Phule's ecology: Cultivating anti-caste natures

This article synthesizes anti-caste critiques of hierarchical natures, drawing on lineages of thought that emerged in nineteenth-century India in the doubly-colonial context of British imperialism and Brahmanism. It focuses on the figure of Jotirao Phule, one of the originators of the modern anti-caste movement. While Phule's immediate audience was in western India, the spatial and temporal scope of his arguments are much more ambitious, laying the grounds for cultivating (in multiple senses of the word) a truly egalitarian social order. The article argues that Phule articulates a complex critique of colonial political economy and ecology, which resonates with Marxist critiques of imperial forestry, agriculture and trade policies. Yet Phule's critique is distinctive in its attention to the predominantly Brahman functionaries who filled the lower rungs of officialdom in the western regions of British India. For Phule, colonial natures were always doubled, and any movement for egalitarian natures had to contend with the complex intertwining of systems of domination. The article explores the relative neglect of caste in political ecology and the potential relevance of Phule for political ecology. It does so in part through a “relational” comparison of Marxist and Phuleite perspectives on (anti)colonial and (anti)capitalist natures, presenting Phule and Marx as situated thinkers and ever-evolving theorists of both their own “local” politics and a newly-emerging international order led by the forces of industrial capitalism and colonialism. For Phule, the doubling of colonialism included not only the intertwining of British and Brahman rule, but the interplay of material and ideological expressions of power. One aspect of the latter was an approach to nature that served to mystify actual, grounded knowledge of human-nonhuman relations. Phule's demystifying emphasis on cultivation has continuing relevance for present-day political ecologies, both in India and globally.