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Railway fuel and its impact on the forests in colonial India: The case of the Punjab, 1860–1884

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  19 October 2012

PALLAVI V. DAS
PALLAVI V. DAS*
Affiliation:
Lakehead University, Canada Email: pvdas@lakeheadu.ca
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Abstract

Recent studies have stressed the need for micro-histories of the environment so that important differences and similarities at local, regional and national level might be revealed. This paper analyses the process and patterns of environmental degradation at regional level by taking the case of deforestation in colonial Punjab by studying its implication at the level of empire. More specifically, it examines three aspects of how the operation and expansion of railways from 1869 to 1884, a peak period of railway expansion, affected the forests of the Punjab's plains. First, the paper analyses the reasons for large-scale railway expansion in the Punjab by discussing spatial and temporal expansion. Secondly, the impact of the railway firewood demand on the Punjab's forests between 1860 and 1884 is examined, specifically, the conditions that facilitated the increased dependence of the railways on firewood. Next follows an examination of the temporally varying nature of deforestation, given that railway firewood demand was determined by railway line openings. This section also includes a discussion on the nature of the colonial state response to the deforestation crisis and its role in maintaining the fuel supply to the railways. Finally, in the context of deforestation in the Punjab, the paper discusses how and why railway fuel changed from firewood to coal.

Type
Research Article
Information
Modern Asian Studies , Volume 47 , Issue 4 , July 2013 , pp. 1283 - 1309
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2012 

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References

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22 This was a state railway but was funded by the Punjab provincial government. In this paper the construction and expansion of this railway and the Rajputana Railways will not be discussed.

23 Ibid.

24 At this time although some lines connected cantonment cities, the primarily military lines were not yet built. They were built from 1880 onwards (see Mazumder, R. K., The Indian Army and the Making of Punjab, Permanent Black, Delhi, 2003, p. 55)Google Scholar. Railway Letters from Court of Directors, op. cit. p. 157.

25 Railway Letter and Enclosures from Bengal and India, railway letter dated 4 March 1862, NAI.

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27 Punjab Government, Report on the Administration of the Punjab and its Dependencies for the years 1862–1863, 1863, p. 52, BL.

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29 Punjab Government, Report on the Administration of the Punjab and its Dependencies for the years 1881–1882, 1882, p. 153, BL; Punjab Government, Report on the Administration of the Punjab, 1885, op. cit.

30 Punjab Provincial Gazetteer, Imperial Gazetteer of India, Provincial Series: Punjab, Vol. I, Superintendent of Government Printing, Calcutta, 1889, p. 195.

31 Punjab Government, Report on the Administration of the Punjab, 1885, op. cit.

32 Punjab Provincial Gazetteer, op. cit. p. 90 notes that the railways in the Punjab were classed as commercial and military. There is no mention of railway lines built and classified as famine lines in the Punjab even after 1880 when the Famine Commission pushed for famine lines all over India. The irrigation canals constructed in colonial Punjab were more important for famine prevention than railways.

33 Railway Letters from Court of Directors, 1854, pp. 7–8, NAI.

34 Sources: Punjab Government, Report on the Administration of the Punjab and its Dependencies for the years 1862–1863, 1863, BL; Punjab Government, Report on the Administration of the Punjab and its Dependencies for the years 1881–1882, 1882, BL; Punjab Government, Report on the Administration of the Punjab and its Dependencies for the years 1884–1885, 1885, BL; Great Britain Parliament House of Commons British Sessional Papers Minute by the Marquis of Dalhousie, February 1856, reviewing his administration in India from January 1848 to March 1856, 1856, [c. 245], vol. XLV, p. 107; Great Britain Parliament House of Commons, British Sessional Papers Report to Secretary of State for India in Council on Railways in India for the year 1863–1864, (hereafter PP), 1864, [c. 3354], vol. XLIII; PP 1867, [c. 3856], vol. L; PP 1867–1868, [c. 4035], vol. LI; PP 1868–1869, [c. 4190], vol. XLVII; PP 1870, [c. 163], LIII; PP 1871, [c. 418], vol. LI; PP 1872, [c. 643], vol. XLIV; PP 1873, [c. 838], vol. L; PP 1874, [c. 1070], XLIX; PP 1875, [c. 1369], LIV; PP 1876, [c. 1584], vol. LVI; PP 1877, [c. 1823], vol. LXIII; PP 1878, [c. 2179], vol. LVII; PP 1879–1880, [c. 2386], vol. LV; PP 1882, [c. 3328], vol. XLIX; PP 1883, [c. 3692], LII.

