From The Marginlands
From The Marginlands
Podcast Description
In From The Marginlands, we -- Prem Panicker and Arati Kumar Rao-- explore storytelling and making sense of the elemental connections between us and the world around us. We converse with carefully curated guests on the art of telling stories about the environment and on climate change as it manifests around the world.
Podcast Insights
Content Themes
The podcast centers around themes of storytelling, environmental awareness, and the impacts of climate change, with episodes covering a range of topics such as the effects of pollution on water bodies like the Yamuna, the ecological studies involving fishing cats, and the exploration of narratives through the works of acclaimed journalists like Paul Salopek. Each episode delves into personal and collective stories that connect listeners to pressing global environmental challenges.
From The Marginlands with Prem and Arati takes unabashed deep-dives into uncomfortable environmental issues. We converse with carefully curated guests on the art of telling stories about the environment and on climate change as it manifests around the world.
A young person once asked: why care about nature when people are dying in Gaza? Environmental historian Mahesh Rangarajan gives the long answer — why the choice between people and the planet was always false.
In previous episodes of this podcast, our guests have talked to us about particular rivers, forests, seasons, environmental fissures. This time, we take the whole arc. Environmental historian Mahesh Rangarajan joins Arati Kumar-Rao and Prem Panicker for a conversation that runs from forest kingdoms that trained elephants for war, to the steam engine that made England the workshop of the world, to a tube well draining the water table under a field in Rajasthan tonight.
History, he argues, isn't a museum. It's a diagnostic tool — a way of understanding how we got here, and of telling the difference between what we meant to do and what we actually did. War is about resources: land, water, plants. So is peace. There was never a wall between caring about people and caring about the earth.
A conversation about the long quarrel between human beings and the rest of life on earth, and what the long view asks of us now:
GUEST BIO:
Mahesh Rangarajan is professor of history and environmental studies, and chair of the HDFC Archives of Contemporary India, at Ashoka University. Previously, he has taught at Cornell University, University of Delhi, Krea University and the National Centre for Biological Sciences (Bangalore). His notable works include Fencing The Forest and Nature and Nation. Along with Arupjyoti Saikia, he is co-editor of the recently released book, India's Forests. He has previous edited The Oxford Anthology of Indian Wildlife and Environmental Issues in India. Other notable co-edited works include Shifting Ground and At Nature's Edge.
VIDEO TALKS:
On archiving India's environmental history: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3rO77i6E040
India's environmental pasts: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t8wcFu7QfLo
Why history matters: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=28K8Y2khCQM
What history teaches us about climate and ecological crisis: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=usHnYRFLVSo
On archiving India's environmental history: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3rO77i6E040
Revisiting the Anthropocene: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HFypZm52YBQ&t=7s
History, activism and the Anthropocene: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5V4tig2pARk&t=1s
Science, society and publics in 21st century India: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=64jnPT4mvBk
Nature's pasts, nature's futures: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X6emo9KuAww
How the tiger became Indian (and why): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KldDax2ZNlw
Are India's forest tribes still left out of policy?: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bQs4Hii3Lwo
WRITINGS AND INTERVIEWS:
An extended The Hindu interview on being recognized by the American Historical Association: https://www.thehindu.com/education/an-interview-with-historian-dr-mahesh-rangarajan/article38185315.ece
Mahesh Rangarajan on the colonial branding of wildlife as ”dangerous beasts”, and its consequences: https://www.scribd.com/document/878819385/Indias-Environmental-History-A-Reader-Mahesh-Rangarajan-Z-Library-1
An EPW piece on the debate on man-animal conflict in India: https://www.jstor.org/stable/4404560
Mahesh Rangarajan on why mining in the Aravallis is driven not by strategic minerals, but by construction: https://indianexpress.com/article/cities/pune/aravalli-mining-not-driven-by-strategic-mineral-but-construction-demand-says-prof-mahesh-rangarajan-10446237/
Mahesh Rangarajan interview in The Hindu on the need for a working relationship between man and elephant: https://www.thehindu.com/features/metroplus/THE-SATURDAY-INTERVIEW-mdash-Jumbo-concern/article14684450.ece
Mahesh Rangarajan on why India's biodiversity, surviving despite depradations, is a gift: https://www.outlookindia.com/society/green-rainbow-news-261339
Wide-ranging interview in Business Standard: https://www.business-standard.com/article/opinion/lunch-with-bs-mahesh-rangarajan-115103000710_1.html
The Hindu on Mahesh Rangarajan's resignation as director of the Nehru Memorial Museum: https://www.thehindu.com/opinion/op-ed/NMMLs-Mahesh-Rangarajan-resignation-Mistaking-a-scholar-for-a-bureaucrat/article62119874.ece
ADDITIONAL READING:
Dr BR Ambedkar's November 1949 speech: https://bodhisattva.org.in/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/Last-speech-of-Dr-B-R-Ambedkar-given-25-Nov-1949-English.pdf
Harish Damodaran piece on the importance of millet cultivation: https://indianexpress.com/article/explained/explained-economics/why-iran-war-monsoon-worries-could-make-2026-indias-year-of-millets-10694671/
Norman Borlaug's 1970 Nobel Prize acceptance speech: https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/peace/1970/borlaug/acceptance-speech/
Contact us:
Email the Podcast
Arati Kumar-Rao on Instagram
Prem Panicker on X (Twitter)
Prem on Substack
From The Marginlands on Instagram
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