Environmental Sociology in India: Unique Perspectives and Movements

India’s relationship with the environment is not just a matter of policy or science – it’s deeply tied to history, social structure, and justice. While environmental sociology as a formal discipline developed largely in the West during the late 20th century, Indian scholars and grassroots movements were already asking critical questions about how societies interact with nature decades earlier. From the pioneering ecological thinking of Radhakamal Mukerjee in the 1920s to the globally recognized Chipko Movement and Vandana Shiva’s ecofeminist activism, India has contributed a distinctive perspective to environmental sociology – one rooted in the lived experiences of marginalized communities, not in the comforts of affluent societies.

Early intellectual foundations: Radhakamal Mukerjee and social ecology 🔗

Long before environmental sociology gained traction in the West, Indian sociologist Radhakamal Mukerjee (1889-1968) was laying its groundwork. Mukerjee pioneered the field of social ecology through works like Regional Sociology (1926) and Social Ecology (1942), defining it as a comprehensive study of the relationships between plant, animal, and human communities within a region. His approach was ahead of its time – he insisted that ecology could not be understood through a single discipline alone.

Mukerjee championed an interdisciplinary approach, arguing that the barriers between physical sciences, natural sciences, and the social sciences needed to be broken down to properly understand human life and its interaction with the environment. He was particularly concerned with how disrupting ecological balance – through deforestation, overgrazing, or unsustainable farming – created a chain reaction of soil erosion, reduced rainfall, and loss of fertility that damaged both the environment and social fabric.

Recent scholarship has reexamined Mukerjee’s contributions, recognizing that his work drew on both Western mainstream and Indian knowledge systems to address ecological challenges rooted in the devastation of British colonialism in India. He was, in essence, developing what we might now call a postcolonial environmental sociology – connecting ecological destruction to colonial exploitation and arguing for approaches grounded in Indian realities rather than imported Western models.

What makes Mukerjee’s contribution especially significant is his insistence that cultural factors matter deeply in how societies relate to nature. He argued that geological, geographical, and biological factors interact with social, economic, and political forces to create ecological zones, and that disrupting this balance – through practices like deforestation – had consequences extending beyond the environment into social well-being.

The rise of environmental movements: Chipko and beyond 🔗

If Mukerjee provided the intellectual framework, India’s environmental movements provided the action. The post-independence period saw rapid industrialization and large-scale development projects – dams, mines, roads – that came at a heavy ecological and social cost. By the 1970s, communities across India began resisting.

The Chipko Movement 🔗

The most iconic of these was the Chipko Movement, which began in 1973 in the Chamoli district of Uttarakhand. Women from Advani village in Tehri-Garhwal tied sacred threads around trees and hugged them to prevent logging, giving the movement its name – “Chipko” meaning “to hug” or “to cling.” The movement was not simply about saving trees. In India, environmentalism was driven not by leisure but by survival – it reflected an unequal competition over resources like forests, water, and pasture, with local communities on one side and urban and industrial interests on the other.

Sunderlal Bahuguna and Chandi Prasad Bhatt were among its key leaders, but the movement’s real strength was its grassroots, community-driven character. The Chipko Movement inspired other environmental movements across India and the world, fostering greater environmental consciousness and advocacy for sustainable development.

Narmada Bachao Andolan and Silent Valley 🔗

The struggle against large dam projects became another major arena. The Narmada Bachao Andolan (NBA), launched in 1985 and led by Medha Patkar, protested the Sardar Sarovar Dam on the Narmada River, highlighting displacement of thousands of people and the environmental consequences of such mega-projects. The NBA became one of India’s longest-running environmental movements and succeeded in getting the World Bank to withdraw its funding for the project.

Similarly, the Save Silent Valley Movement in Kerala fought to protect an ancient tropical rainforest from a hydroelectric dam. This campaign drew national attention to the ecological significance of rainforests and the need for environmental impact assessments. Together, these movements established a powerful principle: the voices of communities directly affected by environmental destruction must be heard in decisions about development.

Development versus conservation: a false binary? 🔗

One of the most important contributions of Indian environmental sociology is its challenge to the idea that economic growth and environmental conservation are inherently opposed. In much of the Western world, environmentalism developed as a “full-stomach” concern – an interest of affluent societies that had already achieved a baseline of material comfort. India’s experience has been fundamentally different.

Indian scholars developed the idea of “livelihood environmentalism” in contrast to the “full-stomach environmentalism” of the affluent world, with scientists like Madhav Gadgil and journalists like Anil Agarwal gaining international recognition for their contributions. The argument was clear: for millions of Indians who depend directly on forests, rivers, and soil for their survival, environmental protection is not a luxury – it’s a necessity.

Ramachandra Guha and the “environmentalism of the poor” 🔗

Historian Ramachandra Guha has been central in articulating this perspective. In his work, Guha highlights pioneering thinkers who wrote about the dangers of environmental abuse from within an Indian context, challenging the Western narrative that countries like India are “too poor to be green.”

Guha argues that it is a misconception to pit development against the environment – a framing favoured by industrialists and politicians, partly out of ignorance and partly because they feel environmentalists oppose development. Instead, India must adopt a far more environmentally sensitive form of development than the models followed by Europe and North America.

