National parks, wildlife sanctuaries and the compatibility of human rights with environmentalist and non-anthropocentric ideas
Last week I met up with my friend Iqbal in Delhi and we had a brief but engaging conversation about the confluence of protected natural areas and human rights. It started when I said I was going to visit the Jim Corbett National Park and Iqbal replied that he always refused to visit such places as they were constituted on Adivasi (an umbrella term which defines the native tribes of India and other South Asian countries) lands with no regard to their rights. The conversation that ensued revealed an interesting difference in our approach: Iqbal’s was fundamentally a human rights one and mine an environmentalist and non-anthropocentric. I realise that my perspective could be viewed as an elitist stance ignoring the reality of the most disadvantaged members of the society but I would like to argue that these perspectives do not need to be on a collision course with one cancelling the other out. Since early childhood I have heard so many stories about India’s nature and wildlife from my fat...