Life in the Himalaya: An Ecosystem at Risk 9780674978621

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L I F E I N T H E HIMALAYA

Life in the Himalaya An Ecosystem at Risk M A H A R A J K . PAN DIT

Cambridge, Massachusetts London, England 2017

Copyright © 2017 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America First printing Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Pandit, Maharaj K., 1958– author. Title: Life in the Himalaya : an ecosystem at risk / Maharaj K. Pandit. Description: Cambridge, Massachusetts : Harvard University Press, 2017. | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2016046667 | ISBN 9780674971745 (hard cover : alk. paper) Subjects: LCSH: Nature—Effect of human beings on—Himalaya Mountains Region. | Sustainability—Himalaya Mountains Region. | Ecosystem Management—Himalaya Mountains Region. | Himalaya Mountains Region—Environmental conditions. Classification: LCC QH193.H5 P36 2017 | DDC 333.72095496—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016046667

To the memory of my mother and father, who brought me into this world, and to Barhi and Bobo, who raised me, and to Rachna’s and my children, Janhvi and Neil

Contents

Foreword

ix

Introduction Prologue: Past as Precursor of Future

1 15

I. NATU RAL PHASE 1. 2. 3. 4.

The Himalayan Memoir Tectonic Serendipity Intercontinental Biological Highway Life in Flux

41 58 76 97

II. CULTURAL PHASE 5. The First Axe 6. The Chipko Saga

123 141

III. MECHANICAL PHASE 7. The First Train to Lhasa 8. Dam Rivers, Damn Rivers 9. Payback Time

163 189 213

viii

Contents

IV. NETWORKING PHASE 10. Toward Sustainability 11. Individuals, Institutions, and Ideals References Acknowl edgments Index

261 285 303 351 355

Foreword

Perhaps no place on Earth will be more important to the sustainability of humanity’s future than the Himalaya. This vast mountain range is the source of the eight largest rivers of Asia, holds our planet’s largest volume of ice after the two poles, and is home to hundreds of thousands of unique species of plants and animals found nowhere else, as well as hundreds of unique cultures, ethnicities, and languages. The Himalaya directly sustains the lives of at least a quarter of humanity. However, this Abode of Gods—a spectacular and mysterious land holding many treasures known and yet unknown—is under assault. Population growth, increased consumption, and land-use changes are destroying thousands of beautiful and unique species of plants and animals at an ever-increasing rate. Massive dam building—more than 1,250 dams are to be built during the next two decades across the Himalaya and Tibet—has already scarred the unforgettably beautiful face of the mountains, turning free-flowing rivers into still ponds, muddying the blue and emerald waters, and disrupting riparian ecosystems. Meanwhile, the burning of vast quantities of fossil and biomass fuels is depositing layers of black soot on the snow-white mountains, thus accelerating the melting of ice and snow. A changing climate is already attacking glaciers, altering river hydrology, and causing massive disruptions in people’s lives and landscapes. Every year, combined natural and anthropogenic disasters in these seismically active young mountains bring untold suffering to tens of thousands of people. Our last Shangri-La is indeed in peril. In Life in the Himalaya, Maharaj Pandit takes us on a personal journey through deep history, both geological and contemporary. He brings to life

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Foreword

the story of this greatest mountain range, its people and cultures, its biological diversity, and its great rivers, recounting the massive changes currently under way, and concluding with suggestions for how to forge a sustainable future both for the people and for the spectacular landscapes they inhabit. Maharaj Pandit’s own journey—his “tryst with the mountains”—began when he was still an undergraduate in the 1980s and continues today. In an engaging style he recounts his personal quest to understand the origin and diversification of life in the region and the ways that this life has been shaped by millions of years of tectonic movements. He sheds light on contemporary changes through the unique insights he has accumulated over more than a quarter century in the region. This book stands out among other recent volumes on the Himalaya. Maharaj Pandit weaves an extraordinarily rich tapestry, integrating biology with geology, providing historical accounts of the movements of people, plants, and animals, and examining the present in the context of the past. The blend is remarkable—unrivaled, unique. Of particular interest is the state of the mountains today. Human life is never easy at high elevations, with the sometimes brutal conditions imposed by short growing seasons and often poor soils coupled with unpredictable weather patterns that make it difficult to scratch out a living in many places. Over the past two centuries, the population of the mountains themselves has increased from 1 million to 75 million, and it is still growing rapidly. Apart from the increasing population pressures building in remote valleys and on the slopes of high mountains, massive changes are being caused by tourism, hydro projects, and the expansion of road networks, sometimes driven by the defense establishments of India and China. Climate change is certain to multiply the adverse effects of these transformations and make life ever more difficult in the decades ahead. In the face of all these difficulties and challenges, however, Maharaj Pandit outlines in his concluding chapter how a network of individuals and institutions can foster sustainability. We hope that this fine book will help to draw global attention to a region that is of fundamental importance to the well-being of a large part of humanity and for the maintenance of international peace as well. Kamal Bawa Distinguished Professor University of Massachusetts, Boston, Massachusetts President, Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and the Environment, Bangalore

Peter Raven Emeritus President Missouri Botanical Gardens, St. Louis, Missouri

L I F E I N T H E HIMALAYA

Introduction

A

lthough the natu ral world of the Himalaya has been the topic of scholarly pursuit since the second century or even earlier, the subject of the Himalayan environment per se has received greater attention only since the 1970s. There is no dearth of literature describing the beauty and grandeur of the Himalaya, often in the form of travelers’ accounts or the colorful coffee-table works, which serve as important sources of general awareness among readers. The best among the travel accounts, I reckon, is The Snow Leopard (1978) by Peter Matthiessen, which more than presenting the story of George Schaller’s search for the elusive cat, is a poignant chronicle of the spiritual journey conveyed so subtly by the author. The more recent book that deserves addition to this genre is Stephen Alter’s Becoming a Mountain: Himalayan Journeys in Search of the Sacred and the Sublime (2014), for which the title says it all. Colonel Francis Younghusband’s The Heart of a Continent (1904) and Wonders of the Himalaya (1924) provide valuable accounts of the geography, natural history, and geopolitics of the region in the early twentieth century. The best writings on the Himalaya’s natural history, in my opinion, are Himalayan Journals (1854) by J. D. Hooker and a number of works by Frank Kingdon Ward, whose coverage of the subject, in both depth and breadth, is unparalleled. Some of Kingdon Ward’s well-known books include On the Road to Tibet (1910), The Land of the Blue Poppy (1913), The Romance of Plant Hunting (1924), Riddle of

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the Tsangpo Gorges (1926), Plant Hunting on the Edge of the World (1930), A Plant Hunter in Tibet (1934), Burma’s Icy Mountains (1949), Rhododendrons (1949), Return to the Irrawaddy (1956), and Pilgrimage for Plants (1960). An exhaustive work by Swami Pranavananda, KailasManasarovar (1949), presents a general account of the area, its administration and history; more importantly, it solves the confounded narrative related to the source of the Himalayan rivers, including Ganga’s origin. Yet another important work that deserve a mention here is Himalaya: Aspects of Change (1981), an edited volume by J. S. Lall and A. D. Moddie that focuses our attention on the more contemporary Himalayan environment. The literature on the Himalayan environment now keeps pace with the information technology revolution, which offers the added advantage of availability of information online across time and space. We are beginning to comprehend the importance and role of the georeferenced spatial databases for the Himalaya, some of which are available online; with time these sources could be transformational for informed choices in policy and decision-making. However, a word of caution seems necessary. The ease of information dissemination has its own share of problems; grey literature without the adequate safeguard of peer-reviewing has the potential to confound the complex topic of the environment and to shape public opinion in an undesirable direction. Without any further elaboration, let us get back to the printed word! The book you hold in your hands was born—or, say, conceived—over a straightforward e-mail from Michael Fisher of Harvard University Press in September 2013. The editors routinely contact potential authors, but Michael has a different creed. After initially dithering for months, I gave in and agreed to send him a short proposal outlining what I had in mind. Half a dozen pages or less elicited his succinct response: “Raj, can you make it meatier?” Writing research papers for academic journals is a distinctive craft, but writing a book is different—and a tad intimidating. I was undecided about whether I had the self-discipline a project of this kind demanded. I wavered more, but the editor zealously persevered. He wanted my account of the Himalaya sans the colorful photographs often associated with books on this mountain region. In any case, a recently published book—Himalaya: Mountains of Life (2013) by Kamal Bawa and Sandesh Kadur—had already filled that space. After a barrage of e-mails, exchanged over nearly a year, I had made the proposal meatier (so I thought). On August 27, 2014, Michael wrote, “I am delighted to inform you that HUP will offer you a contract for your book. So, we’re in business.” Life in the Himalaya was the title Michael thought of; I managed to add the subtitle after a year and a half. The con-

Introduction

3

cern then was that given my academic and administrative responsibilities at the University of Delhi, there would be little quality time to focus on the job of writing a book. At Michael’s suggestion, I made a proposal to the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University to provide me with the much-needed refuge to complete the book. Radcliffe accepted my proposal, and I was one of the Radcliffe Fellows for 2015–2016; in the summer of 2015, I was on my way to Cambridge, Massachusetts. The Radcliffe Institute offered me the best possible environment for writing and also brought me into contact with eminent scholars from different disciplines. Byerly Hall, with its academic opulence, was my operational space for a little less than a year, with scholars from all over the United States and other nations for company and fellowship. These interactions helped me incorporate elements such as history, culture, and imagery into my environmental and sustainability narratives that otherwise I would have missed or overlooked. Let me begin by pointing out the use of Himalaya in singular form throughout the book as opposed to the pluralized version widely used in literature. The latter is, put simply, a colonial legacy. Himalaya is a Sanskrit name (Him = snow, and Alaya = home). Like the Alps and the Andes, the Himalaya cannot be pluralized. A number of Indian scholars of the Himalaya such as K. S. Valdiya, Vishnu-Mittre, and others have mentioned it as such. In a humble way, I have succeeded over the years to convince various journal editors of the singular description of the Himalaya except on one occasion, which I regret (Pandit 2013). Second, the nomenclature of the Himalaya as a geographic entity has meant different spatial extents to different workers. There are varied expressions of the mountains, such as Greater Himalayan region, Himalaya-Tibet region, or Hindu Kush Himalaya region, that are commonly used in literature. I have generally used the term Himalaya to mean the entire mountain range from the northern region of Myanmar in the east to the borders of Afghanistan in the west; Tibet, of course, features as it is. A more recent nomenclature refers to the region as the Hindu-Kush Himalaya, which seems to accommodate regional geopolitical sensitivities. However, wherever needed for the context and clarity, I have used expressions other than the Himalaya as well. Thus, the Himalaya runs across the nations of Afghanistan, Pakistan, India, Nepal, Bhutan, Tibet, China, and Myanmar, embracing a geographical area of nearly 3.4 million km2. Even as I have made the best effort to incorporate case studies and examples from across different Himalayan nations, the lack of information for some areas and my own experience with the Indian Himalaya were unavoidable constraints. The vast literature on the Himalaya spanning centuries makes it extremely difficult to do justice

4

Life in the Himalaya

to everything that may be in the public domain on the subject under discussion, so any omission on my part is regrettable. Lastly, when discussing varied subjects covered here that I cannot claim to be strictly my domain, I have made an effort to record my understanding of these as honestly I could. The book is organized in a manner such that it depicts life in the Himalaya through the ages. The central theme—that initially the mountain shaped the life, but later the life shaped the mountain—is explored in four distinct stages: (1) the natural phase, comprising formation of the Himalaya and its subsequent geobiological consolidation; (2) the cultural phase, which began with the peopling of the Himalaya and the life of early nomadic pastoral communities, followed by the organized deforestation during the British Raj and that was continued afterward by the Himalayan nations; (3) the mechanical phase, which was characterized by burgeoning human population growth, urbanization, militarization, road building, and largescale infrastructure and developmental projects such as dams; and (4) the networking phase, looking to a sustainable future that necessitates information sharing and institutional cooperation in search of a safe operating space in the Himalaya. The discussion that follows in all eleven chapters of the book focuses on an integrated assessment of the geobiological and sociohistorical changes that have unfolded in the Himalaya over centuries. While analyzing the contemporary challenges of the Anthropocene, the book outlines major policy formulations and working solutions for sustainable living space in the Himalaya. The prologue presents a personal account of my engagement as a student and a researcher with the Himalaya, its diverse human communities, and the experts who shaped my interest and ideas about the mountain. This account underlines a Himalayan journey through the eyes of an undergraduate student and features the momentous role of a teacher-mentor during the early stages of my research career. There is no doubt in my mind that a teacher can make or break you; I was immensely lucky to have a remarkably knowledgeable, sensitive individual as my mentor. The journey I describe outwardly traces the metamorphosis of an undergraduate student into a young researcher, but more substantially it introduces the Himalaya, its ecosystems, the rivers, the unique biodiversity, and the common people to the reader in a personal narrative style. The natural phase of the Himalaya is covered in four chapters. Chapter 1 describes the mountain as the pantheon of Asian memory, both in the region’s pronounced literary tradition as well as its vast cultural range dominated by the sacredness and spiritual influence of the mountain. The inducement of the mountain through ages has survived countless rules and

