Environmental Issues in India

8

MAHATMA GANDHI AND THE ENVIRONMENTAL MOVEMENT

Ramachandra Guha

There is a great tradition of critical enquiry and social reform associated with Pune, a tradition possibly unmatched by any other Indian city. Although I am revisiting Pune after more than a decade, in the intervening period my life has been touched at every point by this tradition. My closest intellectual relationship over the last 10 years has been with Madhav Gadgil, an ecologist with a civic conscience to match his wide learning. Madhav, who delivered the inaugural Parisar lecture in 1982, is himself the son of a remarkable figure of the Indian Renaissance, D.R. Gadgil, who lived most of his life in this city. Among the Pune intellectuals of the elder Gadgil's generation ...