‘India’s Forests, Real and Imagined’: Forests as literary-political figures across three millennia
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India’s Forests, Real and Imagined: Writing the Modern Nation by Alan Johnson is an ambitious work of literary ecocriticism that attempts to trace the figure of the forest across approximately three millennia of Indian literary history. It looks at the ancient Sanskrit epics and Tamil Sangam poetry, proceeds to colonial-era nationalism and progressive realism, and then to contemporary postcolonial fiction and Indigenous writing.
Ecological realities and fictitious constructs
The book has been published by Bloomsbury Academic as part of a series in environmental humanities and literary studies and is the result of years of research supported by a Fulbright-Nehru award alongside extensive institutional backing from Idaho State University. It is undeniable that the book has had an incredible journey fuelled by evident passion and considerable scholarly range, but there are tensions in a humongous project that aims to accomplish so much within a relatively compact frame.
The introduction of the book invites its readers on an aerial survey of the Indian subcontinent as it might have looked, around 3000 years ago. Johnson moves south from Himalayan Oak Valleys to the forests bearing sal, sandalwood, teak, and neem. The legendary Naimisha forest from Sanskrit literature, the Dandakaranya in Valmiki’s Ramayana, the Western Ghats and the mullai forest...