Introduction

5

rulers. The pilgrims from different faiths who come to visit the Himalaya and its sacred lakes and rivers do so as seekers of moksha—salvation. The lure of the mighty Himalaya is so intense that men and women, from time to time, have offered to it their most prized possession: life itself. The world’s major rivers—the Ganga, Brahmaputra, Sind (Indus), Irrawaddy, Salween, Mekong, Yangtze, and Yellow rivers—originate in the Himalaya and sustain a billion human lives in both the mountains and faraway, downstream lands. The perennial rivers over the millennia have interested explorers searching for their origin, and they have supported both mundane and sublime human pursuits. The prosperity of civilizations such as the Indus Valley, which thrived over 8–5,000 years ago (8–5 kya), was made possible by the southwest Asian monsoon (the Indian summer monsoon, or monsoon), the fertile soils, and the perennial rivers—all products of the Himalaya. The river banks flourished as centers of great civilizations, of spirituality, and of scholarly debate. The lyricism of the monsoon rain and the meandering rivers has inspired and nurtured the creativity of poets over centuries—Kalidasa, Iqbal, Tagore, and Kazi (Quazi) Nazrul-Islam, to name a few. The Himalaya epitomizes a common cultural heritage for Hindus and Buddhists, whose edifying influence on art and architecture extended to Afghanistan in the west and to Southeast Asia. The Himalaya’s indispensability to the well-being of south Asia and to the earth as well is frozen and flows in its folklore. The Himalaya signifying Asia’s collective cultural memoir is beautifully depicted in the lyrical rendition of its grandeur in Kumarsambhava, the fifth-century poem of Kalidasa, and in the twentieth-century poem Bang-e-Dirah of Iqbal. Chapter 2 on tectonic serendipity reviews the geological events that led to the formation of the Himalaya and explores the vast and equivocal literature on various aspects of its age and elevation, and the timing of major events. Himalayan mountain-building represents a typical example of continent-to-continent collision, specifically the collision of the moving Indian plate traveling from the south with the relatively static Eurasian plate in the north. The approximately 6,500-km journey by the Indian plate was made at varying speeds over millions of years. The cumulative impact of the continental collision and the underthrusting of the Indian plate culminated in the disappearance of the Tethys Sea, the emergence of the Himalayan mountains, and the uplift of the Tibetan Plateau. The Himalaya brought about the connectivity and terrestrial continuity of the Indian subcontinent with Europe in the west and the rest of Asia in the north and east. The stupendous increase in the Himalaya’s elevation presented a formidable barrier to the movement of moist winds from the southern seas, unfolding a new seasonality in the Indian subcontinent’s climate: the onset and

6

Life in the Himalaya

intensification of monsoon, also known as the southwest Asian monsoon. The formation of glaciers at the highest elevations sired an elaborate hydrological system, fashioning a vast network of perennial rivers. Today these rivers continue to carry water and huge quantities of sediments from the Himalayan slopes. The Himalayan river basins of Ganga and Brahmaputra merely comprise about 4  percent of the earth’s land area, but they contribute around 25  percent to the global sediment budget. The high sedimentation rates of the Himalaya and other mountains over millions of years are known to be associated with a reduction in atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) due to silicate weathering and sediment deposition in the sea. The drawdown of CO2 in turn led to the general cooling of the earth around the Miocene-Pliocene epoch and ushered in new physiological adaptations such as the evolution of the C4 photosynthetic pathway, found mostly in grasses that thrive under low ambient CO2 concentrations. An interconnected system of geological processes and ecological responses working in tandem was set in motion in a newly crafted terrestrial space, which came to be occupied by unique biodiversity and varied human cultural diversity. Chapters 3 and 4 underscore the interconnectedness between the geological events of the Himalayan mountain building and the evolution of new terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems in the region. Many scholars have described the drifting Indian plate as a raft or bridge that aided the exchange of biotas from and to other regions in the south and north, although others argue differently. The geobiological consolidation of the emerging ecosystems in the Himalaya and ensuing biotic exchanges established the Himalaya as an intercontinental biological highway. The geomorphic dynamics of the Himalaya shaped the diversity and distribution, macroecological patterns, biodiversity, and endemism of the Himalayan biota. The continued tectonic activity along with fluvioglacial processes aided by the intensification of monsoon during the Miocene carved out deep valleys and river divides that promoted the geographic isolation and vicariance of biota. The interplay between morphotectonic processes, landscape evolution, and evolutionary divergence of the Himalayan flora is highlighted in these chapters. The biological diversity, established during the Miocene-Pliocene epochs, was subsequently reshuffled during Pleistocene glaciation. A period of prolonged glaciation ensued, which forced the displacement of several plant taxa to lower elevations and common habitats, facilitating genetic exchanges among hitherto isolated plant populations. The climate upheaval thus triggered adaptive radiations that enabled new species to recolonize

Introduction

7

the ice-free habitats after the last glacial maximum and to extend their distribution ranges into new habitats. The eastern Himalaya, being closer to tropical latitudes, developed into the “region of extreme relief” due to swifter melting of snows and ice, which carved an extensive network of drainage channels. Some researchers believe that the region’s highly dissected mountain morphology is the reason behind the wide-ranging species diversity in taxa such as Rhododendron. Questions such as why the eastern Himalaya is richer in species endemism and diversity than the western Himalaya and why there is a general lack of endemic birds in the Himalaya are addressed. The impact of climate change on the diversity and distribution of the Himalayan biological communities and the relationship between human communities and the Himalayan biodiversity are some of the key contemporary issues discussed in these chapters. The natural phase of the Himalaya culminated with the arrival of human groups, and their activities gradually began transforming the landscape around 5 kya. The cultural phase of the Himalaya began with the arrival of human communities who effected land use changes initially as hunter-gatherer communities and later as agropastoralists. The cultural phase is discussed in two chapters. Chapter 5 examines the routes of human migration and the diverse evidence—genetic, anthropological, linguistic, and historical—related to the source of the human population groups who arrived in the Himalaya. Modern genetic studies—autosomal microsatellites, X chromosomal DNA, mitochondrial DNA, and Y chromosome biallelic markers—have helped detect phylogenies, migration routes, colonization histories, and gene flows in the human groups inhabiting the Himalaya across nations. There is broad consensus that human groups arrived in the region via the northern and southeastern routes. Human groups, after entering the Indian subcontinent from the western borders, followed a coastal southern route, and traversed along the eastern Indian coastline around 50 kya. They reached the southeast Asian and east Asian region around 40 kya. The peopling of the Tibetan region occurred around the postglacial period (15 to 18 kya), and human groups began their northward migration from the Southeast Asian region to traverse along the Yellow River basin around 20 to 40 kya. The clearing of vegetation for agriculture began in the region around 10 kya, as revealed by the presence of charcoal and fossil woods at various sites. There is strong evidence of hunting and agriculture in the region from 5 to 7 kya; agropastoral practices in the high Himalaya during that period, known to be similar to those of the Nile-Euphrates-Tigris basins, necessitated deforestation and replacement of forests by agriculture. Based on paleobiological evidence from different sites in Pakistan, Nepal, Tibet, and

8

Life in the Himalaya

Bhutan, it is likely that the initial peopling of the Himalaya’s northern region (the Trans-Himalaya) began much earlier, and of the southern declivity (at least at higher elevations) occurred around 4 kya. It appears that human groups from the north migrated southward during harsh climate conditions, and they inhabited the southern slopes in the landscapes similar to Tibet. Herding of livestock, wildlife hunting, and gradual expansion of agriculture started transforming the natural Himalayan landscape around 4 to 5 kya. The first axe had fallen, and it claimed the Himalaya’s natural vegetation cover long before we had thought it happened. Chapter 6 typifies the long, drawn-out period of human transformation of the Himalayan landscape through deforestation. It also represents the culmination of the cultural phase, which manifested in the indigenous people’s resistance in India to state-backed exploitation of forest resources. The resident human populations over millennia had indeed altered the Himalayan natural landscape through expansion of human settlements and agriculture. The eastern Himalayan human communities traditionally practiced slash and burn agriculture (jhoom or jhum) over thousands of years. Akin to swidden agriculture system of Mayan civilization, jhum cultivation did impact the natural forest ecosystems, but the low human population densities may have prevented a more widespread impact. Even though the exploitation by local communities of the forest resources in the Himalaya could be termed as less than sustainable, as evident from the historical records, the commercial exploitation of the forests began with the British Raj. Deforestation in the Indian subcontinent was institutionalized by the British administration in the early nineteenth century (1815 ad) after the appointment of commissioners, who treated the forests as a source of revenue. The policing of the forests that was enforced by British officers resulted in public outrage, and the public protests that followed included burning large forest tracts as a retaliatory measure. The British left behind a system of forest administration that barred local people from using a resource they took as their own; the practice of the state as owner of the forests continued even after British left, as did the policing. The state forest officials often denied the local villagers even minor timber for making agricultural implements, and these repressive practices fueled the people’s agitation. In the early 1970s, when a forest near Reni village in the upper Ganga valley was earmarked for logging by a state-appointed contractor, a group of village women led by Guara Devi threatened to hug or cling (chipko) to the trees if the loggers tried to touch them. The seeds of the world-famous

Introduction

9

Chipko Movement were thus sown through peaceful resistance. The reasons behind the success of Chipko Movement, some previously unknown facts about its history, the roles of various actors, the controversies that followed, and the movement’s failures will be discussed. More importantly, the chapter highlights the power of synergy between social resistance groups and informed scientific opinion. Chipko in a sense was not only a pioneering effort at conserving the Himalayan forests but also a symbol of the culmination of the cultural phase of the Himalaya. The mechanical phase is discussed in three chapters that depict the drivers of Himalayan change: geopolitics and militarization, road building to ensure uninterrupted supplies to military, the human population explosion, deforestation, expanding agriculture, hunting, biological invasions, profligate tourism, and ensuing high motor vehicle densities in interior Himalayan ranges, which now experience high pollution loads that threaten to melt the glaciers faster. The changing climate and warming may well be the major drivers contributing to the changes in community structure and species extinctions in the Himalaya. A plethora of human activities driving land use changes have negatively impacted the biophysical systems in the Himalaya. As a result, the frequency and intensity of natural hazards causing devastation and human misery are on the upswing. Chapter 7 traces the root cause of the race for road building and heavy militarization in the high Himalaya. The legacy of British India’s partition in 1947 has forced erstwhile compatriots into face-to-face military encounters from time to time, and it has given the respective security establishments of India and Pakistan reason and justification to maintain extensive military personnel and infrastructure in the Himalayan region. The Chinese military buildup in Tibet in early 1950s and the subsequent expansion of China’s control of the region ushered in a road-building race that climaxed with the first train to Lhasa in 2006, undermining regional geological and ecological concerns. What prompted the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) of China to occupy Lhasa in large numbers in 1951 (where they comprised nearly one-fourth of the then human population) and what formulations—military and diplomatic—prompted Mao Tse-tung (Mao Zedong) to enter Tibet and remain there permanently are key questions discussed in this chapter. To maintain food supplies for the large contingent of PLA troops, Chinese leadership ordered the soldiers stationed at Lhasa to start clearing lands for agriculture and to raise crops. Simultaneously, a portion of the troops was engaged in major road building in the region. China initially ensured domination of Tibet by extensive militarization, but later on China

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Life in the Himalaya

consolidated its position through robust economic growth. A cruel lesson China handed to India by way of defeat in the 1962 war brought home to the Indian establishment the importance of road connectivity, which necessitated India matching the Chinese road network across the border. The ecological impact of the active military trijunction among China, India, and Pakistan is neither known nor spoken about. Is it a necessary evil, a price that must be paid by the Himalaya? That the impact of extensive militarization on the ecology and the environment of the Himalaya remains largely uninvestigated is intriguing. Concomitant with the establishment of the road network in the Himalaya, the Indian motor vehicle revolution of the 1980s propelled a new brand name among passenger cars: Maruti, the economical street car. The possibility of traveling to hill stations in the Himalaya to escape the summer heat caught the imagination of middle classes. The small car delivered millions of tourists each season to Himalayan hill stations such as Mussoorie, Manali, Nainital, and Darjeeling. Leisure and religious tourism bolstered the local economy, promoting the establishment of cheap hotels and shanties. Thousands of cars and buses frequently jostled for space in the vicinity of the Himalayan glaciers. Research has shown that the high amounts of black carbon deposited near many of the important Himalayan glaciers could be inducing faster glacial ablation. Chapter 7 brings out the nexus between geopolitics, militarization, infrastructure development (roads and buildings), burgeoning tourism, vehicle overpopulation, air pollution, and glacial ablation. Chapter 8 focuses on yet another of the main drivers of the Himalayan change in recent years: dam building. Based on credible estimates, the Himalayan nations of India, Pakistan, Nepal, and Bhutan are likely to build more than 550 dams over the next two decades, and China is set to add nearly 750 dams across Tibet. Thus, the gigantic figure of nearly 1,300 dams on both sides of the Himalaya is a grave prospect for the scale of change these projects would bring to the mountain region. Widespread dam building in the Himalaya is known to lead to loss of habitat, extinction of endemic species, and large-scale evacuation of people from their villages and townships. The consequences of dam building for riverine biodiversity, including obstructing migrations of keystone fish species such as the endangered golden mahseer (Tor putitora), are discussed in Chapter 8. River regulation is known to alter downstream stream ecology and riparian habitats; in the absence of seasonal flooding, the marshy habitats inhabited by animals and birds with specific adaptations (such as webbed feet) dry up and

Introduction

11

transform into woodlands, resulting in the disappearance of unique wildlife. Loss of habitat not only results in the loss of species but also in the extirpation of unique evolutionary adaptations that took thousands or millions of years to develop. Of particular concern is the vulnerability of numerous protected areas (national parks) in the Indian Himalayan foothills that harbor such rare species as the one-horned Indian rhinoceros (Rhinoceros unicornis), which is adapted to marshy habitats. As more and more dams are built across the Himalaya, the new water regimes—both surface and underground—severely impact the habitats of such charismatic species, which attract major tourism and economic gains for the states. Researchers have expressed apprehension that another charismatic and endangered species, the Gangetic dolphin (Platanista gangetica), with a population of only 1,200 to 1,800 individuals distributed in the GangaBrahmaputra river systems, may be further threatened due to regulation of the Himalayan rivers. Equally, there are concerns that water withdrawal from the Himalayan rivers upstream would alter downstream hydrological regimes and impact water sources such as springs, which at many places in the Himalaya are the main sources of drinking water. Chapter 8 also discusses the need for the Himalayan nations to develop relatively ecofriendly hydropower to meet the growing demands of increasing population and also to address the basic requirement of electricity supply. The need for a middle path that both addresses power infrastructure issues and avoids haphazard dam building for the sustainability of the Himalaya is highlighted. The cumulative consequences of natural and human-induced changes, which have resulted in some of the worst disasters in recent times in the Himalaya, are examined in Chapter 9. The Himalaya’s geological nature and geographic placement make it vulnerable to natural hazards such as earthquakes, cloudbursts, flash floods, and landslides. These hazards pose serious difficulties to the resident human populations as well people living far off downstream. Although there is little that can be done to secure populations from earthquakes, the unabated growth in human population and urbanization are placing more and more people at risk. Poverty overpopulation enhances people’s vulnerability to earthquakes, floods, and landslides. The risks posed by the floods that result from a plethora of climatic and geological events are reviewed in this chapter, along with examples from across the Himalayan nations. A separate section on the nexus between climate change and glacial lake outburst floods is included in Chapter 8 to underline the risks from glacial lakes, which could take public administrations by surprise. A comprehensive