35 Railway Letters from Court of Directors, op. cit., p. 8.

36 PP 1866, [c.3696], vol. LII, pp. 4, 18.

37 PP, 1867, [c.3856], vol. L, p. 23.

38 Ibid.

39 Government of India, Public Works Department (Revenue-Forests) Proceedings, Proceeding number 36, May 1870, NAI.

40 Government of India, Public Works Department Proceedings, Proceeding number 26, 1866, NAI.

41 Government of India, Public Works Department Proceedings, Proceeding number 29, 1866, NAI.

42 It contained more sulphur than other types of coal used in steam engines and was liable to spontaneous combustion. Government of India, Public Works Department (Revenue-Forests) Proceedings, Proceeding number 2, June 1867, NAI.

43 Government of India, Public Works Department (Railways) Proceedings, May 1865, NAI.

44 For example, the three closest coalfields to Delhi were the Raneegunge fields in Bengal, the Singrowlee fields at Rewah, and the Mopani fields in the valley of the Nerbudda. They were at distances of 950, 550 and 700 miles respectively (Government of India, Public Works Department (Revenue-Forests) Proceedings, September 1866, NAI).

45 Several efforts were made by the railways and the state to lower the carriage rates of coal on the East Indian Railways in the early 1870s when increased dependence of the railways on firewood along with increased railway openings began to exhaust the woodlands of the Punjab and the North West Provinces but they were not successful (Government of India, Public Works Department Proceedings, Proceeding number 27, 1866, NAI).

46 Government of India, Public Works Department Proceedings, Proceeding number 19, 1866, NAI.

47 A surgeon in the Indian Medical Service and a botanical scientist.

48 Balfour, E. (ed.), The Cyclopaedia of India and of Eastern and Southern Asia, Commercial, Industrial and Scientific: Products of the mineral, animal and vegetable kingdoms, useful arts and manufactures, Madras, Lawrence and Adephi Presses, 1858, p. 200Google Scholar.

49 The forests in the Punjab were of two types, those of the hills and those of the plains (Punjab Provincial Gazetteer, op. cit., p. 72).

50 Ibid.

51 Balfour, op. cit.

52 Maund as a unit of weight in colonial India varied from province to province. On average 27 maunds of wood was equal to 1 British ton or 45 cubic feet of wood (Stebbing, E. P., The Forests of India, vol. I, John Lane, London, p. 284Google Scholar).

53 Government of India, Public Works Department (Revenue-Forests) Proceedings, Proceeding number 23, January 1865, NAI.

54 These were Amritsar, Googaira, Lahore and Multan districts which were surveyed by Dr Stewart for their firewood supply.

55 Government of India, Public Works Department Proceedings, Proceeding number 3, 1866, NAI.

56 Ibid.

57 Government of India, Public Works Department Proceedings, Proceeding number 26, 1866, NAI.

58 This was due to the high costs of imported coal and the lack of availability of suitable Indian coal.

59 Smith, Z., The Environmental Policy Paradox, Prentice-Hall Inc., New Jersey, 1992, p. 38Google Scholar.

60 Cleghorn, H. F., Address Delivered at the Twentieth Annual Meeting of the Scottish Arboricultural Society, Neill & Company, Edinburgh, 1873, p. 5Google Scholar.

61 Amery, C. F., ‘Report on the Forests of India’. Transactions of the Scottish Arboricultural Society, vol. VIII, 1876, p. 216Google Scholar; Mann, M., ‘Ecological Change in North India: Deforestation and Agrarian Distress in the Ganga-Yamuna Doab 1800–1850’, in Nature and the Orient: The Environmental History of South and Southeast Asia, Grove, R. H., Damodaran, V. and Sangwan, S. (eds), Oxford University Press, New Delhi, pp. 408–409Google Scholar.

