain
Right. Thank you so much for explaining that. And this takes me to my first question about the book itself and your foundational argument, which is that your. Your foundational argument is that mainstream Indian environmentalism has been fundamentally cast blind. So could you elaborate on this for us and maybe explain the key concepts that you've introduced, such as eco casteism and eco naturalism, to describe how environmental discourse has historically ignored and at times even reinforced caste hierarchy?
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Professor Mukul Sharma
Look, the mainstream Indian environmentalism has been profoundly cast blind. By this, I mean that while environmental discourses in India has explored multiple themes, themes of development, displacement, forest dams, sustainability, and much more, it has largely ignored how these subjects and processes are structured by caste. The everyday ecological burdens of Dalits and marginal caste, whether in accessing water, facing exclusion from commons, or being relegated to degrading occupations or marginalized industry and technology, have rarely been acknowledged in environmental thought. To make sense of this neglect, I introduced the concept of eco casteism and eco naturalism, as you just now mentioned. Now, to explain briefly, eco casteism refers to the ways in which caste hierarchies are reproduced, justified or naturalized through environmental discourses. Historically, CAST has shaped access to land, water, forest, livelihood options, industry, technologies, marking certain spaces as pure or polluted. Yet instead of challenging this kind of stratification, some streams of Indian environmentalism have actually celebrated the caste system as a form of ecological adaptation. Here, caste is portrayed as if it were a sustainable arrangement of labor and resource use, ignoring its many, many violent exclusions and eco naturalism. As you mentioned, connected with this with eco casteism is the tendency to equate environmental protection with the preservation of so called natural social order, which often means the Brahminical order. This view treats Indian society and environment as inherently organic, spatial, harmonious, under threat from Western modernity or industrialization. Within this framework, protecting the environment also becomes synonymous with protecting actually the traditional natural order and the motifs like the sacred rivers, sacred groves or Vedic tradition as the essence of Indian environmental culture. What is missed here? The Dalit and lower caste ecological experiences, memories of exclusion, the struggle for access and rights, or the ways in which labor, suffering, fear, violence and survival shape a distinct ecological narratives and imagination. So when I say Indian environmentalism has been cast blind, I mean that it has rarely confronted caste as a structuring principle of environmental access and has sometimes even reinforced caste hierarchies by celebrating them as natural or ecological. My book actually seeks to shift this lens to see Environment through Dalit perspective, which not only expose these exclusions, but also offers new ecological visions grounded in justice and equality.
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Abhilasha Jain
Right. Thank you so much. I think this links to the other question that I had for you, which is to say because you mentioned that Dalit experiences, so to say, have been pushed aside. If I can just paraphrase it. But your methodology, I think I found your methodology when I was reading the book. I found the methodology really interesting. You turned to Dalit literature, folklore, art and autobiographies as, as a sort of a primary counter archive of environmental thought. So why, if you could elaborate for me, what kind of ecological knowledge did these reveal for you and how, how and sort of fill that gap which in the. In the dominant narrative, you know, you.
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Professor Mukul Sharma
Rightly said that in Dalit ecologies I consciously, deliberately, actually turn to Dalit literature, folklore, art, autobiographies, which is like a counter archives of environmental thoughts. This was crucial because mainstream environmental discourses in India have been mostly shaped by upper caste voices and literature. And I mean that Dalit culture often try to offer a very distinct ecological imagination. Autobiographies, for example, do not just narrate individual lives. They also document a history of forced occupations, for example, tanning, scavenging, agricultural labor, that tie human suffering directly to environmental condition. Folklores and songs of Dalits and lower caste often register a struggle over land, water and dignity as showing how exclusion from commons or violence around access to natural resources becomes part of their collective memory, art and material culture. If you take for example, Madhuani art, or various monuments or public statues record space and landscapes as sites of resistance, remembrance and dignity. So by centering these sources, Dalit ecologists actually try to recover ecological knowledge that dominant environmental narratives miss. These works reveal how ecology is inseparable from caste, labor and justice issues. They also demonstrate us that environmental thought is just not located in scientific reports or professional endeavors, but also in the lived struggles, creative expressions and and counter memories of marginalized community. So when you are talking about methodology, I'm trying to create a counter archives through Dalit ecologies that really try to expand the meaning of environmentalism. It tells us that to understand ecological justice issues in India, we cannot rely only on dominant knowledge, dominant traditions and sources. We must also engage with Dalit voices in their languages and creative forms, which, as I said, register both exclusion and new possibilities of life and dignity and justice within the environment.