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Life in the Himalaya

analysis of climate change, water availability, human demography, food production, and energy in Chapter  9 highlights the climate-water-foodenergy nexus in the south Asian region. The interconnectedness between ecological and economic security is demonstrated with special reference to the most critical and limiting resource—water. The sharply declining figures of per capita surface water availability in Pakistan (297 m3 / person), Bangladesh (660 m3 / person), and India (1116 m3 / person) raise serious concerns as to our awareness and preparedness to meet these environmental challenges in one of the most populous regions of the world. The impact of climate change on vegetation community structure dynamics and the shift of species’ elevational range pose a serious threat to the traditional livelihoods of the resident human populations in the high Himalayan elevations. Specifically, the incursion of shrublands into the alpine meadows under the impact of warming threatens their endemic herbaceous floras, which constitute an important resource for livestock fodder and traditional medicine. Extinction of these species would weaken the local economy by endangering the trophic structure base of keystone species such as the yak. The central role of the yak in the Himalayan highland economy is illustrated: should the plant species comprising yak fodder be lost, the livelihoods of the local inhabitants will be in serious jeopardy. Similarly, the consequences of climate change on agricultural and horticultural productivity in the Himalayan region and the impact on local human communities are spelled out. The networking phase, the final part of the book, is covered in Chapters 10 and 11. An integrated analysis of the varied aspects of the Himalaya—the regional climate, water availability, agricultural productivity, biotic richness, human cultural diversity, and spiritual grandeur—has been largely overlooked in the scientific literature. Chapter 10 underscores the importance of sustainable living as opposed to sustainable development in the Himalaya. The concept of sustainable living is advanced within the framework of carrying capacity of the Himalaya, which is envisioned through incorporation of geological vulnerability, ecological fragility, and cultural sensitivity of human societies in the economic development profile of the mountain region. An elaborate discussion on the comparative systems interrelationships in pre-Anthropocene and Anthropocene Himalaya illustrates the impact of human activities on numerous ecosystem services, such as carbon sequestration, water supply, climate regulation, and biodiversity. The current challenges faced by the region must be prioritized for policy formulation. The various drivers of environmental change in the Himalaya—

Introduction

13

which shape the present and future of the Himalayan ecosystems and the people who inhabit them—depend on three interacting sets of factors. First are human-driven activities such as dams, deforestation, agriculture, and other deliberate choices made by the Himalayan nations. Second are the natural hazards over which humans have little control, although their actions exacerbate the impact. Third is global warming, which is a combination of natural and anthropogenic events but is less readily ameliorated by regional management decisions. This three-pole framework is discussed in these chapters, as local, regional, and global parameters work synergistically. Finally, what kind of an undertaking and approach would be useful and sustainable in view of the complex challenges—both natural and manmade—in the Himalaya? The discussion in Chapter 11 emphasizes on the need for synergies among individuals, institutions, and the ideal of safe operating space for the Himalaya. The population of nearly 1.5 billion who live in the various basins of the Himalayan rivers depends on natural resources and the resource-generating capacity of the mountains. If this capacity is undermined or compromised, there can be little hope for a safe space for the Himalaya. Access to resources and their use cannot be taken to mean their excessive use or abuse. The Himalayan people, land, forests, rivers, soil, and biodiversity merit equal respect. The sustainability of natural ecosystems and their services is critical for protection of life in the Himalaya. The challenge is to convince the various stakeholders of the importance of and need for a safe space for the Himalaya. The enterprise cannot be driven purely by science and technology or by resource management— ethics must remain the cornerstone of any workable solution matrix. There is a need to balance and align conservation and economic development priorities with people as equal stakeholders. Limits on the carrying capacity of the Himalaya vis-à-vis human enterprise demand that we redouble our commitment at all levels—individual and institutional—to ensure that the idea and the ideals of sustainable policies are followed in both letter and spirit through state and public partnerships. The concept of conservation easements for the most vulnerable Himalayan communities has been put forward. Sustainable living instead of sustainable development should be advanced as the sustainability paradigm for the Himalaya. After all, we are stewards to a remarkable biome that has taken shape through millions of years of geological and biological change. An important initiative by the former King of Bhutan to emphasize gross national happiness (GNH) instead of gross domestic product (GDP) holds great promise for achieving a

14

Life in the Himalaya

middle ground between conservation and development. It is not surprising that this remarkable expression has emanated from the land where Buddha’s teachings and philosophy form the soul of the nation. The seeds of this philosophy are sourced from Hindu scriptures such as the Ishopanishad (Isha Upanishad), which emphasizes equal rights on resources for all life forms. A happy Himalaya is most likely to be a safe Himalaya.

Prologue Past as Precursor of Future The tallest of the mountains, neighbor of the sky; you are our guard, our savior. — Iqbal, “Bang- i- Dara”

The Story of the Bull and the Earth As the saying goes, “You can take a man out of the mountain but not the mountain out of a man.” My earliest memory of the Himalaya is rather deeply embedded, and is symbolized by the visual and the experiential. The visual was embodied in the dominant presence of a mountain toward the northeast, overlooking our window at home in Mahind, a village to the north of Bijbehara town in Anantnag district of India’s Kashmir valley. There was no escape from the giant black heap of a triangular rock under whose imposing shadow the village folk lived and died. The mountain was about a kilometer and half from our home, but its size and height overshadowed everything else in the surroundings. Our village sat at the 5,500-foot elevation, and the mountain named Shei-bal stood at 8,500 feet. The mountain, therefore, was always there; and it was more inside us than outside. I do not recall being afraid of the mountain, but the monolith undoubtedly was imposing. Even today, decades later, its structure and contours fill my mind as clearly as ever—not the tiniest part of its spur has blurred from my memory. It occupies as much of my mind’s space today as it did when I was eight years old; the slopes of Shei-bal stand as bare and as tall as ever. My experiential connection to the mountain symbolized a more mundane relation between the mountain and the men and women living under

16

Life in the Himalaya

its omnipresent silhouette. We experienced the benevolence of the mountain as an eternal provider. It was from there we harvested stones and timber to build houses, and to it we dispatched our cattle and livestock for grazing. The mountain did not offer much in terms of quality timber; for its conspicuous absence of a forest, it was known among the villagers as the “bald mountain.” The pony owners ran small businesses mining stones from the mountain. Occasionally, adults and children alike scooped up the prized, delicious mushrooms hidden in its humid shaded groves. As schoolchildren we visited the mountain on class excursions; the main attraction besides the mountain was a canal running at its base (Dadi canal), which had waters flowing most of the year. During early spring, Hindu children eagerly looked forward to a nearly weeklong celebration of Mahashivratri [Herat], a festival celebrated by Kashmiri Hindus with remarkable gaiety. Translated as the great night of Shiva (also known as Siva; one of the three main deities of Hinduism), Mahashivratri marks the occasion of his marriage to Parvati. The more enterprising children ventured toward the mountain to collect lovely Virkim (Colchicum luteum) and Tenk-baten or the wild Himalayan tulip (Tulipa clusiana) to make an offering to Lord Shiva and Parvati on their marriage anniversary. Both deities are eminently linked to the Himalaya. In fact, the lore of the Himalaya without Shiva and Parvati is incomplete, as Mount Kailash is the throne of Lord Shiva. The two early bloomers, C. luteum and T. clusiana, also adorn the songs of the famous Kashmiri poet Mahjoor, who writes of the songbird, “Bulbul narrates to the flowers, ours is a garden nation; Virkim and Tenk-baten arrive early to cover ground, the buds shorn of their robes.” Over time, school education in some ways altered the solidity of my belief in the benevolence of the mountain. In 1967, a number of earthquakes hit our area in quick succession. I recently located references to these earthquakes in the literature as the Anantnag earthquakes, which struck near home between February and April (see Tandon 1972). That the mountain and the earthquakes were related, as revealed by my general knowledge teacher, instilled in me an eerie fear of the mountain. The school lesson had introduced a disruptive thought into my reverence for the mountain. I do not think I believed my mother’s story that the earthquakes came about when the huge bull, on whose horns the earth rests, changed the load from one to the other horn. For some strange reason, I believed the general knowledge teacher more than my mother on this subject. It was around this time in school that I also learned that our local mountain was the Himalaya—or was a part of it. Despite the fact that each day, as a member of a three-boy trio, I helped lead daily prayers at the school—I

Prologue

17

sang Iqbal’s ode to the Himalaya, “parbat woh sab se ooncha ham-sayaa aasman ka” (the tallest of the mountains, neighbor of the sky), “woh santari hamara, woh pasbaan hamara” (he is our guard, he is our savior)—the earthquakes began to shake my faith in the mountain’s munificence. The school prayer and the general knowledge teacher stood at odds with each other in my mind. If the mountain was our guard and savior, why did it induce earthquakes to kill and destroy? The solidity of the paradigm that the mountain was our benefactor had been somewhat dented. A conglomeration of a thousand or more mountains like the one outside my window was a hugely intimidating prospect. The contradiction between the mountain “angel” and the mountain “devil” only grew more inside me. In contrast, my mother’s world was perfect and without any contradictions. She had it all sorted out—the bull story explained the earthquakes. She also empathized with the good bull who deserved to rest his horns once in a while! The bull, in the form of Nandi, Lord Shiva’s vehicle and also the guard of Shiva and Parvati, is revered by Hindus and is seen at the entry of many a temple dedicated to Shiva and his consort. Not that my mother did not also attribute shades of grey to the mountain. Chief among these beliefs was that it was inhabited by djinns (ghosts) and devs (giants), which are evidently different from the benevolent devtas (gods / deities). These nonphysical entities were believed to cast spells on humans and at times kidnap them, too. Thankfully, I have no recollection whatsoever of any such thing ever happening. Occasionally men and women in the village would suffer from psychological disorders that caused strange behavior, but all such afflictions, including Down’s syndrome, among the villagers were believed to be the handiwork of djinns. Even today, the vast majority of people in the villages and towns of Asia and particularly in the Himalaya are steadfast in their belief in the existence and power of these nonhuman presences. Interestingly, a number of Western travelers and scholars also seem to acknowledge the presence of such bodyless and “superior powers” in the Himalaya. Over the past two centuries, Western explorers have been attracted to the Himalaya for land and biological surveys, trade, and military considerations for the expanding British Empire. Colonel Francis Younghusband’s accounts of Himalayan trials and travails in the later part of the nineteenth century as part of his several military expeditions are interspersed with mystic experiences he had during his journeys. Patrick French in the 1994 biography of Younghusband claimed that these journeys were transformational for Younghusband, so much so that he had lamented his role in the British invasion of Tibet in 1903, which resulted in the massacre of more than 700 Tibetans (Morris 1979). His mystical experiences

18

Life in the Himalaya

in the Himalaya made Younghusband believe that “men at heart are divine,” a belief that culminated in his founding the World Congress of Faiths in 1936 (French 1994). However, an examination of Younghusband’s own writings reveals a rather different side of the man, such as the description of his reunion with one of his erstwhile companion servants from his Himalayan journeys: Years after, when I was Resident in Kashmir, he came down from Ladakh to see me, and kissed my feet and jumped up and laughed with delight, then kissed my feet again and behaved exactly like a dear big faithful dog who has caught sight of his master again after a long separation. And I loved him as men love their dogs, knowing that their fidelity can be counted through every circumstance whatever. ([1924] 2003, 57)

In yet other instance, Younghusband speaks of his travels—“in which the chief obstacle was the man rather than the mountains” ([1924] 2003, 112). One does not know what to make of his opinions of men in view of their being “divine.” It may however be said in fairness to Younghusband that he wrote his Himalayan travel account about twelve years before he came to believe in the divine nature of humans. Numerous other writers of the Himalayan saga also have pointed to the unseen mystical powers that inhabit the snows, the valleys, the forests, and the deserts across the Himalaya alike. These writers have equally conveyed the dichotomy of the treacherous and the magnificent face of the Himalaya. Peter Matthiessen’s scientific and spiritual Himalayan journey compels us to believe that in these stark contradictions, lies the passage to cleanse the soul: “I walk lighter, stumble less, with more spring in leg and lung, keeping my center of gravity deep in the belly, and letting that center ‘see.’ At these times, I am free of vertigo, even in dangerous places; my feet move naturally to firm footholds, and I flow” (1978, 125). I comprehend this dichotomy in humans as I perceive it in the Himalaya. The dual description of the mountain by humans oscillates between the reverent and the dreadful, the majestic and the dull, and the generous and the unkind. This dualism is intrinsic to Nature. Humans as a part and product of Nature inherit this contradiction and live with it; there is no escaping.