62 Guha and Gadgil, op. cit., p. 147; Haeuber, R., ‘Indian Forestry Policy in two Eras: Continuity or Change?’ Environmental History Review, Spring, 1993, p. 53Google Scholar; Rangarajan, M., Fencing the Forest: Conservation and Ecological change in India's Central Provinces, 1860–1914, Oxford University Press, Delhi, 1996 p. 161Google Scholar; Sivaramakrishnan, K., ‘Colonialism and Forestry in India: Imagining the Past in Present Politics’, Comparative Studies in Society and History, Vol. 37, 1, 1995, p. 16CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

63 Government of India, Public Works Department Proceedings, Proceeding number 3, 1866, NAI.

64 Government of India, Public Works Department (Revenue-Forests) Proceedings, 1864, NAI.

65 Government of India, Public Works Department (Revenue-Forests) Proceedings, Proceeding number 38, May 1867, NAI.

66 Punjab Government, General Annual Report on the Administration of the Punjab and its Dependencies for the years 1868–1869, Lahore, 1869, p. 91, BL.

67 Government of India, Public Works Department (Revenue-Forests) Proceedings, 1866, NAI.

68 Government of India, Public Works Department Proceedings, Proceeding number 3, 1866, NAI.

69 None of the railway companies wanted to invest so large a sum for such a long time, especially on extensive fuel plantations. However, some small plantations were started, for instance, by the Delhi Railway Company in Ludhiana district in 1865 but they were unable to meet the growing fuel demands of the railways (Ibid.).

70 Government of India, Public Works Department Proceedings, Proceeding number 29, 1866, NAI; Government of India, Public Works Department(Revenue-Forests) Proceedings, March 1867, NAI.

71 Government of India, Public Works Department Proceedings, Proceeding number 25, 1866, NAI.

72 For example, the agent of the Punjab Railway estimated that plantations of 20,000 acres would require an expenditure of 1,350,000 rupees in the first ten years (Government of India, Public Works Department (Revenue-Forests) Proceedings, Proceeding number 54, May 1867, NAI.

73 See Miliband, R., Marxism and Politics, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1977Google Scholar; Alavi, H., Burns, P. L., Knight, G. R., Mayer, P. B. and MacEachern, D., Capitalism and Colonial Production, Croom Helm Limited, London, 1982Google Scholar.

74 With the opening of about 120 miles of railway lines each in 1868 and in 1869 by the Punjab and Delhi Railways, the total opened mileage in the Punjab was about 540 miles by the end of 1869, having doubled since 1865.

75 Punjab Government, General Annual Report on the Administration of the Punjab and its Dependencies for the years 1869–1870, Lahore, 1870, p. 84, BL.

76 The total mileage of opened lines had doubled, hence the annual firewood demand also doubled totalling 2,300,000 maunds. This is a conservative figure because the total number of trains on these opened lines is assumed to be constant at four trains per line.

77 Punjab Government, General Annual Report on the Administration of the Punjab and its Dependencies for the years 1869–1870, Lahore, 1870, p. 86, BL.

78 Government of India, Public Works Department (Revenue-Forests) Proceedings, Proceeding number 12, June 1870, Part B, NAI.

79 Government of India, Agriculture, Revenue and Commerce (Forests) Proceedings, January–June 1872 Appendix B, NAI.

80 Government of India, Public Works Department (Revenue-Forests) Proceedings, July 1869, NAI.

81 Government of India, Public Works Department (Revenue-Forests) Proceedings, Proceeding number 35, September 1870, NAI.

82 Government of India, Public Works Department (Revenue-Forests) Proceedings, Proceeding number 91, October 1870, NAI; Punjab Government, General Report on the Administration of the Punjab and its Dependencies for the years 1873–1874, Lahore, 1874, p. 61, BL.

83 Punjab Government, General Report on the Administration of the Punjab and its Dependencies for the years 1874–1875, Lahore, 1875, p. 64, BL.

