Book Review: Green and Saffron: Hindu Nationalism and Indian Environmental Politics
| Published date | 01 December 2013 |
| Date | 01 December 2013 |
| DOI | 10.1177/2321023013509161 |
| Subject Matter | Book Reviews |
252 Book Reviews
Studies in Indian Politics, 1, 2 (2013): 241–257
who join. However, Chitralekha would probably argue that motives underlying actions of perpetrators of
mass violence are much more complex and ambiguous than the parsimonious idea of selective incentives
and rational, strategic actors would allow (p. 21). This complexity is the major strength of this book,
rather than its weakness. Together these two books add multiple layers of richness and detail to our
understanding of political violence in South Asia.
Rumela Sen
Doctoral Candidate, Department of Government
Cornell University
E-mail: rs723@cornell.edu
Mukul Sharma, Green and Saffron: Hindu Nationalism and Indian Environmental Politics. Ranikhet: Permanent
Black. 2012. 318 pages. ` 795.
DOI: 10.1177/2321023013509161
Studies on contemporary trends in political theory note the discipline-altering challenge posed by envi-
ronmentalism. Ideas of nature are now seen as intrinsic to conceptions of good life and preferences
regarding social, political and economic arrangements. The impossibility of any automatic relation of
compatibility or incompatibility between ecology, on the one hand, and political ideologies and key
concepts (democracy or justice), on the other, testify to the contested nature of all three. This calls for
contextualized examination of the ways in which the ecological question is posed and answered. Mukul
Sharma’s impressive new book is a contribution in this direction.
Scholarship on environmental movements in India has drawn attention to the ‘new traditionalism’ in
the discourse’s critique of colonial modernity and the postcolonial paradigm of development-as-
modernization and its espousal of pre-colonial Indian values, resource use and social arrangements as
eminently sustainable. Green and Saffron probes further into this traditionalism and argues that such a
construction constitutes a shared terrain between environmentalism and Hindu nationalism. Right-wing
ecology, Sharma argues, uses the conceptual framework of purity and pollution to link sacred nature,
unique unchangeable culture and the supremacy of the nation. Indian environmentalist discourse partakes
of the key elements of this Hindu ecology-glorification of the Hindu past and Brahmanical traditions;
emphasis on ‘Indian’ values of unity, order, discipline; authoritarian leadership; nationalism; hostility to
the outsider—West, Muslims, Christians and Dalits—as the cause for all crisis. Ecological conservation
thus reinforces the stratifications in society in terms of caste, religion and gender. While a large number of
environmental initiatives consciously or unconsciously adhere to a Hindu nationalist worldview (the saf-
fronizing of green), the Hindu Right has come to perceive ecology as a core part of its ideological vision
and organizations affiliated to it have actively entered ecological domains (the greening of saffron).
This twin process is explicated through three case studies which constitute the heart of the book.
These are the Anna Hazare-led non-party constructive work aimed at village regeneration in Ralegan
Siddhi; the anti-big dam movement in Tehri in Uttarakhand, and the role of its leader Sunderlal Bahugana;
and the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) sponsored conservation project in Vrindavan, a region
famous for its association with the Hindu god Krishna. While the marketing of the book seeks to cash on
the interest on Hazare triggered by his entry into the national scene, the book does an admirable job
of examining all three in detail by taking into account their regional histories, geography, institutional
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