A Tryst with the Himalaya My scientific education and understanding of the Himalaya started when I came into contact with my teacher, Dr. Virendra Kumar, during my undergraduate days at Zakir Husain College (Delhi College, and now Zakir

Prologue

19

Husain Delhi College). Virendra Kumar (hereafter VK, as he was fondly known to his colleagues and students), was a botanist who had spent a considerable number of years working on the cytogenetic and evolutionary aspects of Himalayan flora. He took me under his tutelage, and I adapted to his rather idiosyncratic disposition effortlessly. Indian undergraduate education of the 1980s (and so even today) had little scope for much personal interaction between students and their professors. VK was markedly different. He had just returned from overseas academic stints in the United Kingdom and the United States, including some work at Arnold Arboretum at Harvard. I was completely blown away by his style—he smoked a pipe and wore nice Harris tweed jackets of immaculate shades. Personal respect apart, our class realized that instead of progressing to molecular genetics, as he was supposed to have done by then, VK spent far too much of the academic year teaching Gregor Mendel and his laws of genetics. This got most of my classmates worried, but I do not recall any such fear having occupied my mind. However, for some very silly reasons that accompany young age, I changed my institution in the beginning of my second year and went to study at Sri Venkateswara College. VK’s assignment with the government of India (the federal government) to advise the Indian Planning Commission on Hill Areas came in handy as an excuse for me to change colleges. However, VK did not go out of my life entirely; after my graduate studies, he played a pivotal role in what I embarked on—the Himalayan journey. He was not my legal parent, and the Himalaya was not his estate, but I inherited the mountain from him nonetheless. VK became my mentor almost by accident. It is important for undergraduate students to be pointed by someone toward a life or vocation beyond the textbooks. My brother-in-law, Moti Lal Pandit, an Indologist and an eminent scholar in his own right, asked me if there was anyone at my college who was pursuing research; he told me that I should meet with that professor and request that he take me under his tutelage. At the time, Moti Pandit was a visiting scholar at Aarhus University in Denmark, and he would often visit various universities in Europe where he found young students taking research assignments with professors. “If nothing else, tell him that you can wash the Petri dishes in his lab,” he told me matter of factly. Other than giving the tuition to a distressingly poor school student to support myself, there was not much else to do. The next day at college my choice was clear—in fact, there was no other choice. At the first opportunity, I met with VK and blurted out the line I had rehearsed. It worked. No further questions were asked, and I became a regular visitor / attendee at VK’s laboratory cum library, which he had built in the 1960s largely with his own funds.

20

Life in the Himalaya

VK’s “hut” was a big, plain room with a long worktable facing an equally wide window. There was another table, more official, with a single chair for the boss, which VK occupied only occasionally. In the center of the room were four huge easy chairs facing four cardinal directions with a small round coffee table at the center. VK sat there for hours meeting with students, visitors, and his staff, which included a number of old loyal friends and employees. The laboratory housed a very good library, and I read a lot of literature there on biology and natural history, particularly the works of Frank (Francis) Kingdon Ward, the famous English author and naturalist, and G. Ledyard Stebbins, the celebrated American botanist and geneticist, as well as volumes of special issues of Scientific American and fiction, nonfiction, and poetry. There was plenty to choose from: Rudyard Kipling, Leo Tolstoy, Boris Pasternak, Albert Camus, Franz Kafka, and Emily Dickinson, among others. VK also was very fond of paintings by the great masters, and he had a good collection of books and prints of Monet, Rubens, Van Gogh, Reynolds, and many others. Some of these prints adorned the walls of his laboratory and VK’s one-room dwelling on the college campus. Sadly, VK was forced to leave his laboratory in 1993 after some miscreants vandalized it, and he was distraught to have been ousted from his sanctuary of decades. On a hot Delhi summer noon, while I waited to get into the laboratory, a bearded young man inquired after VK, and we both waited for him in the adjacent botany department. When VK arrived about half an hour later, the three of us entered the hut where VK formally introduced me to his other visitor: Yogeshwar Kumar (Yogesh to his friends), a civil engineer from IIT Delhi who had helped VK build a small water turbine in the Valley of Flowers (now a national park and UNESCO World Heritage Site in the Uttarakhand Himalaya) a couple of years back to provide power for his alpine tent and the compound microscope he carried to the field. Clearly, VK and Yogesh had a longer association with the Himalaya than I had imagined. By that point, I had been visiting the laboratory for some time and was conversant with VK’s routine. That day he appeared a bit hurried and did not take much time to break the news—Mrs.  Indira Gandhi, the prime minister of India, had desired a short presentation on the Himalaya in general and the Valley of Flowers in particular. VK was the obvious choice for such a presentation. Dr. M. S. Swaminathan, the renowned agriculture scientist and secretary of agriculture to the government of India, who is popularly recognized as the father of India’s green revolution, had organized the meeting. Swaminathan also had been VK’s Ph.D. supervisor and was fond of him.

Prologue

21

The work of preparing the presentation for the prime minister then began in earnest. My job was to neatly type assorted materials on Himalayan geobiology and the evolutionary divergence of the flora, and special white bond paper was procured for the purpose. Yogesh prepared several nice drawings and figures, and VK, after having satisfied himself with the product, took photographs on 35mm color slide film. He insisted that these photos had to be made with “slow” film—Kodachrome 64, which he procured from England and was processed prepaid. My duties included going to the Eastern Courts Post Office in Connaught Place (as no other post office would do) and sending the exposed films overseas by registered post. The films came back processed as excellent 35mm slides, complete with the Kodak logo on the margins, but VK did not want to take any chances— additional rolls were shot and developed at Kinsey Brothers, an upmarket photography company in Connaught Place (as no other company would do). Ashok Dilwali, the owner of Kinsey Brothers, an ace photographer and author of coffee-table books in his own right, never charged VK for developing his films, and VK returned the favor through payment in kind— several rolls of Kodachrome were gifted to Ashok from time to time. In November 2014, after a gap of over three decades, I met the gentleman again at the launch of Stephen Alter’s new book Becoming the Mountain (2014). Ashok had hardly changed since 1980s, and not only did he recognize me, but he recalled my connection with VK. He spoke with great reverence for VK and expressed his gratitude to the man who he said had introduced him to the Himalaya. While the preparations for VK’s presentation for the prime minister proceeded, I asked hundreds of questions to VK and Yogesh about what I should type for the slides: the text was VK’s, but the aesthetics of the layout were left entirely to me. VK never tired of rejecting stuff, and I never tired of typing the material over and over again until it met with the master’s approval. VK’s own slide collection from the field formed the bulk of the presentation. The slides covered several topics: the formation of the Himalaya, the Himalayan biogeography, the migration routes of several plant families that came to the Himalaya from far and wide, and the need for local museums and herbaria at each Himalayan village school. VK in his slides also stressed the need to widen the net of school education in the Himalaya, and he presented figures on the school dropout rate in the mountain region. Sadly, Mrs. Gandhi’s younger son, Sanjay Gandhi, died in an airplane crash in the interim (June 23, 1980), so VK’s hopes of making his views on the Himalaya known to the highest executive office in the country were initially shattered. However, to his surprise, although the mood at the prime

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Life in the Himalaya

minister’s house was sombre, she rescheduled their promised appointment for a later date. I was told that on the appointed day VK spoke for over an hour, and that the prime minister sat through the entire presentation and participated actively. What interested Mrs. Gandhi the most, besides saving the Himalayan environment, were the slides on school education and school dropouts in the hills. Indeed, after the presentation, education in Himalayan villages became an important theme of the prime minister’s policies in the days to come. Yogesh, who was present at the meeting, recalled, “Indira Gandhi gave [a] statement on [the] Chipko movement the next day in Parliament. She rejected [the] move of the Uttar Pradesh government to set up tourism infrastructure at Gangharia,” the village nearest to the Valley of Flowers. Her commitment to the cause of protecting the Himalayan environment became second to none. I was too young to understand the importance of the meeting, and in any case being the innocuous typist and student volunteer hardly amounted to anything significant. Over the years, however, I have come to realize that with each sheet I rolled into the typewriter, with each key I hit almost mechanically, a basic education on the Himalayan domain was being inscribed on my mind. As such, it was not classwork, and there was little formal training involved, but I came to know that the Himalaya was not there about 40–50 million years ago (Ma) and India itself had been somewhere down near Antarctica, which was hugely exciting to me. From then on, it became routine business for me to help VK arrange his slides and accompany him to various institutions carrying his Rollie slide projector and the slide trays. If he couldn’t recall the Latin name of a plant, I was expected to remember and remind him. I was receiving a different training that hardly mattered to my curriculum; new expressions, such as plate tectonics and continental drift, and new names—Rhododendron, Polygonatum, Disporum, Vaccinium, Lyonia, Anaphalis, Meconopsis, Primula, Gentiana, Podophyllum, Leontopodium—were being added to my vocabulary. It was important to remember what elevational range these plants occupied and, if need be, to remind the master at the desired hour. As the caravan of VK’s presentations around Delhi progressed, my interest in Himalayan ecology and biogeography kept pace. I now understood how the Himalaya was formed and why the Himalaya is an earthquake-prone zone. Through these countless special lectures, it was clearly revealed to me how ecological succession progressed—how a naked Himalayan rock was colonized by lichens and moss, and how ultimately, with the passage of time, a wooded slope emerged on the landscape. I slowly began to comprehend the processes and patterns of the life on the

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mountain—and the influence of the mountain on life as also being life on the mountain. VK, prior to joining the Planning Commission, had received a minor research grant from the government of India that required him to make a case for declaring the Valley of Flowers a biosphere reserve. The picturesque valley in the upper Ganga region of Alaknanda River was made world famous by Frank Smythe. Smythe was a British naturalist, mountaineer, author, photographer, and botanist who extensively traveled in the Himalaya and is said to have coined the name Valley of Flowers in 1931. The valley is also known for the small tomb of Joan Margaret Legge, a British botanist, who died on July 4, 1939, in the valley after slipping down a rocky slope during one of her visits for plant collection. Given that VK had spent a number of years studying the floral dynamics of the valley, the decision-makers in the government had little choice but to fall back on his knowledge and experience of the Himalaya. A motley group of young students awaiting their graduate studies had gotten together to work on the project, with Yogesh in some kind of unwritten lead role. I was introduced to these young men by Yogesh, but I understood very little of what was happening, for most of the time they were in the field. Sadly, there is little written account of their fieldwork. It was ultimately left to Yogesh and myself to write the final report. I gladly accepted the challenge and learned a great deal about the interplay of geography, geology, hydrology, and biology from Yogesh. He was no simple engineer. During the period we were compiling the report, VK asked me to include the chromosome numbers of the plants that had been reported in the proposed biosphere reserve area. The scope of biosphere reserve had now widened from the Valley of Flowers to the Uttarakhand region (the state was only carved much later and did not go by this name then). VK had known these areas for decades through his travels and research, and Yogesh had undertaken several travels into the region during the project tenure. Based on their combined knowledge of the field and available literature, Yogesh earmarked areas for core and buffer zones in the proposed reserve. The report on Uttarakhand Biosphere Reserve was delayed even after several extensions. VK was now under pressure from the government to submit the final report. I had very little experience in the field, so I assisted with data collation from secondary sources and its analysis. Much of the graph-making work was done on graph sheets. One day Yogesh brought a computer printout depicting a plot, which had the number of bird species on the x-axis and the elevation on the y-axis (Fig. p.1). The plot appeared

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Life in the Himalaya

BIOSPHERE RESERVE RANGE Tethys Himalayas

Great Himalayas

From Siberia, Iran, T urkm enis tan dur ing w

Lesser Himalayas

Adjoining Plains

Shiwaliks

int er

7,000 M 6,000 5,000 4,000

PERMANENT CHOUGHS SNOW PERMANENT RAVEN SNOW DIPPER, FINCH, ACCENTOR (SUMMER) FINCH (WINTER) TIMBER LINE

WHISTLING THRUSH (SUMMER) LAUGHING THRUSH, TIT (RESIDENT) CHOUGH (WINTER)

3,000

WHISTLING THRUSH WINTER), TIT BULBULS, SWIFTS (WINTER)

2,000 BARBET, HONEY GUIDE, PIMLET, WOODPECKER, SAP SUCKER, WOODPECKER (WINTER)

1,000

200

100

WINTER

100

200

300

400

500

600

TO PLAINS

700

SUMMER

figure P.1. The Himalayan bird species richness plot made by Yogeshwar Kumar showing elevational distribution patterns. This illustration is reproduced from the Uttarakhand Biosphere Reserve Report document submitted by Virendra Kumar to India’s Ministry of Environment and Forests.

like an amphora without the side handles; there was a long, thin neck toward the upper middle and higher elevations, and a wide bulge toward the lower middle elevations, which gradually tapered toward the lower elevations. I had absolutely no idea of what Yogesh was trying to do, but he showed that computer printout to numerous visitors to the laboratory for several days. He explained to me that bird species were not uniformly distributed along the elevational gradient, but there were more species at the lower middle elevations as compared with the low and high Himalayan altitudes. The Ministry of Environment and Forests published the report in mid1980s that contained this bird elevational distribution plot. Yogesh’s ideas and work on elevational patterns of bird species richness in the early 1980s possibly predated any other work on the subject, or at least coincided with that of Rapoport’s thoughts on latitudinal patterns of mammals. It was much later that G. C. Stevens explained elevational patterns of species richness and named it as Rapoport’s rule and Rapoport’s elevational effect (Stevens 1992). Be that as it may, we religiously made these plots for numerous research reports on the Himalayan river basins, extending the

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analyses to mammals, plants, and other taxa. It never occurred to us to take these patterns seriously and publish the results. Unfortunate circumstances disallowed the publication of Yogesh’s endeavor and thus defrauded him of the priority to which he had a rightful claim. Regrets, however, have no place in science, and I appreciate this fact. Moreover, we are not the only ones to lose on the principle of priority. Years later, in the summer of 2005, I shared these repetitive graphic patterns with my friend Navjot Sodhi at the National University of Singapore, who looked interested and referred me to the work of Robert Colwell and his associates. The more patterns I saw in the published papers, the more devastated I felt for Yogesh. I wished my civil engineer friend had worked somewhere in North America or Europe—I am inclined to cautiously suggest that the location, institution, and company play a crucial role in realizing great contributions to science. Yogesh was by choice a freelancer in a poor laboratory in Delhi, and to his misfortune he had a novice like me for company. Imagine his sheet of paper had been waved at someone in a North American laboratory instead of at me; things could have been different. Who knows? The ecological world might have known this macroecological pattern as “Yogesh’s elevational rule.” I never spoke to Yogesh about it, and he cared little. He has dedicated his life to the rural mountain folk, and he continues even today to install turbines on small water channels to help generate cooperative electric power for villages in the Himalaya. He likes nothing better than to make the lives of the Himalayan people better and more comfortable. After I graduated, I was geared to understand the import of what I had been doing or was asked to do. Having read the major works of G. Ledyard Stebbins (he happened to have been one of VK’s Ph.D. thesis examiners) that were available in VK’s laboratory, I was beginning to make sense of the numbers that were falling in some kind of mathematical pattern. It was around that time I chanced upon the correlation that the less common or rare plant species had a lower chromosome number or were mostly diploid (cells with two pairs of homologous chromosomes). It all began with pure intuition, but I kept crunching the chromosome numbers on rare / endangered species. For the next decade or more this story lay buried inside me. Once I was convinced of the definite pattern, I began to seriously look at these numbers in the year 2000, but only for the rare and endangered species listed in the Indian Red Data Book. I had yet not thought of the polyploids (cells with more than two pairs of homologous chromosomes). I recall having mentioned it to VK in early 2002. After seeing what I had to show, he gently enquired, “What about polyploids and invasives? Are they related, too?” I didn’t have an answer, but it put me on the path that

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diverged from associating diploidy and endangerment to polyploidy and invasiveness in plant species. There was a definite correlation there as well. I was to show this correlation later in a series of publications through empirical and analytical studies (Pandit 2006; Pandit, Tan, and Bisht 2006; Pandit, Pocock, and Kunin 2011; Pandit, White, and Pocock 2014). Some five years back VK had retired after long service at the University of Delhi, but the old fox had yet again reminded me who the master was.

