Presentation short abstract

India’s political forests have been shaped historically by shifts in ideology, territoriality for extraction and conservation, and regimes of possession. The hitherto stable hegemonic regime of fortress conservation is being disrupted today by unruly natures and emerging discourses of coexistence.

Presentation long abstract

Conservation regimes that seek to protect charismatic species in pristine ecosystems mask an inescapable truth: strictly protected areas are socionatures actively produced through deception, discourse and physical manipulation of biota. Theorising India’s protected areas as terra natura, this paper demonstrates the interplay of ideology, territoriality, and regimes of possession in producing such landscapes. We critically analyse the history of forest management, law, conservation policy, and elite mobilisations vis-à-vis charismatic species to discern five phases and two ambitions of territoriality in India. In each phase, the knowledges and practices of forest communities came into conflict with the state’s imagination and uses of political forests. However, the violence, dispossession and social justice outcomes varied in each phase with shifts in ideology, ambitions of territoriality (extraction and/or conservation) and regimes of property and possession. We focus especially on the most recent phases (1972-2006 and 2006-2025) when (a) terra natura is produced through discursive and material practices that spectacularise, invisibilise and sanitise; (b) the ideology of fortress conservation achieves hegemonic status through narratives of crisis, extinction, and nationalism; and (c) counter-hegemonic challenges of forest dwellers’ resistance and safeguard legislations are thwarted in practice. We contend that the contemporary moment is an inflection point, where the hegemony of fortress conservation is being disrupted materially by unruly natures, and discursively by non-state conservation actors advocating coexistence of humans with non-human and more-than-human nature.