84 Government of India, Agriculture, Revenue and Commerce (Forests) Proceedings, January–June 1872 Appendix A, NAI.

85 Government of India, Public Works Department (Revenue-Forests) Proceedings, June 1868, NAI.

86 Government of India, Agriculture, Revenue and Commerce (Forests) Proceedings, Proceeding number 7, June 1872 NAI.

87 Ibid.

88 Government of India, Agriculture, Revenue and Commerce (Forests) Proceedings, Proceeding number 11, May 1874, NAI.

89 Punjab Government, General Report on the Administration of the Punjab and its Dependencies for the years 1879–1880, Lahore, 1880, p. 123, BL; Punjab Government, General Report on the Administration of the Punjab and its Dependencies for the years 1877–1878, Lahore, 1878, p. 109.

90 Government of India, Forest Administration Report 1878–1879, 1879, p. 20, NAI.

91 Government of India, Agriculture, Revenue and Commerce (Forests) Proceedings, Proceeding number 12, June 1878, NAI.

92 Government of India, Home, Revenue and Agriculture (Forests) Proceedings, Proceeding number 4, November–December 1881, NAI.

93 Government of India, Home, Revenue and Agriculture (Forests) Proceedings, Proceeding number 31, September 1879, NAI; italics added.

94 In semi-arid and arid ecosystems trees such as Prosopis spicigera known as jhand or khejri are sand binders and act as a wind-break. Prosopis also plays an important role in the centuries old agrosystem where it is believed by the local farmers to improve soil fertility for growing crops such as millet (Le Houérou, ‘Prosopis cineraria (L.) Druce’, in Food and Agriculture Organization, <http://www.fao.org/ag/AGP/AGPC/doc/Gbase/DATA/PF000371.HTM>, [accessed 14 September 2012]). Overall the trees of the rukhs played an important role in preserving the arid and semi-arid ecosystems preventing desertification.

95 Government of India, Home, Revenue and Agriculture (Forests) Proceedings, Proceeding number 5, November 1879, NAI.

96 This paper does not focus on the social impact of deforestation as a result of railway fuel demand. This will be the focus of a future paper.

97 For example, in 1870, 516 miles of railway lines were opened and in 1874, 529 miles were opened. In 1878, 899 miles of railway lines were opened.

98 PP 1871[c. 418], vol. LI, p. 319; PP 1878 [c. 2179], vol. LVII, p. 638.

99 The Madras Railways was an exception as it found the use of imported English patent fuel cheaper than Indian coal when the firewood supply in the Madras Presidency diminished (PP 1880 [c. 2386], vol. LV, p. 576). PP 1883 [c. 3692], vol. LII, p. 1, 85.

100 Punjab Government, General Report on the Administration of the Punjab and its Dependencies for the years 1874–1875, Lahore, 1875, p. 77, BL.

101 Government of India, Home, Revenue and Agriculture (Forests) Proceedings, Proceeding number 5, November 1879, NAI.

102 PP 1881 [c. 2999], vol. LXVIII, p. 303; italics added.

103 Government of India, Home, Revenue and Agriculture (Forests) Proceedings, Proceeding number 6, July 1881, NAI.

104 Government of India, Home, Revenue and Agriculture (Forests) Proceedings, Proceeding number 9, July 1881, NAI.

105 Government of India, Home, Revenue and Agriculture (Forests) Proceedings, 17 September 1881, NAI.

106 PP 1880 [c. 2683], vol. LII; PP 1883 [c. 3692], vol. LII; Government of India, Home, Revenue and Agriculture (Forests) Proceedings, Proceeding number 5, November 1879, NAI.

107 Government of India. Forest Administration Report 1878–1879, p. 20.

108 Government of India, Home, Revenue and Agriculture (Forests) Proceedings, January–August 1880, NAI.

109 This was one of the peak periods of opening railways in the Punjab when the Indus Valley Railway opened 499 miles of railways. Similarly 1880 and 1881 were also peak railway opening years when the Punjab Northern Railway opened 124 miles and the Indus Valley Railway opened 151 miles respectively.

110 PP 1881 [c. 2999], vol. LXVIII; PP 1883 [c. 3692], vol. LII.

111 Government of India, Home, Revenue and Agriculture (Forests) Proceedings, Proceeding number 5, November 1879, NAI.

112 Government of India, Home, Revenue and Agriculture (Forests) Proceedings, 17 September 1881, NAI.

113 R. Guha, 1983, op. cit.

114 The impact of forest ‘conservation’ on the forest communities has been studied by Guha and Gadgil (1989, op. cit.).