Rivers and Daughters I went on to complete my master’s degree at Garhwal University and later on my Ph.D. at the University of Delhi. My research on the endangered medicinal plant Coptis teeta, endemic to the Mishmi Hills in India’s remotest Himalayan state, Arunachal Pradesh, took nearly six years, and there were other costs besides time. Wandering in the Mishmi Hills for months altogether over those years meant being snatched away from the more convenient life of urban Delhi. Whatever had survived from those years of undergraduate study and the interregnum had to be set aside and perhaps forgotten so that I could embark on a new journey with a more focused aim. I have come to realize that serendipity is more regular in our lives than we might think. In the mid-1980s, India’s Ministry of Environment and Forests initiated a national project on the conservation biology of endangered species. One of VK’s close friends, C. R. Babu, at the Department of Botany of the University of Delhi, was one of the recipients of a major research grant under this national project. Of the two positions of junior research fellow available with Babu, I secured one via an interview. I had known Babu from my undergraduate days as a highly dedicated and respected teacher at the University of Delhi’s graduate school, so he was an obvious choice for me to join for a doctoral degree. After I joined Babu’s laboratory, I had to choose between one of the two eastern Himalayan Indian states. I could either pick Sikkim to work on the Himalayan poppies (Meconopsis spp.) or Arunachal Pradesh to work on Coptis teeta. Sikkim was not as much of a challenge as the wild and unknown Arunachal was, so I chose latter. Before I could begin to explore areas on the farthest northeastern frontier of India in search of my plant, Yogesh accepted an assignment with the state government of Meghalaya and moved to Shillong. Going to Shillong for me was a bit of detour as it was south of Brahmaputra. Dibang Valley of Arunachal Pradesh, where I was headed in search of Coptis teeta, was north of Assam, which constituted the catchment of the Dibang River, an important tributary of the mighty Brahmaputra. C. teeta, commonly

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known as Mishmi teeta, an endemic, endangered plant species of high medicinal value, was well-known to the world of commerce, but little was known about it scientifically except that its populations had severely dwindled in the wild due to overexploitation of its rhizomes. The pencil-thick rhizomes with a deep yellow interior and bright gold threadlike roots give the plant genus its common name—goldthread. Because I had little experience with that part of the country, Yogesh being in the vicinity was a great relief to me, all the more so because of the numerous stories I had heard about Arunachal Pradesh and its tribes. Yogesh thus re-entered my life and was to play a pivotal role in facilitating my research. Yogesh had a large bungalow to himself with a decent compound; he placed both at my disposal. I converted one of the rooms into a laboratory that housed my compound microscope, some chemicals and stains, and other minor equipment as well as some books and research reprints. Yogesh nearly took charge of my research, and he made all the logistic arrangements for my travels in the region. I also received help in the form of generous letters of recommendation and support from two of the senior-most bureaucrats of the northeastern region, Mrs. Pratibha Trivedi, the chief secretary of Meghalaya, and her erudite and scholarly husband Mr. Parimal Trivedi, who was the secretary of the Northeast Council. They were both good friends of VK as well as Yogesh, and I was fortunate to be received by them at their residence whenever I sought their support. Their letters of recommendation carried weight throughout northeast India and greatly facilitated my travels and interactions with officialdom, which otherwise could have been a tough assignment for a young graduate student from far-off Delhi. My first visit to the field around mid-January of 1986 was reconnaissance to get a feel for the northeast and touch base with as many contacts as I could, for there were inner line permits to be had from the state government, herbarium specimens to be located, and names of locations where one could find the plant species of interest to be identified. The next time, in early July that year, I headed straight to Arunachal Pradesh, completing the train journey in nearly three days. I deboarded the train at Tinsukhia in Assam and made enquiries about going to Roing, the district headquarters of Dibang Valley that would be my base camp. I was not carrying much luggage except for the not-so-big rucksack that stored my Leica compound microscope with its first-rate objectives and lenses, my sampling vials and plastic bottles filled with Carnoy’s solution and spirit, biological stains, a spirit lamp, a lighter, a couple of books, and a modest first aid kit. A sleeping bag tied to the rucksack was the compact gear that served me well in the field. Mercifully, this was before the advent of laptops, which could have

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Life in the Himalaya

complicated or hindered the course of my journeys among some of the still remotest and wildest areas of India and of the earth. From the train station at Tinsukhia I rode in a small van crowded to more than double its capacity, and after an awfully bumpy ride reached what was the ferry terminus. The van driver left me in the middle of a vast sandy floodplain around midnoon. “Sadiya Ghat,” he said, and hurried back. There was sand all around that made up the Brahmaputra river front, with the attendant sea of water coming briskly at us from the north. I caught a glimpse of some ramshackle huts that composed the local bazaar. It was warmly humid, and the air was heavy and salty, the sky a canvas of blue with a sprinkling of dense white clouds moving with some urgency, but no sign of any rain yet. A few men walked around on the wet sand without any ostensible purpose. As I approached the left bank of Brahmaputra, where I would take a ferry to the other side, I had little idea of how I would reach Roing, which was about 45 to 50 km farther north. I must have waited a lifetime, not knowing when the ferry would leave for the other bank. It was summer, and Brahmaputra seemed to be swelling by the hour. There was little to do but watch the deep, threatening waters flowing in front of my eyes, rather hastily carrying along considerable amounts of silt and uprooted vegetation. I watched large chunks of the sandy bank fall and disappear inside the river’s huge belly, as tiny air bubbles momentarily followed each collapse. The gradual disappearance of the banks and the widening of the channel during summer and the monsoon season is a characteristic feature of Brahmaputra. Ganga, in comparison, is more contained. I will tell more of the river’s story in later chapters, but suffice it to say here that the wayward nature of Brahmaputra must have made it impossible for the state apparatus to construct bridges and roads over it. For this reason alone, the north bank of Brahmaputra remained unexplored territory until recently. The extensively braided river isolated the Abor and Mishmi tribes living in its northern forested watersheds from the rest of the country, and very little scientific exploration was carried out there. Even the powerful British Empire left it untouched until the early twentieth century. As I stood watching the banks melt in the water to produce a milky soup, a deep chill went down my spine on remembering something I had read and heard about the challenges of this region. The District Gazetteers of the British era had been recommended to me as an authentic source of information on the Himalaya, and the Assam District Gazetteers had featured a terrifying account of Jack Needham’s camp in 1894—specifically, the Bordak massacre (see Allen 1905). It was a big relief that I was not

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headed toward Bordak, which was farther northwest of Sadiya, where I now stood on the slippery sands. The Bordak massacre took place in January 1894 when a British Indian Army expedition was dispatched to the areas farther north to punish the Abors, who had abducted some subjects under British territory and captured their boats in December 1893. The justification for the expedition was not uncommon for the then British Indian administration: “For thirty years, the behaviour of the Abors had been growing more and more insolent and overbearing” (see Army Intelligence Branch, India, 1907). The political officer stationed at Sadiya, a Mr. Needham, and a captain in the British Indian Army named Maxwell led the expedition to Damroh village. They decided to leave the bulk of their supplies at the Abor village of Bordak under some guard. After a week’s unsuccessful march, Needham, Maxwell, and the rest of the smaller regiment returned to find thirty-six of  their men murdered by the Abors and their supplies destroyed. In March  1911, another Abor attack killed Needham’s successor, Noel Williamson, at Rotung village. The tribal resistance did not last too long; later in the same year the English under the leadership of Major-General Hamilton Bower not only avenged their earlier fatalities but also crushed the Abors: “the surrounding villages razed” and “defences dismantled” (see Allen 1982, 197). British officers and commentators reserved their choicest epithets for the local tribes—“rude, wild looking, dirty, barbarous, uncouth, filthy, savages”—for their actions in defending their territory (see Allen 1982, 111), but they were quite sparing and generous toward their own countrymen’s brutal crimes against the Abors. But that was not my immediate concern. With the historical baggage in mind, my consternation was heightened by the fact that I had no idea about the place and the people I was venturing to work with for the next five odd years. Other than my letters of reference from the Trivedis to the district magistrate of Dibang Valley, I had absolutely no cover or safety net. I consoled myself that the times had enormously changed since those sad encounters with the British and that I was a fellow countryman, not a foreigner. So I was utterly surprised later to find out that things on the ground had not changed as much as I had thought—one had to be extremely careful and ever cautious not to put the wrong foot forward. Nonetheless, I would receive ample support and affection from the local Mishmis during my visits and period of study. By late in the afternoon, finally the ferry arrived at Sadiya Ghat. After a  minor commotion, everyone seemed to almost fall into the ferry’s bulky structure. There was hardly a need for this rush—there were fewer

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Life in the Himalaya

passengers than seats. In fact, more than half of the big ferry was empty; the collective memory of the horribly cramped minibus must have prompted this impulsive action. I managed a seat on a wooden plank all to myself and briefly talked to some fellow passengers in hopes of directions from the right bank onward. It took us a couple of hours to get to the other bank, for again we were in the middle of nowhere, with only abundant sand all around. Suddenly the situation changed for the best, as if by magic, and we were disembarking from the ferry. A bus from nowhere approached the ferry terminus, which was a damp sand bank, and soon all of us found ourselves inside the bus that would take us to Roing, the subdistrict headquarters of Dibang Valley. We arrived at Roing with night descending fast; after an hour and a half of darkness, I found myself standing lost at the bus stop. After some quick thinking and producing my letter, I somehow ended up at Circuit House, a place I felt was grand under the circumstances. This was to be my residence for the coming years as I traveled there at regular intervals for my research. The two outstanding gentlemen officers who made my research in the Mishmi Hills possible were Dr. Guriqbal Singh Jaiya, the district magistrate (DM) of the Indian Administrative Service, and Mr. J. L. Singh, the divisional forest officer (DFO) of the Indian Forest Service. Both officers offered me their homes, their vehicles, and their help in finding the guides, translators (known as local interpreters), gunmen, and workforce I needed in the field. Circuit House was located in the middle of the officers’ colony, which consisted of generously spaced bungalows, of which my gracious hosts and benefactors occupied one each at the two extremes. The DFO’s house was at the forest fringe, while the DM lived closer to the main road. Though it was abutted by official habitations on two sides, Circuit House was a desolate place—the only other soul on the premises besides me was the cook and caretaker, who departed at 8:30 each night. My first night at Roing was made memorable by the constant, very noisy calls in the wee hours of the morning of what I later learned were hoolock gibbons (Hoolock hoolock). An arboreal ape, the hoolock gibbon is distributed in China, Myanmar, and northeastern India. Recent taxonomic revisions have put the number of species at two—the western hoolock gibbon (H. hoolock) and the eastern hoolock (H. leuconedys). Initially the ruckus the gibbons created was quite a scare for me, but over time I saw more of them and found them completely harmless creatures. I came to like the characteristic white strip above their eyes and spent a lot of time watching (and more often hearing) them jump from one tree to another. The nearest plant population of Coptis teeta was over 50 km north of Roing at elevations above 2,500 m. After I had met with the district ad-

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ministration and forest officials at Roing and spent couple of days on preparation, I set out for Mayodia Pass (~2,600 m). DFO Singh spared the only jeep he had at that time for me to be driven as far as we could go. The motorable road ended about 5 km or so from Roing, barely crossing the Deopani River. Here, I would learn the first lesson of traveling safe in the Himalayan mountains and respecting the forces of Nature. As we were crossing the bridge, a magnificent view of several rows of mountains rose to my right, through which flowed the river. I got down, strutted to the left bank, and like an obligate romantic, hopped, skipped, and jumped over the half-submerged boulders. I quickly reached the middle of the river seeking a better view of the valley, descending step by step across the smooth, dipping mountain outlines, its floor washed by the crystal blue waters. I had barely clicked a couple of shots with my camera when a local middle-aged gentleman started to wave at me frantically. I ignored him initially, but then he shouted at us all, ordering my immediate return. I complied posthaste but wanted to find out what had agitated him. He burst out in laughter at the inquiry and mumbled something to the public interpreter accompanying me. Seeing that I was not amused, my interpreter explained, “He says that these Himalayan rivers are like daughters; you hardly realize before they have grown.” It was monsoon time, and the Mishmi gentleman had simply wanted me to value my life more than any romance I may have attached to hopping into a torrential Himalayan river. I have never forgotten his sound advice in all these years of traveling in the Himalaya, for native advice is sound advice—no book can ever teach you these unwritten laws of the land. This experience touched me deeply. Gratefully I took his rough hands with stubby fingers into mine and looked into his eyes without saying a word. The gentleman simply laughed aloud, but through his warm handshake hopefully transferred some wisdom to me. So much for the “savagery” of the “filthy” tribals, as numerous English travellers and political officers of the British Raj would have us believe (see Allen 1982). It was time for the jeep driver to be released; beyond that point, we had a long trek ahead of us. The road was rough, with pointed pebbles peeping out of the surface, for the torrential rains so common in this region had washed away the last remnants of soil and cementing material that had been pressed together by a road roller. We instead chose to walk on the shoulder, which was a tad muddy but softer nonetheless. As we marched along this recently cut mountain road, our left side was the mountainside, and on our right was an unending sea of lush vegetation. This was secondary scrub formed after the forest had been slashed and burned for agriculture, but was now abandoned. Thinly spread trees of Duabanga parviflora

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Life in the Himalaya

(=D. sonneratioides) stood tall with slender branches parallel to the ground, breaking the monotony of the boundless horizontal shrubbery of bamboo groves and the tree ferns. Wild bananas with glistening green foliage made a sizable contribution to the vegetation; their stout reddish-brown inflorescences created beautiful arcs with their tips hanging downward. As we ascended, the valley to our right became deeper and steeper, and the secondary scrub slowly gave way to dense tropical rainforest, filled with the ear-piercing sound of cicadas toward the late afternoon. I was attuned to the cicada’s song from my childhood memories. Most of the children in my village would catch cicadas by stealth then put them inside empty matchboxes to create a child’s personal “radio.” But there were too many of them here, and the noise from the forest on our right was far too shrill.

