The Original Environmentalists

Ramachandra Guha ties his protagonists by a common thread of human-nature relationships and their writings

- AMITABHA BHATTACHARYA

While reading this book, I was frequently interrupted by old memories and associations. I remember having written in Bangla for my school magazine how nature was integral to Tagore's poetry, how during my district training at Srikakulam I had spent a month in a tribal area named 'Elwinpeta', and how I had grown up reading columns of M Krishnan in The Statesman. I knew about Radhakamal Mukherjee as an important academic from Lucknow, of Patrick Geddes as the biographer of his scientist-friend Jagadish Chandra Bose, about K.M. Munshi as a noted author who founded the Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan, and of J.C. Kumarappa and Madeleine/Mirabehn as Gandhiji's devoted associates. I hardly knew anything about the remarkable couple Albert and Gabrielle Howard, except by name.

Ramachandra Guha's genius lies in discovering the common thread that tied the ten characters, with different levels of renown, in a manner that is both exhaustive and absorbing. Mixing description with analysis, and covering around a century—from Rabindranath to Krishnan—Guha unites them in that "they all addressed human-nature relationships, and they did so in writing".

Admittedly, Guha's books that select individuals and their contribution to public causes—whether in shaping modern India or through writing and acting on ecological issues—have sometimes been criticised by casual readers for having left out personalities of their choice. Many such critiques emanate from an inadequate understanding of the historical context in which Guha posits such men and women.