MADHAVAIAH KRISHNAN AN ECOLOGICAL PATRIOT

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http://www.hinduonnet.com/mag/2003/07/20/stories/2003072000130300.htm

*Ecological patriot *

 

RAMACHANDRA GUHA

 

 

 

*Wildlife... a subject for M. Krishnan's " Super-Ponderosa " camera... *

 

MY wife and I were recently discussing people we admired. High on her list

was the artist and writer Manjula Padmanabhan. She had just seen Manjula's

evocative graphic " Let it Grow " : and had previously read and liked her play

" Harvest " , her illustrated children's story *City Market*, and her very

adult short story collection, *Hot Death, Cold Soup*. High on my list,

indeed on top of it, was M. Krishnan (1912-96), likewise an artist and

writer of varied gifts, originality of expression, and singularity of

purpose.

 

Krishnan was, among other things, an accomplished writer in Tamil. He grew

up in Mylapore, as the youngest son of the celebrated novelist and social

reformer A. Madhaviah. Krishnan's own last work was a detective novel in his

mother tongue. A posthumous collection of his Tamil essays, edited by the

scholar and naturalist, Theodore Baskaran, has recently been published by

Kalachuvadu Pathippagam under the title *Mazhaikkalamum Kuyilosaiyum*.

 

Krishnan was also a pioneering wildlife photographer. The camera he used was

called (by himself and his acolytes) " Super-Ponderosa. " It was put together

from pieces garnered from here and there; a lens from East Germany, a cap

and shutter from Malaysia, nuts and bolts from Burma Bazaar, the lot held

together by some neighbourhood string. But it, and he, took staggeringly

good pictures. Some are represented in a 1985 collection called *Nights and

Days *(published by Vikas); others, better still, will soon appear in a book

put together by Ashish and Shanti Chandola and T.N.A. Perumal.

 

Then again, Krishnan was a marvellous prose stylist in his adopted language,

English. Growing up, I spent many enjoyable hours in his company, reading

his fortnightly " Country Notebook " column in *The Statesman*. Much later, I

had the privilege of making a selection from essays he had published over 50

years. The standard of the writing was so consistently good, and the

subjects treated so compellingly relevant, that the choice of what to leave

out became almost more difficult than what to include. I finally winnowed

1,500 pieces down to 68, these published by Oxford University Press in 2000

under the title, *Nature's Spokesman: M. Krishnan and Indian Wildlife*.

 

Lastly, Krishnan was a precocious environmentalist and conversationist. He

knew and practised " environmental education " before that term had been

coined or subject had been born. Consider thus his essay " Nature Study " ,

printed in *The Hindu *on May 18, 1947. " The school approach to nature

study, " wrote this former school-teacher, " is fundamentally unsound. It is

based on the theory that one must proceed from elementary, understandable

things. There is simplification and selection, and logical, reasoned steps

guide the approach. But the fact is that nature is not simple, logical and

reasoned — thank God that it is not. There is no need to fully understand

anything in all its structure and complexity to be alive to its charm...

What makes living things fascinating is their behaviour " , not their anatomy.

Children in primary schools should get to know the common wild plants and

birds of the locality; birds because they are so easily watched. They should

learn, a little later perhaps, the stories of the domestic animals. They

should be taken out to see nature for themselves, and be given pleasant

books, with gay, colourful illustrations... Children love them, and will

readily interest themselves in any text if it is free from morals and

illustrated in colour. "

 

 

 

*... and Mazhaikkalamum Kuyilosaiyum ... his collection of essays. *

 

Krishnan continues that " it is in high schools, however, that nature study

can be made really interesting and worthwhile. Occupation and instruction,

without dullness, can be provided by giving the students a plot of ground

for growing things in — not a bed for the bean seed only, but a miniature

market garden. I am convinced that if the school could go to the trouble,

and trifling expense, of maintaining a poultry-run, a goat-pen (not too near

the miniature garden), a pigeon-loft ... (and) a middle-sized School Dog,

the scholars would acquire virtues and knowledge that a whole board of

teachers cannot help them to get. ®egular nature study outings,

supplemented with lessons in field identification and methods of

observation, will help them to develop a keen, live interest in nature " .

 

Krishnan was an ecological patriot, who believed that the essence of

Indian-ness lay in the species and habitats distinctive to the land. When,

in the first flush of Independence, the nation was restless to build — to

build dams, steel mills, atomic plants and the like — Krishnan warned (in an

essay published in *The Hindu* in December 1958) that " we are a very ancient

nation too, and there are vital matters in which we need to be conservative

rather than constructive " . He complained that " particularly we are given to

the introduction of exotic plants in our desire to beautify the countryside

and make up by plantation for the annihilation of jungle and woodland that

we have been responsible for during the past 50 years ... No country in the

world has a flora so rich in exotics as India " . He recommended that we

cultivate " a narrow sort of patriotism in our floral preferences " . In other

words, to be truly Indian, one must plant (and protect) Indian.

 

All his life, Krishnan underlined the connections between conservation and

nation-hood. An essay of 1974, printed in the *Times of India Annual*, put

it this way: " If we are wise, we can save India and her magnificent heritage

of nature for the generations of Indians to come, and safeguard the physical

and organic integrity of our country, threatened today — we can give them a

country to be truly proud of. Will we? " Twenty-two years later, in a column

published in *The Statesman *on the day he died, Krishnan suggested that the

snag " seems to lie in our Constitution, evolved by men with formidable

knowledge of legal and political matters and hardly any of the unique biotic

richness of India — they do not even seem to have realised that the identity

of a country depended not so much on its mutable human culture as on its

geomorphology, flora and fauna, its *natural* basis " .

 

In India, as elsewhere, wildlife conservation has chiefly operated by

punitive methods: by the preservation, through policing, of wilderness areas

from " the intended and unintended consequences of human actions " . But, as

Krishnan suggested in an essay of 1955, one must look forward to the day

when wildlife would be kept safe not from, but *by *humans. " No man truly

interested in a country's fauna, " he wrote, " will deny that the ideal is

where there are no parks or preserves, but where the beasts and birds are

ceded territory and unmolested by virtue of a highly informed national

consciousness. "

 

Speaking strictly in career terms, Krishnan was conspicuously unlucky in the

timing of his birth. For, in his day, there were no serious publishing

houses active in India. If Krishnan were alive now, publishers small and

large, *desi *and foreign, would be beating a path to his door, offering

seductive advances to allow him to take an extended breather from the world

of freelance journalism, thus to give them books based on his photographs,

his essays, and his crusading environmentalism. I have the honour of

belonging to a most gifted generation of Indian writers, but I will say

this: in terms of talent and originality M. Krishnan comfortably exceeded us

all.

 

*Ramachandra Guha is a historian and writer based in Bangalore. *