Mayodia Pass As we approached Mayodia Pass on a gentle upward slope, a stout goatlike animal crossed our path in a flash and leaped into the bamboo brakes to our right. I did not have time to observe its features well, except that it had a light brown coat with dark streaks that were denser toward the hind legs. This peculiar animal had an extended snout, like that of a goat, toward the distal nostril region but was more bovine near its proximal horns. By the time it had plunged into the bamboo thickets, I also realized it had almost nothing to show for a tail. “Takin,” said a voice from behind me. The Mishmi takin (Budorcas taxicolor taxicolor) is a fascinating animal—a sort of chimera, with characteristics that it seems to have inherited from both bovine and mountain goat ancestors. Although molecular phylogenies have shown the takin to be part of the subfamily that includes goats (Caprinae) rather than bison, sheep, or cattle (Bovinae), its appearance defies that classification (see Arif et al. 2012; Driscoll 2014). The takin is threatened because its habitat across the distribution range has shrunk, and the animal has been hunted in the wild for a long time. There is, however, some good news for the animal as well as conservationists. The breeding program of Mishmi takin at the Scottish Highland Wildlife Park has borne fruit, with calves being born in 2008 and April 2014, which has allowed further study of this fascinating animal (Fig. p.2). I did not manage to capture the takin with my camera in 1986, but that I had had a darshan (auspicious sight) of this lovely, endangered, endemic species was reward enough. As someone interested in genetics and speciation, I understand that such remarkably unique life forms can reveal important secrets about evolutionary processes and pathways. As an endemic Himalayan animal and

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figure p.2. A Mishmi takin (Budorcas taxicolor taxicolor) with calf at the Scottish Highland Wildlife Park where a successful breeding program of this fascinating animal is now set to reintroduce the species to its natural habitat and assist in building up its population in nature. Photo credit: Mrs Jan Morse, RZSS Highland Wildlife Park.

in view of the poor fossil record of the Caprinae, the Mishmi takin is a potential candidate for phylogenetic reconstruction of this group that could further our understanding of the Himalayan formation on one hand and the evolutionary divergence of its biota on the other. Mayodia Pass, by Himalayan standards, is at a lower elevation (~2,600 m), and it marks the watershed boundary between the Deopani and Ithun Rivers, both tributaries of Dibang River. We reached Mayodia late in the evening and camped a kilometer or so ahead after a gentle descent. The slope to our left was open and almost undulating, with abandoned cultivated fields now completely overtaken by a mat of green grass, interspersed with numerous old tree stumps popping out of the ground. Beside this grassy glade to the right side of the road were a couple of bamboo huts that housed casual laborers employed by India’s Border Roads Organization, which is supervised by officers drawn from Indian Army’s Corps of Engineers and General Reserve Engineering Force (GREF).

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For any Himalayan traveler in India, the BRO and GREF are ubiquitous and welcome encounters in the less frequented areas. These personnel are always ready to help in terms of providing shelter, food, and guidance. The only disconcerting part of this road pioneering enterprise was the ruthless chopping of trees for use as fuel to melt bitumen. A year or so later when the road became drivable (treacherously), every half a kilometer or so I observed temporary fireplaces full of partially burnt logs; some of the finest rhododendrons had been harvested from the neighboring pristine oldgrowth oak-rhododendron forest. But I could not begrudge these road construction laborers their actions, for what other way did they have to carry out their job? Building roads deeper into the Himalaya for better quality of life for the human communities and the attendant consequences thereof shall always remain an ecological dilemma. The answers are not easy. Mayodia Pass today is a thoroughfare of sorts, conveying hundreds of men and women, visitors and business establishments setting up hydropower plants on the Dibang River. Humans and machines are carving new homes for themselves in this remote, pristine land of the rising sun. What about the old oak, the rhododendron, Coptis teeta, and the brisk Mishmi takin? The takin, which had disappeared in a flash from our sight, may soon vanish from the land of its birth and per force only reside in Scottish Highland Wildlife Park far from home. A little ahead of the pass was the small GREF colony to our right. Standing detached from others was a rather large bamboo shed owned by a woman laborer of Nepalese origin. She had given up her “labourey,” as she put it, a year ago and had become an entrepreneur of sorts. She had converted her shack into a full-fledged hotel, which at different times of the day and night became a restaurant, bar, resting place, teashop, and gossip center. I remember her charming demeanor reinforced by the impish look of her kohl-lined eyes; her face supported a liberal smile overarched by a large red bindi on her forehead. As I became a regular visitor over the next couple of years, she became my gracious hostess in summer rains and winter alike. She accepted whatever remunerations we paid her for the numerous breakfasts, packed lunches, and dinners. After the completion of my Ph.D. program, as I was set to publish my research work, not a word would be written about her contributions that had made it possible for me to work in such inhospitable conditions, living a life full of privations. I took shelter there in a small, dilapidated hut, which my companions repaired to habitable condition in short order. For an entrance, it had a door made of leafy bamboo branches tied together in the shape of a fence. A makeshift bed of tender bamboo branches was also prepared on which

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figure  p.3. a–c. Coptis teeta rhizomes and the plant. (a, b) The rhizomes and roots of C. teeta show the characteristic golden color that gives the genus its common name, goldthread. (c) A specimen of the C. teeta plant. (d) The saprophyte Monotropa uniflora, which shares the same habitat on the forest floor as C. teeta. Photographs © Maharaj K. Pandit.

I spread my long-term companion—the sleeping bag—and rested. I woke up early the next morning to the insistent baying of a dog. After an early breakfast, we left for the forest in search of the goldthread. A gentle morning breeze and a clear sky made a perfect start to our day. We entered the forest near a small gap created several years before by the local Forest Department officials in view of establishing a nursery for growing Coptis teeta and aiding in situ conservation efforts. The forest stood in its pristine glory, characterized by a dense canopy formed by huge old trees of rhododendron and oak. Even at daybreak little sunlight reached the forest floor, whose partially decomposed leaf litter and twigs buried beneath a thick layer of soft spongy wet humus had a cushion-like feel. The softness of the forest floor was heightened by a generous ground cover of mosses growing on decaying logs, fallen branches, and small rocks. My continuous gaze on the ground in search of Coptis led me to my first sighting of the curious-looking saprophyte Monotropa uniflora, nestled among mosses firmly settled on the decomposing foliage (Fig. p.3). The exceptional appearance of M. uniflora is best described as a distinctive waxy, translucent, white stem topped by a similar drowsy singular flower with five to six petals (whose rims had turned black), tightly overlapping around a conspicuous pink or orange whorl of stamens. I located a group of four odd plants, all of 10 to 12 cm high, cozying up to each other in a dark cold home. The plant’s various common names—ghost plant, or corpse plant—seem misnomers at best and an injustice to its fragile body at worst. By no stretch of imagination can it be termed a ghost or corpse, notwithstanding its full body of white robes. Indian pipe seems

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to be a more fitting description. The Indian pipe fascinated the poet Emily Dickinson for the obvious symbolism it conveys: White as an Indian Pipe Red as a Cardinal Flower Fabulous as a Moon at Noon February Hour—

Later, when I visited Emily Dickinson’s memorial in Amherst, I learned from the knowledgeable guide that the first edition of her book of poems, published posthumously, bore the Indian pipe on its cover. After carefully scanning the forest floor, we located Coptis teeta plants an hour later, mostly hidden among the larger ferns. There was nothing obvious to suggest that someone had transplanted them, but the regularity of their occurrence in the forest patch did point to some human intervention. It took me a while to differentiate Coptis from some of the neighboring ferns because of the remarkable similarity of its leaves (Fig. p.3). I took notes about the goldthread as well as of the dense forest, which occupied me all morning. The cool mist closed in on us and enveloped the ivy (Hedera nepalensis) climbing the tallest of the trees in the forest. We hurried to get out of the boggy ground and sought a clear area with more light. Before we even realized it was approaching, a heavy downpour drenched us to the bone. Only a few days before, the forest in the valley below had been unbearably hot; 50 km higher, the forest was dripping in a cold mist and rain. Frank Kingdon Ward aptly described this eastern Himalayan temperate forest phenomenon as “the trees stand with their heads in a cool Turkish bath and their toes in a wet sponge” (Kingdon Ward 1974, 128). We hurried to our huts, a gentle half-hour walk back from the forest. The weather broke suddenly; the sunrays sharpened after the rains made our walk back prickly. I ventured toward the shaded, cooler area of the road to spare myself the irritating discomfort. About a quarter of an hour into the trip back, we met a princely band of half a dozen snakes emerging from the forest and crossing the road; two brightly colored serpents led the band. Startled, we stopped, only to find a couple of them basking in the sun near the forest clearing. I had not seen so many snakes together in a long time. I recalled having had this experience regularly while on my way to senior school during summers in Kashmir, at a small abandoned graveyard in Mir village close to the world-famous Neolithic archaeological site Gufkral of Tral area in southern Kashmir. There were more surprises in store for me that day. In the afternoon, as we sat to have our lunch, I desired to change to drier clothes. As I removed

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my shoes, I was horrified to see blood oozing out of my ankle and a dark brown leech latched there. Very soon I would have to remove at least five or six of them that had traveled all over the place inside my clothes, but the most gruesome was the one that made its way to my right inner thigh. I cringe at seeing blood; the wise men with me quickly assembled and offered as many prescriptions as they could think of. But the one I settled for was a combo pack—dried, coarsely ground tobacco leaves mixed with a good helping of common salt. On my subsequent trips into the forest I would sprinkle the tobacco and salt mixture inside my shoes at the time of departure, with generous amounts over the laced area of my shoes. However, I wanted to be doubly sure: without revealing my plan to anyone else, I packed my feet in polythene bags (meant for collecting plant material) pulled up slightly higher than my ankles, and I hid the entire gear under long socks. That day, when we returned in the late afternoon the expectant onlookers wanted to see how their remedy had fared. Happily, there was no blood: I had squarely beaten the leeches of Mayodia. But I could not look at my feet for at least three to four hours—they had turned into unfamiliar puckered white appendages. Afterward I sort of felt guilty for denying the leaches of Mayodia forest their sustenance. This time around I was too early to collect mature seeds for seed germination experiments of Coptis teeta and too late to collect young flower buds for cytogenetic and pollen analysis, but I was absolutely in time for the continuation of my lifelong learning about the Himalaya. In due course, I began to understand the story of the endangerment of C. teeta, and how even in the absence of a human threat the species was struggling to survive due to intrinsic genetic bottlenecks—mutations, loss of sex, and the failure to build up a viable population resulting from a number of impediments before and after fertilization (Pandit and Babu 1993, 1998, 2000, 2003). The illegal trade in Coptis rhizomes, which fetched a good price on the market, aggravated the problem of its dwindling population size. Yet somewhere deep inside me, I felt that my tryst with C. teeta was part of a much larger enterprise than my graduate thesis and research papers. DM Jaiya, DFO Singh, Gunman Baruah, the numerous porters, the public interpreter, the Mishmi wise man by the river, and the gracious Nepalese lady by the road had all significantly contributed to whatever success I achieved, although there was no way to include them in the final analysis. Instead, they were relegated to an acknowledgment page in my doctoral dissertation, which they never got to see. Perhaps most academic work is like that, and there is no escape from this burden of debt that most scholars must carry to their graves. When I returned from my first visit to the Mishmi hills, there was little to show in terms of scientific data, but my Himalayan education had made

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a fascinating beginning. My encounters with the Brahmaputra River, the tribal cultures of northeast Himalaya, the kind administrators, the endangered plants, the changing elevational profile of the Himalayan vegetation, the forests and the wildlife, the small mercies of the mountain, and its men and women, all belonged to me. The memory built itself into a huge canvas from which I keep picking piece by piece to concentrate deeply on. But for now, I simply wanted to return home. The remarkable words of Lal Ded, the fourteenth-century Kashmiri mystic, come to my mind: With an unspun thread, I pull My boat across the ocean. Pray the Almighty listen And takes me safely across. Like the water absorbed In unbaked pots My heart yearns— I want to go home.

Arunachal Pradesh and the Mishmi hills were my home for the next five years, with intermittent travels back and forth to Delhi for analysis of the research materials and the data in my laboratory. This eventful Himalayan sojourn, though challenging in many ways, set me on the path to a lifelong association with Himalayan biodiversity, rivers, people, and the mountains themselves. My academic career so far has been principally dedicated to these mountains, and what a great blessing it has been to work in one of the most beautiful spaces on Earth, where science, art, culture, and the divine encounter each other on a daily basis. I see my humble offering on the pages that follow as akin to a pebble that undergoes continuous chiseling by the torrents in an effort to attain a dignified form, hopeful that one day it would be worthy of a tiny corner in the great temple of Himalayan scholarship.

