Ann Grodzins Gold and Bhoju Ram Gujar. In the Time of Trees and Sorrows: Nature, Power and Memory in Rajasthan. Durham: Duke University Press, 2002.

Extract

In the Time of Trees and Sorrows is an engaging and elegant exploration of the history of the former kingdom of Sawar, an area of twenty-seven villages in Rajasthan. The authors focus on the period from the 1930s to the 1950s, an era of dramatic changes in Sawar's (and India's) political and ecological landscape. Drawing on interviews with subjects of the former kingdom, mostly non-literate farmers, herders, and laborers, the authors provide a textured account of the pre-independence period (pre-1947) marked by what they term the “double oppression under colonial and regional rulers,” and a landscape rich with trees and wildlife, albeit resources to which the king's subjects were mostly denied access (p. 1). This period is contrasted with the post-independence period, during which India's princely kingdoms were absorbed in the Indian Republic, and the subjects of Sawar experienced “the sudden and radical transformation to democracy and modernity” (1). This latter period also witnessed, as the authors draw attention to from the outset, the complete devastation of Sawar's landscape which “transformed from one of rich biodiversity of trees and growth to one where hillsides have been stripped of indigenous growth and are now dominated by a single alien species” (3). In bringing political and ecological history into the same frame, Gold and Gujar explore a compelling paradox of the area's postcolonial history: as the residents of Sawar gained political rights, their environment was transformed and, in many ways, devastated.