Critical Insights on Colonial Modes of Seeing Cattle in India (1850-1980)

This book traces the contours of the symbiotic relationship between crop cultivation and cattle rearing in India by reading against the grain of several official accounts from the late colonial period to the 1980s. It also skillfully unpacks the multiple cultural expressions that revolve around cattle in India and the wider subcontinent to show how this domestic animal has greatly impacted political discourses in South Asia from colonial times, into the postcolonial period. The author begins by demonstrating the dependence between the nomadic cattle breeder and the settled cultivator, at the nexus of land-livestock-agriculture, as indicated in the writings of Sir Albert Howard, who espoused some of the most sophisticated ideas on integration, holism, and mixed farming in an era when agricultural research was marked by increasing specialisation and compartmentalisation. The book springboards with the views of colonial experts who worked at imperial science institutions but passionately voiced dissenting opinions due to their emotional investment in the lives of Indian peasants, of whom Howard was a leading light. The book presents Howard and his contemporaries' writings to then engage contemporary debates surrounding organic agriculture and climate change, tracing the path out of the treadmill of industrial agriculture and factory farming. In doing so, the book shows how, historically, animal rearing has been critically linked to livelihood strategies in the Indian subcontinent. At once a dispassionate reflection on the role played by cattle and water buffaloes in not just supporting farm operations in the agro-pastoral landscape, but also in contributing to millions of livelihoods in sustainable ways while fulfilling the animal protein in the Indian diet, the book presents contemporary lessons on development perspectives relating to sustainable and holistic agriculture. A rich and sweeping treatment of this aspect of environmental history in India that tackles the transformations prompted by the arrival of veterinary medicine, veterinary education and notions of scientific livestock management, the book is a rare read for historians, environmentalists, agriculturalists, development practitioners, and animal studies scholars with a particular interest in South Asia.

Dr Himanshu Upadhyaya teaches Development Studies at Azim Premji University, Bangalore, India. With a deep interest in environmental history, he completed his doctoral research on the late colonial policies on Livestock and Agricultural Development in Western India, on which this book is based. His research papers have been published in academic journals such as Economic and Political Weekly, Journal of Land and Rural Studies, and International Development Practice. His research papers have also appeared in edited volumes, focused on Agrarian History of Colonial India (Tilling the Land edited by Deepak Kumar and Bipasha Raha, Routledge), Development Studies (Intractable Conflicts in India (edited by Savyasachi, Routledge). He holds a MA in English Literature from North Gujarat University, Patan, Gujarat, India, and a MA in Linguistics from Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, India. He also wrote a research dissertation on the Syntax of Negation in two varieties of Gujarati Language for his M.Phil. degree in Applied Linguistics at the University of Hyderabad, India. Outside of his academic work, he was actively involved with several environmental justice movements from 2000-2010, such as Narmada Bachao Andolan (Save the River Narmada Movement) and communities fighting displacement due to large mining projects and large dams. He has spent time working with several civil society and academic organisations such as the South Asia Network on Dams, Rivers and People; Hydro Monitor India at Delhi Forum; Intercultural Resources (with prominent Post-Development scholar Smitu Kothari); the Tata Institute of Social Sciences (where he authored a research study titled Performance and Development Effectiveness of Sardar Sarovar Dam Project in 2008) and Environics Trust, New Delhi. A collection of his popular articles on the Narmada Dam were published in 2010 under the title 'Big Dam, Bigger Questions' by the Delhi Forum. He was also part of an oral history project culminating in the publication of testimonies by environmental activists titled 'Plural Narratives from the Narmada Valley (2010).

1. Introduction.- 2. Revisiting 'Surplus Cattle' and 'Sacred Cattle' Discourse: Why a History of Cattle in India needs to move beyond this framing?.- 3. Famines, Cattle Diseases and Cattle Mortalities: History of Civil Veterinary Departments in India.- 4. Breeding Bovine Animals for Better Productivity: High Modernist Mission.- 5. Writing the Pre-History of Amul: Emergence of Milk Markets and Dairy Cooperatives in Late Colonial India.- 6. Discourse on Dairy Development, Scientific Instruction and Emergence of Technocracy.- 7. Chasing Productivity Dreams: Intensification in Crop and Cattle Development in Post-Colonial India.- 8. Replicating Anand Pattern Milk Cooperatives: Studying the Operation Flood.- 9. After the Operation Flood: Studying Transformations in Bovine Holding Patterns.- 10. Conclusion.- 11. Endnotes.