I NATU RAL PHASE

chapter one

The Himalayan Memoir Om mani padme hum. — Buddhist Prayer

The Lure of the Mountain “The Himalaya is us and we are the Himalaya”—this is an expression one often hears on Himalayan journeys. The people and cultures that inhabit the Himalaya and its neighborhood not only revere and deify the Himalaya, but also see it as the mainstay of their existence. The Himalaya predates the arrival of humans on Earth, but its memoir forms an integral part of the shared inheritance of large parts of Asia. The final phase of the Himalaya’s elevational rise occurred toward the end of Pleistocene after humans had arrived on the scene. The grand spectacle that unfolded before many a generation of our ancestors’ eyes must have been an edifying experience for the mind. Hindus often speak of such experience in terms of ananda, which presages a boundless sense of fulfillment and peace, conveying much more than joy and bliss. The massive rock that stands high above the ground is not merely a conglomeration of stone to the vast humanity, irrespective of color, creed, faith, and nationality, but a living magnet that pulls the weak and the strong alike toward itself. The Himalaya’s unequivocal exhortation goes beyond the simple description of its scenic beauty—the sparkling snowfields, the floral tapestry and fragrance, the diversity of life and its colors. The Himalayan visitor never fails to comprehend the mountain in a manner that transcends the physical beauty of the rock and the varied life it harbors. Something that

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figure  1.1. Nanda Devi peak (7,816 m), the second-highest peak in India. Located in Uttarakhand state in the western Himalaya, both the mountain and the goddess it is named for are greatly revered by the Hindus. The mountain attracts a large number of mountaineers each year. Photograph © Maharaj K. Pandit.

elevates the experience to a deeper understanding of life is invariably expressed. In this chapter, I explore the human celebration of the Himalaya’s grandeur, which is entrenched in the lore and legend of the mountain. I discuss the intertwined and complex relationship of human cultures and beliefs, and the Himalaya. The narrative traces and reflects on the deep sense of reverence and awe that for ages has manifested in the human exploration of the mountain to seek inner peace, deliverance from worldly suffering, and also the sources of the magnificent life-sustaining rivers. The Himalayan legend abounds in symbols that underpin man’s abiding faith in the sacredness and divinity of the mountain. Willi Unsoeld, one of the first Americans to scale Mount Everest in 1963, was so enthralled by the divine pull of Nanda Devi Mountain (7,816 m) in Uttarakhand Himalaya that he named his daughter after it and the presiding deity of the mountain, who goes by the same name (Fig. 1.1). Nanda Devi Unsoeld was a proficient mountaineer, who accompanied her father on many mountaineering expeditions. Sadly, during one such expedition to Nanda Devi, Nanda Devi Unsoeld, aged twenty-two, died on September 8, 1976. She had gone against the advice of the accompanying team physician, Dr. James States, who had asked her to descend to a lower camp. Nanda Devi was a

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wildlife biology major, and she had developed a great interest in the conservation of endangered species such as the “cats of the East” (Sharma 1976). Even though she was averse to mountain climbing as a full-time vocation, “she felt almost mystical about the climb she was about to undertake.” Before setting off for what turned out to be her last climb, she told an interviewer, “I can’t describe it, but there is something within me about this mountain ever since I was born” (Sharma 1976). Willi Unsoeld buried his daughter around Camp IV at 7,300 m under the snows of her namesake mountain. There is no way to verify whether Willi Unsoeld had known that, in Garhwal Himalaya, Nanda is metaphorically used for daughters. I was caught by surprise some years ago when I heard my wife Rachna’s grandmother address her as Nanda. Stories of supreme sacrifice during pilgrimages in the Himalaya are not uncommon. For instance, on the famed pilgrimage to Amarnath Cave in the Kashmir Valley, which is dedicated to Lord Shiva (one of the highest gods in Hinduism and the destroyer or transformer aspect of the BrahmaVishnu-Mahesh trinity), we have heard stories of ascetics and common men in the past rolling down the mountain or jumping to their death as penance to attain moksha (salvation). Likewise, on the route of the Raj Jat Yatra pilgrimage in the Chamoli Garhwal region of Uttarakhand Himalaya, pilgrims in the past have been known to jump from the cliffs of Junargali (death alley) to attain deliverance from the sufferings of this world and achieve moksha (Alter 2014, 110). Raj Jat Yatra is a 280-km journey along the Pindar River that is undertaken every twelve years from the villages of Kansua and Nauti to an alpine lake, Rupkund / Shila Samudra, located at 5,000 m, to celebrate the glory of the goddess Nanda Devi. Variously referred to as “performing bhairav” or the “bhairav jump” in Kashmir and Uttarakhand Himalaya, respectively, the undertaking is associated with the destructive nature of Shiva, illustrating annihilation. Yet another demonstration of the ultimate sacrifice for attaining salvation can be found in the Jain religion. According to Jain scriptures, Rishabdev, the first of the twenty-four Tirthankara, went on a pilgrimage to Mount Kailash for santhara (fasting until death) and is believed to have achieved nirvana (salvation). Georg Bühler, in his book On the Origin of the Indian Brahma Alphabet, refers to several Indian texts including Mahabharata where references are made to the practice of religious teachers inciting their followers to commit suicide for rewards in the next birth (Bühler 1898). The religious teachers recommended death to ascetics, kings, and others by starvation, jumping from precipices, and voluntary cremation, and Bühler contends that this practice continued even into the nineteenth century (Bühler 1898, 12). He explains, however, that the majority of

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Brahminical teachers and Buddhists have strongly disapproved of committing suicide. Whether such practices are archaic, irrational, and a result of ignorance is difficult to judge. On October 27, 2015, a well-educated Australian couple, Peter and Patricia Shaw, both eighty-seven years old, ended their lives under a suicide pact. The couple called it the “Big Sleep” and claimed that there were thousands who planned to follow them. By their own admission Shaws were “mostly not religious, sensible, mature, perfectly in control, good and responsible citizens” (Donelly 2015). Human beings, irrespective of time and space, follow trajectories of thought that could be dubbed irrational, but that may not be the final word on their actions. Bhairav, santhara, and the big sleep may be separated by thousands of years and kilometers, yet such thoughts occupy space in the human mind. The scientific narrative around the mountain appears to be as exalted as the mystical tale. Peter Molnar, a well-known geoscientist, suggests that mountains played a key role in the evolution of Homo sapiens (Molnar 1990). He argues that the formation and rise of mountains posed a formidable challenge to “adventurous hominids” and brought out the best thinking and fittest physiques among them. Molnar draws our attention to various human cultures around the world that exhibit immense respect and affection for mountains, citing examples of Zeus, Olympians, and Mount Olympus in the West, and Shiva, Hindus, and the Himalaya in the East. He likens mountain cultures of the past to the habitations of “higher beings” in sharp contrast to “others who preferred to laze at home in the lowlands where, granted, life was easy, but unchallenging” (Molnar 1990). What role the Himalaya has played in the evolution and developmental history of human race is not well researched, but its role in promoting cultural vicariance is amply discernable. Vicariance refers to the evolutionary process by which new species and diversity are formed as a result of fragmentation of a continuous range of an animal or plant species due to a physical or biotic barrier. This ecological principle also appears to have shaped the rich cultural diversity of human communities in the Himalaya. Anthropologist Gerald D. Berreman opined that variations in topography and climate necessitated cultural adaptations and therefore promoted ethnographic diversity (Berreman 1963). A summary of the cultural anthropology and ethnography of the Himalaya and the Tibetan Plateau shows that approximately 97  percent of the 278 tribes live in the vastly dissected morphological landscape of the southern face of the Himalaya, while only eight tribes inhabit nearly the entire Plateau region from east to west (see Bisht and Bankoti 2004). Therefore, the southern Himalayan slopes, with their complex topography, numerous valleys carved out by tectonic events, and huge network of rivers, have

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witnessed a vertical human cultural diversification compared with the horizontal uniformity of the northern Tibetan Plateau. There is evidence that through Paleolithic times the tectonically driven topographic complexity ensured the availability of water, varied food sources, and other resources important for survival (Force and McFadgen 2012). The authors suggest that active tectonics spurred the swiftness of cultural change, promoting the advance of human cultural complexity.

Romancing Moksha The most remarkable account of the Himalaya, the synthesis of a scientific and spiritual journey, must be Peter Matthiessen’s The Snow Leopard (1978). This narrative describes the author’s account of a field expedition to the remote mountains of Nepal in 1973 led by the famous biologist George Schaller, who was researching Himalayan blue sheep and the enigmatic snow leopard. Matthiessen’s account is a lyrical mix of Himalayan biology and concurrent reflective and spiritual transformation, a journey across disciplines. Pilgrimages to the Himalaya are indisputably undertaken in the belief that the journey itself is cleansing for the pilgrim’s soul. The words of Bruce Chatwin, the noted English travel writer and novelist, appear so apt: “My God is the God of Walkers. If you walk hard enough, you probably don’t need any other God” (1977, 35). One of the toughest as well as the most sacred journeys, performed for thousands of years in the Himalaya, is the pilgrimage to KailashManasarovar. The lore and legend of Kailash surpasses any other spiritual narrative in the history of mankind. Long before any historian or geographer could script a story, a large part of Asia flocked to Kailash-Manasarovar for a collective spiritual carnival—physically or mentally. Mount Kailash embodies the shared faith of a large number of Asians. To a Hindu, the mountain remains the eternal seat of Shiva and his consort Parvati. To a Jain, the mountain Ashtapada (eight steps) is the site where Rishabdev or Adinath Bhagavan attained moksha. To a Bodh (Buddhist), Kailash represents the triumph of yogi Milarepa over Naro Bonchung, a holy man in the pre-Buddhist Tibetan Bön tradition. To a Bön, the region is the seat of spiritual power (Huber and Rigzin 1999). The quintessential Kailash story invariably recapitulates the two versions of the characteristic marking—a vertical gouge—on the southern face of Kailash. This legend seems to have survived thousands of years without a shred of religious conflict. Hindus believe the characteristic gash cutting across the horizontal layers of the mountain forms a swastika—an ancient

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Hindu symbol of good luck and auspiciousness. Buddhists ascribe the gash to the fall of Naro-Bonchung’s damaru or damru (a small two-headed drum resembling an hour-glass) during a fight with Milarepa, who defeated him in a duel to occupy the holy seat of Kailash. Bonchung had to contend with a smaller throne, which Milarepa magnanimously offered him on a nearby hill as his abode. Hindus, Bodhs, and Bons for centuries have believed that Kailash was the pivot or the handle of the earth and that the major rivers of this vast region had their sources in this divine land. Indeed, there is considerable evidence that the region of Kailash-Manasarovar holds the key to the water resources of south and southeast Asia. Between hard rock and soft emotions, and between treacherous forces and life-sustaining elements lies the essence of Asia’s collective memory of the Himalaya. Kailash-Manasarovar is the center of this memory to which the devout and agnostic, king and commoner, mighty and meek turn for succor and solace of the spirit. This collective memory of Asia—the legend of Kailash that symbolizes the Himalaya—is best described by the British author Charles Allen: “And for more than two thousand years it has been the lodestone—the all but unattainable goal—that draws toward itself all the devotional cults that seek the attainment of bliss through self-sacrifice, austerity and penance. It is the greatest and hardest of all earthly pilgrimages” (Allen 1982, 29). The Himalaya epitomizes the spiritual home for the believer wherever he or she was born. For the resident it is an abode of prayer and for the visitor a journey to salvation. For many like James Ramsey Ullman, the American mountaineer and writer, the mountains hold the ultimate wisdom, for when a man strives for something “beyond his grasp it is a battle worth the winning save that against his own ignorance and fear” (Ullman 1954). The Himalaya played the key role of bridge in the expansion of Buddhism from the Gangetic Plains of northern India to Tibet and China in the far north, to Japan in the northeast, and to nations across the southeast Asian region. It is reasonable to suggest that the predominant Indian influence on the art and culture of the Tibetan region dates back at least 1,300 years, and the Himalaya played a significant role in bridging the two cultures. In the absence of a proper written script, the folklore of Tibet remained shrouded in mystery until the early seventh century, when the Tibetan Dharma King of the gYar lung dynasty, Srong btsan Sgampo, sent his emissary, Thon mi Sambhota, to India to learn Sanskrit and explore the use of the Indian Devanagari script in Tibetan works (Cabezón and Jackson 1996, 13). The king’s decision may have been guided by the fact that Buddha was an Indian native and by the great strides made in philosophy

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by numerous India scholars whose reputation had traveled across the mountain. The spread of Buddhism from the northern Indian plains across the Himalaya to Tibet and China greatly influenced Tibetan literature. Some scholars refer to this as Tibet’s Indianization, as compared with the Chinese influence, which is described as distant at best (Cabezón and Jackson 1996, 14–16). That the original texts of Buddhism were written in Sanskrit and that the origins of Tibetan script lie in Devanagri testify to the significant impact of India on Tibet and therefore the historical interest of India in the affairs of Tibet. The transmission of knowledge and learning by oral training, which was prevalent in Tibet in the past, typically belongs to the Indian tradition of Shruti (śruti) and Smriti (smŗiti). Shruti in Sanskrit means “listening,” and it involves direct revelation from the one who knows or possesses the knowledge; therefore, the teacher must have seen, observed, and or experienced what is being described. Buddhists in the past followed the Vedic model of oral tradition for learning important texts, but they differed from the Hindus in their emphasis on not only memorizing the material but also in understanding it. Buddhists also could give up the practice of reciting once they thought that they had attained salvation (Anālayo 2009). In the Hindu tradition, ancient texts such as the Vedas constitute Shruti. Many scholars of the East and the West have argued that originally the Vedas were not in written form—not for want of the means of recording them, but to emphasize proper sound. This is an extension of the concept of Nãda-Brahman (God as sound consciousness, or God as divine sound) (Beck 1995, xiv). In the his preface to Guy Beck’s Sonic Theology: Hinduism and Sacred Sound, Fredrick Mathewson Denny writes, “Probably no religion has had as central a place for sacred sound as Hinduism” (Beck 1995, ix). Beck, in turn, proclaims that in Hinduism the transmission of sacred power and authority rests with the oral word, that the written form is seen as worthless and even prohibited (Beck 1995, 1). The author quotes a verse from one of the sacred texts of Hindus, Parama-Samhita 6.2–4, which articulates, “It is by mantra that God is drawn to you. It is by mantra that He is released. By secret utterance these are mantras, and therefore these are not to be published. Their form is not to be written and their features not to be described” (Beck 1995, 1). Smriti, on the other hand, relates to the remembering of events and experiences, and the retelling of something that is remembered. It is thus a recollection, mostly based on the memory of classical texts. In that sense, it is an elaboration, explanation, interpretation, and clarification of the primary

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revelation (Grimes, Mittal, and Thursby 2006, 35–36). The later texts or Dharamasutras, and epics such as Ramayana and Mahabharata, the Puranas, and the codes of Manu are all Smritis. This important aspect of orality and aurality is emphasized in Buddhist religious traditions, which are central to the Tibetan identity as well as a link to many ancient Indian traditions and beliefs. Most importantly, at the heart of this discussion on Shruti and Smriti tradition lies the all-important accomplishment of liberation or moksha. This tenet was, is, and will remain the fulcrum of Hindu and Buddhist religions and philosophies, which flourished in the Indian plains and spread to neighboring regions. The Himalaya played a central role in the progression of moksha or nirvana as a dominant cultural metaphor in the Indian subcontinent. Tibetan literature itself shows a strong Indian influence. And, although China influenced Tibetan food, art, and printing, India inspired many of the important literary and cultural elements of Tibetan civilization, including its script (Cabezón and Jackson 1996). These Indian and Tibetan cultural linkages predate business or political connections between the two.

