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CHAPTER V

THE STAGES PRIOR TO THE DEVELOPMENT OF

T

A FOREST POLICY, 1796-1850

HE growth of a forest policy in India was extraordinarily slow. There were many mitigating factors at first. Those responsible for the management of affairs had no difficulty in procuring all their requirements from the forests. The great continent appeared to hold inexhaustible tracts covered with dense. jungles. Their contents were unknown, but there was no apparent necessity for their detailed exploration even had this been a possibility. The process of building up the empire province by province in itself covered a considerable period of years. Scientific knowledge amongst the European officials was confined almost entirely to the members of the medical profession; and had this not been the case, in the early years of our occupation the botany of the forests, the species of trees they contained and their respective values, was an unopened book. The fact also that great tracts of the jungles were the aftermath of the method of shifting cultivation which had been practised for centuries, and contained nothing but a worthless scrub, was a matter which only received slow recognition.

To the Government and their officials the important part which forests play in nature and the great influence they exercise on the physical well-being of a country was unrecognised ; nor were they able to appreciate their importance to the people or their revenue-producing capacity. The Government for some years obtained their requirements without difficulty and the people took all they wanted. The early administrators appear to have been convinced that this state of affairs could go on for an unlimited period; and that in many localities forests were an obstruction to agriculture and therefore a limiting factor to the prosperity of the country. The whole policy was to extend agriculture, and the watchword of the

time was to destroy the forests with this end in view. The direct and indirect value of the forests was under-estimated, as is clearly exhibited by the provisions of many of the earlier settlements, especially in Bengal and the Punjab, which transferred large forest areas in perpetuity to landowners or to cultivators who at that period had no legal right to them. The recipients of these grants did not at the time appreciate the boon conferred; for they attached no greater value to the forest than the Government itself. In other cases, and they were numerous, where the forests were not entirely alienated, the main rights of users, which constitute the value of the possession of the forests, were abandoned in favour of the cultivator.

This, as will be shown, was a transitory stage, but it covered a period of several years, and enormous destruction to valuable forests was the outcome. The time arrived when, with the advance of modern civilisation and the increased demands of both population and trade, the diminution of the forests began to be regarded with grave apprehension. The spread of railways at a later period brought the matter to a head. But before their appearance the increased area under agriculture and the rapidly multiplying flocks and herds, which ensued, owing to the greater security afforded the people under the settled government of British rule, caused greater demands upon the forests and their produce. And to obtain these demands the same methods continued to be practised, the habits of a pastoral and semi-nomadic population. No check had yet been introduced into the practice of firing the forests annually in spite of the glaring anomaly that if young growth was burnt it was obvious there could be no old trees for a future generation.

The true state of affairs was not appreciated by the Government until the failure to supply local requirements began to be felt. The first of these requirements which began to give out comparatively early was timber for shipbuilding; but in most instances the solution of the difficulties encountered was sought for in improved methods of exploitation both by Government agency or through contractors; and even when protection was accorded this was, for many years, only given to certain species of trees and not to the forests as a whole.

A general summary of the initial steps taken towards the introduction of forest conservancy between 1796 and 1850

will be given in this chapter, fuller details being subsequently furnished under the Presidencies concerned.

With the defeat of Lally in Madras the French power in India came to an end in 1760.

As a result of the first defeat of Tippoo Sahib by the British in 1792, Malabar and Coorg were ceded to the British, who already held Canara. Tippoo's final defeat and death at the capture of Serangapatam (1799) put an end to the struggle for supremacy in Madras, and the civil administration of the Presidency by the British thereafter proceeded on comparatively peaceful lines. The growing demand for teak timber was one of the matters which received early attention.

If we omit the first efforts at bringing some method into the operations of extracting teak in Malabar (Madras) and Tenasserim (Burma), to be alluded to later, the initial step towards forest protection taken by Government was an order issued by the Bengal-Bombay Joint Commission, appointed about 1800, to enquire into the internal circumstances of Malabar and to make regulations prohibiting the felling of teak below 21 inches in girth. No further action was taken up to 1805, when a despatch was received from the Court of Directors enquiring to what extent the King's Navy might, in view of the growing deficiency of oak in England, depend on a permanent supply of teak timber from Malabar. This enquiry resulted in the immediate nomination of a forest committee charged with a comprehensive programme of enquiry both into the capacity of the forests themselves and, as important, into the status of the proprietary rights in them. Thus the first real interest aroused in the Forests of India and the resulting study of those accessible at the time originated from home, and the cause was the same which had kept Forestry in the forefront in England through a period of three centuries-the safety of the empire, which depended upon its "wooden walls." The planting of oak owing to the supineness of successive Governments had fallen into abeyance for nearly a century, and the country was faced with a shortage in timber supplies which, in view of the bid of the French for sea supremacy, might well spell the doom of England.

The reason for the Court of Directors' enquiry relative to teak does not appear to be on record. They were probably aware that the Arabs imported teak from Bombay for building their fleet. The timber had long been prized. But it is curious that Bontius first described the teak under the name

of Quercus Indicus, although save in the strength of its timber the tree has no affinity to the oak.

Rhode has given an accurate representation of Tectona grandis and refers to the teak forests of Malabar in these terms (Hort. Malab., iv, t. 27): "Crescit ubique in Malabar, at præsertim in provincia Calicolan (Calicut) ubi integræ sylvæ ingentium harum arborum reperiuntur. . . . Lignum vero hujus arboris quercino ligno haud absimile operi fabrili accommodum, atque naupegis ad navium fabricam in usu est: sed in aquis (præsertim dulcibus) teredini facile obnoxium."

The reports submitted by the Forest Committee were by no means reassuring. They brought into evidence that the capacity of the forests in mature teak timber had been overestimated; that the more accessible forests had been almost cut out, and that to tap the more distant ones would necessitate the construction of costly roads. At the same time the Committee pointed out that if protection were afforded the forests a valuable property would be gradually built up. Thus, as had been the case in other countries on the initiation of a forest policy, next to the utilisation of the forests, the oldest branch of the science of forestry, protection proved the next necessity if the forests were to be saved from total ruin and disappearance.

The immediate result of the Committee's report was a general proclamation declaring that the royalty right in teak trees claimed by the former Government in the south of the continent was vested in the Company and all further unauthorised fellings of this tree were prohibited. Under further pressure from the Home Government, and with regard to the maintenance of the future strength of the King's Navy, the decision was taken to appoint a special officer to superintend the forest work, who should have a knowledge of the language and habits of the people in addition to a knowledge of the forests. His duties were to preserve and improve the production of teak and other timber suitable for shipbuilding. Captain Watson of the Police was the officer selected, and he was appointed the first Conservator of Forests in India on 10th November, 1806. Under the proclamation of April, 1807, he wielded great powers, which unfortunately were somewhat vague in both scope and in the amount of interference he was to undertake in the established order.

The Conservator soon established a timber monopoly throughout Malabar and Travancore and furnished Govern

[graphic]

COUNTRY CART LOADED WITH A SQUARED TEAK BEAM OF 20 CUBIC FEET. MADRAS From Cleghorn's "Forests and Gardens of South India'

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