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Abhilasha Jain
Right, and you mentioned commons. And for me it was quite enlightening, to be honest, when I read your book and you have a very critical lens you're casting a very critical lens towards community. And so if you could unpack that idea of community for me. And also if you could talk a little bit about how your critique of community can be used effectively in reimagining environmental justice.
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Professor Mukul Sharma
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Professor Mukul Sharma
You are right actually. Thank you for asking this. You know, when we talk about community in environmental debates, it is often imagined as something harmonious, collective and naturally inclusive. A space where people come together to share resources and protect the environment. This view actually this perspective I would say has been specifically strong in Indian environmentalism where the village community is frequently celebrated as the custodian of forest or water or common lands. But in my work, actually, I suggest that this view could be deeply misleading because it ignores the way caste hierarchies fracture and stratify our community life. And if you want to see this from the perspective from lower and Dalit caste, the idea of community has rarely meant equality or inclusion in environment. In fact, so called common spaces like Wells Pond, cremation ground, Forest village commons have historically been sites of exclusion, violence and humiliation. A very well known Dalit writer, Ravi Kumar, once observed that a common will in an Indian village often meant from which Dalit could not draw water. A common funeral ground meant a place where Dalit bodies could not be crevated. In other words, what was called common was never common to all. It was structured by caste power and people were systematically denied equal claim to it. So this is why critique of committee what you have asked becomes very important for the Dalits and lower caste people for reimagining environmental justice. Instead of accepting community as A ready made, harmonious unit. We need to ask who is included in this common, who is excluded and on what terms. For Dalits, claiming rights over common spaces has meant struggle, protest, and even violence from dominant caste. Think, for example, of how Ambedkar statues in village squares or Dalit areas have been met with upper caste resistance. These acts actually show that reclaiming the commons, it is not just about resource sharing, but about challenging entrenched caste power. For example, I tell this story of Dashrath Manhi, the so called mountain man. His act of carving a road through a mountain was not simply about connecting two villages. It was a radical remaking of common space from a Dalit perspective. By transforming the mountain into a shared road, Dashrapman he redefined the commons not as a site of exclusion, but as a resource of dignity, mobility, migration, livelihood for his committee. His work actually showed me that community has to be reimagined through the lens of Dalits and their perspective about environment, not from the perspective of tradition and conservation. So to answer your question sharply here, the critique of community from the perspective of Dalit and lower caste helps us to see that environmental justice cannot be built on an idealized notions of harmony. It must be built on recognizing histories of exclusion and actively transforming commons into genuinely inclusive spaces.
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Abhilasha Jain
Right. I think one of the. It brings to mind my next question, which is the theoretical move you make in the book. By introducing the concept of Dalit Bahujan Anthropocene and talking about histories, I think you are looking, instead of just looking at common histories between Dalit and black ecologies, you're putting them in conversation. You're looking for the relationship instead of just a commonality. So how do these frameworks challenge the universalizing narrative of our current geological epoch? And if you could also tell me what can be learned from the historical solidarity between movements like the Dalit Panthers and Black Panthers for building a transnational environmental justice movement today.