In a densely populated country like India, environmental issues have both ecological and human dimensions – conservation is not a luxury but the very basis of human and national survival. This was the key insight of India’s environmental movement in the 1970s and 1980s, and it continues to challenge policymakers today. The question is not whether to develop, but how to develop – in ways that protect both ecosystems and livelihoods.

Gadgil, Guha, and rethinking resources 🔗

Ramachandra Guha, along with Madhav Gadgil, co-authored This Fissured Land (1993), which explored India’s environmental history and resource exploitation, particularly of forests. Their later work, Ecology and Equity (1995), examined how environmental debates in India are inseparable from questions of social justice. These works argued that sustainable development requires understanding who benefits from resource extraction and who bears the cost – and in India, the cost has overwhelmingly fallen on tribal communities, subsistence farmers, and fisherfolk.

Ecofeminism and the role of women in India’s environmental struggles 🔗

No discussion of environmental sociology in India is complete without examining the role of women. From the very beginning, women have been at the forefront of Indian environmental activism – often because they are the first to feel the impact of ecological degradation in their daily lives.

Vandana Shiva and the ecofeminist framework 🔗

Vandana Shiva is perhaps the most globally recognized voice of Indian ecofeminism. A scholar, environmental activist, and anti-globalization author, Shiva has written more than 20 books and is often called the “Gandhi of grain” for her activism associated with the anti-GMO movement.

Shiva critiques modern science and technology as a Western, patriarchal, and colonial project that is inherently violent and perpetuates violence against both women and nature. Her foundational book, Staying Alive: Women, Ecology and Survival in India (1988), argued that the dominant development model systematically devalues both nature and women’s knowledge. She sees development not as progress, but as a new form of colonization – one that replaces diverse, self-sustaining ecosystems and communities with monocultures driven by corporate interests.

At the centre of Shiva’s work is a critique of globalization, which she argues attempts to homogenize society and the environment in detrimental and neo-colonial ways. In Monocultures of the Mind (1993), she argued that the dominant economic system treats nature and women as passive raw material, disempowering entire sections of global society.

Navdanya and seed sovereignty 🔗

In 1991, Shiva founded Navdanya, a national movement to protect the diversity and integrity of living resources, especially native seeds, while promoting organic farming and fair trade. Navdanya operates a seed repository and promotes biodiversity conservation, directly countering the corporate monopolization of seeds through patents.

Shiva’s argument is that when corporations patent seeds and promote monoculture farming, they destroy both biodiversity and women’s traditional role as custodians of seed diversity. This hits hardest in the global South, where women in agrarian communities are most dependent on diverse, self-sustaining farming systems.

Women at the grassroots 🔗

The connection between women and environmental protection in India goes well beyond Shiva’s academic work. Indian women have been pioneers in protecting and conserving the environment, and their dedication has made them key figures in many of the country’s most significant environmental movements. The Chipko Movement was fundamentally a women’s movement. So was the much earlier Bishnoi Movement of 1730, when Amrita Devi and 363 Bishnoi villagers in Rajasthan gave their lives to protect sacred Khejri trees from the king’s soldiers.

This pattern – of women leading environmental resistance at the grassroots level – is not coincidental. In rural India, women are typically responsible for collecting water, fuel, and fodder. When forests are destroyed or rivers polluted, women bear the direct burden. Their activism is therefore an expression of both environmental concern and social survival.

Contemporary issues and ongoing relevance 🔗

Environmental sociology in India is not just a historical subject – it addresses issues that are intensifying today. Rapid urbanization, industrial pollution, groundwater depletion, air quality crises, and the impacts of climate change on agriculture all demand the kind of interdisciplinary, justice-oriented analysis that Indian environmental thinkers have championed.

Indian environmentalism, unlike its Western counterpart, is deeply intertwined with the lived experiences of marginalized communities – tribal groups, subsistence farmers, and fisherfolk – who depend on natural ecosystems for their survival. This makes it inherently sociological: you cannot understand India’s environmental challenges without understanding caste, class, gender, and the legacy of colonialism.

The environmental debate in India continues to evolve, with climate change adding a new dimension. But the core insight remains: environmental protection and social justice are not separate agendas. They are two sides of the same coin.

What do you think? Can India’s model of “livelihood environmentalism” – where environmental protection is tied to the survival of the poor rather than the preferences of the affluent – offer lessons for other developing countries? And how can the ecofeminist insights of thinkers like Vandana Shiva be better integrated into mainstream environmental policy?

References

1. https://www.sociologyguide.com/indian-thinkers/radhakamal-mukherjee.php
2. https://www.agriscigroup.us/articles/AEST-8-181.pdf
3. https://www.clearias.com/environmental-movements-in-india/
4. https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/southasia/2012/07/24/indias-environment-balancing-development-and-conservation/
5. https://edgeeffects.net/ramachandra-guha/
6. https://globalsocialtheory.org/thinkers/shiva-vandana/
7. https://www.tni.org/en/podcast/ecofeminism-1-a-powerful-vision
8. https://www.downtoearth.org.in/environment/india-would-be-an-environmental-disaster-zone-even-if-climate-change-did-not-exist-ramachandra-guha