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Podcast: New Books in South Asian Studies
Episode: Ramachandra Guha, "Speaking with Nature: The Origins of Indian Environmentalism" (Yale UP, 2024)
Description: From one of the worldâs leading historians comes the first substantial study of environmentalism set in any country outside the Euro-American world.By the canons of orthodox social science, countries like India are not supposed to have an environmental consciousness. They are, as it were, âtoo poor to be green.â In Speaking with Nature: The Origins of Indian Environmentalism (Yale UP, 2024), Ramachandra Guha challenges this narrative by revealing a virtually unknown prehistory of the global movement set far outside Europe or America. Long before the publication of Rachel Carsonâs Silent Spring and well before climate change, te...