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Professor Mukul Sharma
You're right that I have tried to introduce the idea of Dalit Baojan Anthropocene as a way of rethinking the dominant narrative of the Anthropocene. We all know that the mainstream Anthropocene story actually tends to be, as you said, rightly universalizing the story. It tells us that humanity as a whole has entered a new geological epoch defined by the massive planetary impact of our species. But this framing in fact conceals the fact that the burdens and responsibilities for ecological devastation are profoundly unequal as we know it hides how caste, race and colonial histories shape who suffers environmental harms. Most acutely and who benefits from the exploitative systems of production consumption. What I try to do that through the Dalit Bhajan Anthropocene. I challenge this erasure by foregrounding the ecological experiences of those at the bottom of caste and labor hierarchies in India, for example, manual scavengers, leather workers, brick clean workers, agricultural laborers or industrial migrants whose lives have always been entangled with toxicity, waste, exclusion from land and water there. Anthropocene is not about sudden planetary rupture in the 20th century. It is about long histories of caste operation that tied Dalit bodies to degraded environments. But it is also something more. It is also about the creative and imaginative dimensions of ecological life. Dalit Bahujan communities have not only endured these violent ecologies, they have also transformed them into spaces of resilience art new forms of environmental imagination. From turning discarded materials into cultural expressions, to making beauty out of waste, to creating alternative commons in conditions of displacement. Many Dalit Bahujan activities practices actually generate once again a counter archive of ecological knowledge. And you talked about Dalit methodology or my methodology? As I said, Dalit art folklore autobiographies often register the that how garbage or the most cruel landscapes become re signified as sites of dignity, survival and event joy. Migration and displacement, though born out of exclusion, can also spark new imagination. Where Bricklins Road urban peripheries become the ground for solidarity, mobility and belonging to. So in this way, Dalit Bahujan Anthropocene is not only about marginalization, but also about reimagining environment from below. I would say where, as I said, waste can become resource. If you go to nature garden, you could see it very well. Displacement becomes movement and discarded life worlds become fertile ground for ecological creativity. You mentioned about the Blacks and Black Panthers. You are right that this framework Dalit Bahujan Anthropocene strongly resonates with blacks and black ecologists. African American and black diasporic thinkers have shown how slavery, plantation labor, segregation and environmental racism have produced what actually academician Christina Sarpe called the weather a climate of anti blackness that has structured both social and ecological life. Similarly, Dalit writers and activists showed how caste orders, space, labor and environment in India. When placed together, these perspectives, black perspective and Dalit perspective reveal that there is no singular universal Anthropocene. Rather, they are multiple a stratified Anthropocene that expose the racial and caste violence hidden within the dominant story of humanity as a species. And look, this is not only. This is not only a theoretical move. It's Also that you asked in your question. It's also a history of solidarity. The Dalit Panthers in India were directly inspired by the Black Panthers in the us. Both movements actually foregrounded dignity, self respect and collective resistance against their operation. And both linked struggles over land, housing, labor and survival to broader questions of justice. I think that for today's environmental justice movement, this transnational solidarity offers very crucial lessons to all of us. It reminds us that ecological struggles cannot be separated from the struggles against racism and casteism. And that building alliances across geographies is essential if we are to confront global ecological crisis. So now put it simply, that the Dalit, Bahujan, Anthropocene and black ecologies together expose the exclusion within the universal Anthropocene narrative. They show us that how new visions of planetary justice can emerge precisely from those who have been forced to live within the, I would say World west zones. And they invite us to imagine transnational environmental justice movement. One that is not only about saving the planet in the abstract, but about dismantling the caste and racial hierarchies that has long produced ecological inequality in the first place.
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Abhilasha Jain
Right. I think this. This centers justice and liberation. I think it brings politics back into environmentalism, so to say. And your book also presents like a very provocative rereading of Dr. B.R. ambedkar's vision of modernization. Not as an anti ecological stance, but as a necessary path to liberation from the oppressive caste ridden village. So how does this Ambedkar WR perspective offer a radical alternative to both this. This kind of what you've already mentioned, romantic environmentalism and on the other hand, this caste blind developmentalism? If you could tell me more about that.
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Professor Mukul Sharma
Thanks, Abhilasha. Really it's. It's a very important question for the entire work of me. I think that we need to fundamentally reread Ambedkar's vision of modernity or modernization. He has often been dismissed within environmental discourse as a figure indifferent to nature, too occupied with Western models of science, technology and industry. But my argument is, as you rightly mentioned, that Ambedkar embrace of modernity was not anti ecological. It was a necessary path to liberation from the oppressive, caste ridden natural and social order. For example, we discussed about the community some time ago. For Ambedkar, the village was not a site of ecological harmony and community as it has often been romanticized in Gandhian or environmental thoughts. But for him it was a site of graded inequality where untouchables were denied land, water, dignity and basic human rights. His writing, very, very extensive on Indian village and community describes The Indian villages as a republic of the Untouchables by the touchables for the Touchables. A space that systematically excluded Dalits from both natural resources and democratic participation. In this way, if you see from this perspective, modernity, modernization, either through land reforms or through urban development or through the introduction of science and industry, was not simply about economic progress, not at all, but about breaking caste hierarchies embedded in this so called natural glorious committee. So you ask about the Ambedkarai perspective. Actually this Ambedkrait perspective can offer a radical alternative to two dominant framework. I would say. First, it challenges romantic environmentalism that you just mentioned, which really celebrates the village and community, as I said, timeless ecological units while ignoring how they function as instrument of caste operation. Second, it challenges the caste mind developmental ethos which embraces industry and modernity, but fails to address how development and growth project reproduce social exclusion, leaving Dalits at the bottom of the hierarchy. So Ambedkar vision, I would say was of a democratized modernity where rights over land, water, technology, resources, labor are grounded in equality and fraternity. His emphasis was not on preserving the tradition and community, but on dismantling casteist naturalism and casteist community and creating new ecological figures or futures rooted in justice. And I would say that the implication of Ambedkar's view for today's environmental politics in the present era are very much urgent. If environmental activism in India continues to valorize the community or the natural without integrating caste, it actually risks reinforcing the very hierarchies it claims to resist. On the other hand, if policy, our developmental policy, state policy, embraces development without addressing social justice, it will create more and more inequality in new forms. And Ambedkarai environmentalism asks us to move beyond both these traps. I would say it tells us that ecological futures must be imagined alongside social transformation. That there can be no sustainability without equality and no conservation without dignity. For environmental activism and policy today, this means actually from Ambedkarat perspective, centering the experiences of Dalit and other marginal groups, recognizing access to natural resources as a matter of right, and refusing to romanticize oppressive traditions and culture. In short, I would say that Ambedkar and Ambedkar view on development and modernity teach us that liberation from caste is itself an ecological project. And the struggle for environmental justice in India must also be a struggle for establishing and deepening social democracy.
