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CHAPTER III

POSITION OF THE FORESTS AT THE TIME THE BRITISH
ACHIEVED SUPREMACY IN INDIA

I

T has been shown that the constant streams of immigration and invasion to which India was subjected during the 3800 years, which roughly elapsed between the invasion of the Aryans and the advent of the English as Rulers, resulted in the destruction of a very large proportion of the forests which originally covered great tracts of the country. The forests had, in fact, in some parts already been reduced below the minimum essential to the well-being of the country and its inhabitants when the English first began to achieve supremacy in the middle of the eighteenth century. As will be described in subsequent chapters this state of affairs did not improve, but the destruction of the more accessible forests increased during the early days of British occupation. The new Administration possessed no knowledge of tropical Forestry, nor, indeed, of European Forestry, since British Forestry had almost ceased to be understood as a commercial enterprise in Great Britain. Coal, in a larger degree, was replacing wood fuel, and with the realisation of the value of teak the British Admiralty were soon engaged in enquiries with the object of replacing oak timber by teak from India for use in the construction of the Fleet. For the supplies of first-class oak timber were falling short in England owing to the cessation of planting, which had fallen off to a great extent early in the latter part of the eighteenth century.

The British were not the first in India to make indents on its timber wealth. For a long period before their arrival timber had been exported in large amounts to Arabia and Persia. For a considerable period the Arabs had possessed a powerful fleet in the construction of which teak was used; and the valuable sandal-wood of South India had for many centuries found its way by the sea and land routes to the

Western markets; as also had the satin-wood, ebony and blackwood.

Investigations carried out at the beginning of the nineteenth century proved that the big cities of India surrounded by a dense agricultural population were already short of timber, which was being transported to them from forests situated at considerable distances. The fellings carried out to supply these requirements were in the hands of bands of timber merchants, who readily obtained short leases from local officials in charge of the localities, or from those who claimed the ownership of the forests, and felled the big timber and any smaller material that had a sale, destroying all young growth of every description by the reckless methods of extraction employed. Their methods were so inferior that probably not more than 30 to 40 per cent of the timber thus felled ever reached the markets.

The ownership of the forests and waste lands of the country had almost invariably been claimed by the de facto ruler at the time. But free access to hack and burn at will was permitted, save in the case of certain species of trees which were considered the prerogative of the ruler whose felling without permission was forbidden. Tippoo Sahib, in Southern India, had created a monopoly in teak, the tree being constituted a "royal" tree, the felling and sale of which he kept in his own hands. In Burma the Alompra dynasty had taken the same action. In a similar manner the sandal-wood of Mysore was constituted a monopoly of the ruler.

But these monopolies did not afford any protection to the trees or forests which they affected. The ruler sold blocks of forest for a certain sum down or rate per tree, and the timber merchants were then allowed to fell as they pleased and ruin what was left.

These fellings and the wasteful forms of extraction were greatly intensified during the early days of British occupation, owing to the varied demands made by the latter for military and other purposes and to supply the teak export trade. Another destructive factor was the pernicious system of shifting cultivation which had been in force for centuries. Under this system an area of forest was felled by the forest dwellers, the material burnt, the ashes spread over the area and a crop sown. As soon as the crop ripened it was reaped. The cultivator might raise a second crop on the same area. By the end of this period the growth of weeds would become

very heavy, and he then shifted to a new piece of forest which was treated in the same manner. This practice, the most wasteful of all methods of forest utilisation, was in full force at the time of the arrival of the British, and thousands of square miles of the valuable forests of the country had been laid waste by the system, the formerly fine timber forests being replaced by a worthless scrub. For the areas so treated were quickly occupied again and covered by the quickly growing, worthless, soft-wooded species, or by bamboos or grass, and in the south by great tracts of plantains which were worthless from an economic point of view. It is impossible to compute in figures the value of the vast forest resources in timber and other valuable forest products which were wasted by the practice of this method of crop cultivation, a method which, as has been shown, was forced upon the peace-loving portion of the population constantly pressed backward through the ages into the forest-clad parts of the country by the pressure of the invading hosts entering India from the north-west. But that the system should have persisted for so long under the British regime and be still in force in the more remote parts of the empire at the present day is a fact significant of our ignorance of Forestry in the past and what Forestry implies in the economic life of a nation. In spite of the lessons learnt in India it was left for the Great War to bring home to the British Empire the full meaning of the great potential value of its forests.

Nor had the British any ideas on that other matter of vital importance, and more especially in a country of tropical heat such as India, viz. the effect of large areas of forest on a climate of a country. But as our first operations in India were confined to regions near the seaboard a consideration of this question will be left to a later stage in this history. But long before our arrival the Indian ryot had begun in many parts to realise that water was diminishing, that streams and springs were drying up, and that areas which his ancestors had been able to cultivate were now becoming useless for cultural purposes, owing to the to him inexplicable-drying up of the streams upon which they had depended for irrigating the crops. Whole villages had to move to more suitable sites, and this process had been taking place for centuries, as is evidenced by the remains of old town and village sites scattered all over the country, some of them buried in sand in the centre of an unproductive wilderness, whilst others are enveloped in jungle

which has sprung up on the deserted fields. For with the disappearance of man in such areas the hill-sides became re-clothed with jungle, and the water had once again filled the streams and springs.

These processes were not, however, appreciated in those early days of our supremacy, nor had we any close knowledge of even a fraction of the country.

No forest policy was initiated when we commenced to govern India, nor was it realised that any such policy was necessary. With the exception of a few "royal" trees such as teak, sandal-wood, etc., the felling of which was retained, and only nominally retained-for illicit felling and smuggling was rife throughout the country-in the hands of the rulers of the particular territory, the forests were free to all to take what they required, to hack and burn down; or to fire annually in order to obtain a fresh crop of young grass with the arrival of the monsoon for the grazing requirements of their cattle.

When the British in the early days, after attaining supremacy in the country, began to require timber of various kinds for military purposes and other works they had no difficulty in obtaining all their needs, and so far as is known this may be said to have been the position of the population throughout the greater part of the country. The waste in exploitation was appalling, but the material was still in existence within reasonable distance of the markets, and no question of shortness in supply arose between the Home or Indian Governments. Nor did the matter apparently ever cross their minds, the forests being regarded as inexhaustible.

The position of the forests, therefore, towards the close of the eighteenth century is easily defined. Certain trees, the timber of which had a recognised value as articles for a valuable export timber trade, a trade which had existed in some cases for many centuries, had been proclaimed "royal trees" by the rulers of the territories in which they flourished. With these few exceptions the forests were free to all, although nominally they belonged to the ruler of the territory. This latter claim existed, with certain small exceptions of forest territory, throughout the country as a whole, and formed the basis upon which it was ultimately found possible to build up the Forestry Department under the British regime.

The forest area had been immensely reduced by fire and axe and by the almost universal practice of shifting cultivation, this reduction having reached a point at which it was

seriously jeopardising in parts the pursuits and business of the population, which was in the main an agricultural and pastoral one. For the unchecked destruction of the forests was having an adverse effect on the maintenance of the water supplies over considerable areas in some parts.

But the British of the period were unacquainted with the principles of forestry science. The reports on the forests in the neighbourhood of the parts of the country we first occupied were unanimous in regarding them as inexhaustible, so far as the materials that were required from them were concerned. The first decades of British occupation of India, therefore, witnessed no check, but rather an enhanced rate in the destruction of fine timber forests in these regions. And the destruction of the forests throughout the remainder, the greater bulk, of the country, continued on the lines which had been in force. throughout the centuries.

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