- [36:51]
Abhilasha Jain
Thank you so much Professor Sharma, for really taking us through your book in so much detail. But lastly, but definitely not the least, I'm sure all of us are eager to know what you are currently working on or planning to work on in the future in terms of your research. If you could tell us a bit about that.
- [37:11]
Professor Mukul Sharma
Thank you. Look, you know, I have recently just now completed a Hindi version of Dalit ecologies. You know, I also write in Hindi, which is very important to me. The politics of language actually plays a crucial role in how knowledge is created and circulated. Environmental knowledge, I mean, here much of what we understand as environmental thought actually has been constructed through English, which often carries, you know, elite and exclusionary framework. But a great deal of ecological imagination, particularly if you want to work on Dalits and lower caste imagination, is expressed, you know, in India at least in regional and local languages, in their songs, oral histories, literary traditions. By writing in Hindi, you know, I hope not only to expand the reach of the book, but also to underline that building new ecological knowledge requires us to take these vernacular sources seriously because they reveal experiences and insight that English language discourse actually can't capture, often overlooks, and so on and so forth. So that is one. Hopefully it will be out soon. Secondly, I'm working on a collaborative book with my colleague, Professor Anand Swami, that is on Bihar, economy, ecology and politics. You know, Bihar is my native state, covering the past hundred years up to the present. You know, Bihar is often framed in very narrow and stereotypical ways, but it also has a rich and complex history of agrarian change, ecological shift, various kind of agrarian and industrial struggles and political obligation. Through this book we want to show how economy and ecology are intertwined with caste and politics in the state and how these dynamics have shaped both the reason and the larger stories of India's ecology and development. Finally, and that is very important, I'm turning to another urgent absence in Indian environmentalism, that is the question of Muslims and environment. Just as, you know, Dalit ecology is asked, where are the Dalits in Indian environmentalism? Here I now ask, where are Muslims in Indian environmentalism? You know, in much of the mainstream environmental discourse in India, we see either Muslim blindness, a refusal to acknowledge Muslim committees, their experiences and their ecological practices, or we see Muslim othering, where Muslims are depicted as outsiders, polluters, ecological threats, particularly in the moment of Hindu nationalist ascendancy in our country. Yet I would say that Muslims in India have long histories of environmental knowledge, from pastoral practices to urban ecology, from craft traditions to ecological ethics embedded in their culture and religious life. So my aim here, while working on the question of Muslims and environment, is to map both how environmentalism has excluded Muslim Indian environmentalism and how Muslim themselves articulate environmental vices and reasons that could enrich and transform the field. So, you know, across some of these projects, I mentioned these three writing in Hindi, trying to read a century of Bihar's ecological history, and integrating the place of Muslims in Indian environmentalism. The common thread is an effort, a small effort of mine, to expand and democratize environmental thought in India. I want to push myself and us to see that ecology is not just a technical or professional or Hindu or elite discourse, but as something deeply shaped by caste, religion, language, labor, and ambition. That, to me, is the urgent task for the future of environmental research and activism in India.
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Abhilasha Jain
Thank you so, so much, Professor Sharma, for joining me today and talking to me about your book, Dalit Ecology's Caste in Environmental Just. I am Abhilasha Jain, and you've been listening to the New Books Network podcast.