Pilgrimage as Path to Salvation With the first arrival of humans in the Himalaya, pilgrimages began as well. How else do we explain the preponderance of Hindu and Buddhist shrines dating back 2,000 to 2,500 years or more across the Himalaya? The residents of and visitors to the Himalaya appear to resolve the tension between the munificent and the perilous faces of the mountain through a process of sacredness that leaves little scope for doubt or debate. Purely in terms of the folklore, the tradition of walking or wandering goes back to Lord Shiva, who is believed to be the presiding deity of Mount Kailas by the Hindu tradition. The other wanderer in the history of this region was Buddha, as he became a Bhikhshu (mendicant). Hindu texts are full of appreciation for those who wander, and this mode of life even now is not looked down upon by the Indian society. Interestingly, there is a conspicuous interplay of images going back and forth between believers of Shiva and Buddha, the two dominant divine and spiritual symbols of the Himalayan region and beyond. Even though humans do not appear to have traveled north into the Himalaya upon their first arrival from Africa via western Asia, ultimately they did so. What reasons were there for humans to travel so deep into the Himalaya, crossing vast tracts of dense forests, rivers, and inhospitable

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mountains? This cannot be explained without speculation. Deducing answers from simple theory of human migration—humans move in search of abundant cultivable or harvestable land and food—the long arduous journeys into the Himalayan lands made little sense. Clearly, both cultivable land and food steadily decline with increasing elevation, but the reverse is true for the sacred abodes. Moreover, there seems little scope in these uncongenial environs for economic or political reasons that might drive travelers. It is logical to assume that sheer adventure and search for the divine pushed and pulled humans up the mountains against all odds. The predilection of the human mind to search for the unknown perhaps stimulated them to explore it among the raw forces of nature; the mountains offered themselves as the best candidates for such a challenge. Besides the spread of Buddhism, the cultural linkages between India and China date back to the first millennium, and human exchanges via the Himalaya ranged among “science, mathematics, literature, linguistics, architecture, medicine, and music” (Sen 2004). According to European historians the “purposeful travel” across the Himalaya began with William Moorcroft in 1812, who was entrusted by the East India Company to explore the better breeds of horse in Turkistan in Central Asia for domestication in India, perhaps for their cavalry. Sadly for his sponsors, Moorcroft returned only with some cashmere wool, and his geographic exploits hardly interested the company (Moorcroft and Trebeck 1841, xvii–xviii). Subsequent travels undertaken by several European explorers to study natural history, collect animal and plant specimens, and pursue geographic and military adventures have enormously furthered our understanding of the Himalaya and the life it harbors. The only point that needs to be made here is the way travel or journeying was perceived in the ancient Indo-Tibetan tradition vis-à-vis the Western one: the aim of one was almost purposeless, seeking intangible gains such as self-purification and moksha; the other was a purposeful attainment of material gains and knowledge for business and commerce.

The Temple Mountain In the Indo-Tibetan tradition, journeys were performed both to accept the challenge of the mountain and to pay obeisance to it by way of building replicas of the mountain itself. A well-known practice of travelers in the Himalaya is to construct structures that resemble the omnipresent mountain in its miniature form. A cairn is one such symbol, which depending on the site could be built using eight to ten stone boulders stacked one upon

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another. These innocuous, but hugely symbolic structures are commonplace around mountain passes or at high elevations. Building cairns is perhaps a Tibetan tradition or a cultural relic from farther north in Mongolia. Purely from a utilitarian perspective, the cairns act as milestones in uninhabited places to guide those who may follow and to ensure that no one becomes lost on the return journey. Beyond the logic, however, are they a practice humans use to pay tribute to the mountain? Or is it merely an aesthetic curiosity, to declare to the mountain that I can make you? Or are they an outpouring of anxiety, of the fear humans may have of the gigantic mountain? Whatever the reason, humans have expressed their awe for the Himalaya in several ways. One such human endeavor took the form of the temples across the Himalaya—the architectural simulations of a mountain. Hindus, predominantly occupying the Himalaya’s southern face, built temples that more or less emulate the triangular or pyramidal geometry symbolizing the mountain. Michael Meister has reflected on the pyramidal typology of the Himalayan temples “most typically in Kashmir”: “The metaphor of temple as mountain runs throughout India’s traditions of building . . . the temple at Masrur, beyond all others from the Indian subcontinent, provides the antecedent and conceptual model for the great ‘temple-mountains’ of Cambodia soon to be built by kings in southeast Asia” (Meister 2006). This inference underscores the pervasive expression of a shared cultural memory of the mountain across Asia and southeast Asia. Meister stresses the point, quoting Fiona Kerlogue, that “fundamental to Hindu influence on art in South east Asia is the cosmological conception of the universe with Mount Meru (some suggest it to be the Kailash), the abode of the gods, at its center” (Kerlogue 2004; Meister 2006). Examples of mountaintemples as the most profound and fundamental architectural symbol from other cultures such as the “Egyptians pyramids, American teocalli (stepped pyramid) and Buddhist stupa” point to an inherent human impulse to reconstruct the mountain, thus revealing a yearning for “ascension” (Cirlot 2006, 16). Many scholars have expanded the mountain-temple metaphor to suggest that the temple not only represents the mountain, but also the cave—the sanctum sanctorum or Garbhgraha (womb), the residence of god (Kramrisch 1965, 171–174). Yet others see these temples symbolizing the mountaincave structure with elements of the Hindu mandala representation, which uses geometric drawing to illustrate “the squaring of the circle,” while also depicting the effort and desire of humans to move from the mountain peak into the central cave—a journey from the outside into the inside (see Cirlot 2006, 16).

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Purely from a structural point of view, Hindu temples and Buddhist monasteries reflect their immediate geography. Buddhist monasteries consist of one or many rectangular sections, with a flat roof or several tiered flat roofs; therefore, in many respects, they are representations of the relative flatness of the Tibetan Plateau. One invariably finds in these monasteries a horn-shaped structure on the roof in the center of the uppermost tier, most likely signifying Mount Kailash in the middle of a plateau. Humanity, therefore, finds creative meaning in replicating nature and natural forces, and the temple is an expression of the human desire to attain the ultimate goal— moksha (see Kramrisch 1965, 10).

Rivers of Folklore The name Himalaya is from the Sanskrit for the abode of snow; the vast glacier fields it harbors make it evident why it is also sometimes referred to as the Third Pole. These glaciers constitute a prodigious hydrological estate, an extraordinary source of perennial waters that stream down as complex river systems, flowing into the plains of the Indian subcontinent in the south and from the Tibetan highlands into east Tibet and southeast China. The criticality of Himalayan rivers in the lives of south and southeast Asian communities cannot be overemphasized. The Himalayan region constitutes the origin of some of the world’s major rivers: the Ganga, Brahmaputra, Sind (Indus), Irrawaddy, Salween, Mekong, Yangtze, and Yellow, which support an attendant population of nearly 1.5 billion people. The banks of these Himalayan rivers from time immemorial have been active centers of thriving civilization, spirituality, scholarly debate, and writing. The Indian epic Bhagavad Gita is believed to have been composed on the tranquil banks of one such Himalayan river, the Yamuna, the largest of the Himalayan tributaries of the river Ganga. The earliest written description of the Himalaya itself is contained in Kumarsambhava, the epic poem by Kalidasa. The renowned fifth-century poet described the grandeur of the Himalaya in terms of sanctuary of snows, clouds, and rain, and the home of rich minerals and birches whose bark “makes, when torn in strips / And streaked with mountain minerals that blend / To written words ’neath dainty finger-tips / Such dear love-letters as the fairies send. Whose organ-pipes are stems of bamboo . . .” (Ryder 1928). The poet also defined the Himalaya as the “measuring rod of the earth. . . . Sinks to the eastern and the western sea” as well as its “roof and refuge.” Nearly sixteen centuries later, satellite images have made these appellations from the poet’s imagination seem more rational than fanciful.

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The Himalaya spans over the earth like wings on a bird, from the east to the west. As defined by Kalidasa, it is “the mountain on earth that spans the two seas in the east and the west.” The easternmost flank of the Himalaya through the Arakan-Yoma ranges submerges into the Bay of Bengal, traversing a long marine stretch to reappear in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands in whose southeastern neighborhood lies the Pacific Ocean. In the west, the Himalaya join the Hindu Kush and Suleiman ranges, which finally descend into the Arabian Sea. Bhagwat Saran Upadhyaya provides an authentic assessment of Kalidasa’s works in his famous treatise India in Kalidasa (Upadhyaya 1947). In this critical evaluation of Kalidasa’s geographic account of the Himalaya, Upadhyaya cautions that the western reach of the Himalaya up to the Arabian Sea may be a long shot, with the caveat “unless we accept the Hindu Kush and the Iranian plateau as forming part of the great range and thus touching the Arabian Sea.” The modern scientific opinion, based on satellite images, is not vastly different from Kalidasa’s description of the Himalaya in the fifth century if the mountain range is seen in continuity with other ranges to its west. Notwithstanding scholarly criticism of Kalidasa’s knowledge of geography, Upadhyaya restores our faith in the poet’s adequate understanding of his subject, albeit with some riders (Upadhyaya 1947). Therefore, the attempts of most Western historical geographers to hand over the title of “father of Indian geography” to James Rennell (1742–1830) are examples of the standard undermining of Indian historical accounts during the British Raj. It is fair to suggest that Kalidasa may have made mistakes in his description of India’s or Himalaya’s geography, but so did a number of geographers of India in eighteenth century and later. What is remarkable, however, is that the thirteen centuries that separate the two accounts, by any yardstick, favor Kalidasa’s sophisticated understanding of the science of geography. He did, after all, clearly state: “far in the north, Himalaya, the lord of the mountains, spanning the wide land from east to western sea.” Not only did he describe the Himalayan boundary nearly perfectly, Kalidasa provided a reasonably detailed account of India’s geographic extent (Upadhyaya 1947, 3). Charles Allen, in A Mountain in Tibet, records in great detail the several attempts of foreign explorers to unravel the mysteries of the Himalayan lands and the rivers (Allen 1982). Allen’s work is largely a Western historiographical account, based on the explorations of officers of the East India Company and the British Empire in the eighteen and nineteenth centuries, whose main goals were seeking the sources of the “great rivers of Asia.” Allen’s work essentially presumes that the pre-British history of the

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Himalaya was some sort of fact-fiction mixture, which he describes as “highly improbable oriental beliefs” (Allen 1982, 7). But fact or fiction, if the truth be told, Hindus had long known that the source of Ganga was Gaumukh, the terminus of the Gangotri Glacier, whose name translates as “the cow’s snout.” Citing Niccolo Manucci, the Venetian adventurer turned court physician, Allen writes, “Long before Akbar’s time (1542– 1605) the peoples in the Indies were persuaded that the Ganges took its source in a high mountain range whose figure resembled that of a cow’s head” (Allen 1982, 30). Allen’s research suggests that the early European travelers, like the Indian mythical accounts, confounded the issue of the Ganga’s source. Major James Rennell, who started survey work in India in 1764 and left her shores in 1777, wrongly proposed that the source of the Ganga was linked to Mansarovar Lake, though he was right to solve the puzzle of the origin of Brahmaputra by joining it to the Tsangpo of the Tibetan region. James Baillie Fraser, who is described by Allen as “the first European to get close to Gaumukh, the source of Ganga river,” never made it to the glacier. Allen’s description of Fraser’s interesting encounter with the priest (“pundit”) at Gangotri Temple (Fig. 1.2), who wonders why everyone from the plains asks the same question, leaves the reader perplexed by the English explorer’s inquiry and the reply of the priest (Allen 1982, 77). Despite a Hindu temple dedicated to Ganga at Gangotri and the written description in Indian ancient texts that designated Gaumukh or Gomukh as the Ganga’s origin, why did Akbar, the East India Company, and the British Empire lay so much emphasis on solving the riddle of the Ganga’s source? The mystifying description in ancient Hindu texts suggesting that Mansarovar Lake near Kailash is the fountainhead of the Ganga could be one reason. The confusion could also have arisen as a consequence of a wrong translation of Gaumukh, the glacier, which led many Western explorers to mistakenly believe the source to be a “rock shaped like a cow’s mouth” or head. The myth that the Ganga originated from Mansarovar Lake was put to rest by the extensive explorations and surveys of Swami Pranavananda, who clarifies, “Ganga Chhu is the only outlet of Mansarovar and it flows into Rakshas Tal from which in turn the Sutlej or the Langchen Khambab flows out” (Pranavananda 1949, 133). It is quite possible that a number of Hindu visitors and pilgrims to Kailash-Manasarovar over the centuries carried the impression of the Ganga originating from there because Ganga Chhu was the Tibetan name for Sutlej. There was no way for the travelers to verify the course of Sutlej; the best they could do was acknowledge the continuity of holy waters from Manasarovar to Ganga.

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figure 1.2. Temple at Gangotri dedicated to Mother Ganga, the goddess and the river whose waters are believed to be the holiest, with the power to rid men and women of all sins. Photo credit: Virendra Kumar, October 1989.

So the folklore and monumental written records of ancient India became entangled, therefore, in the confusion. Notwithstanding the complications of Himalayan geography through time, it is a huge burden for Indian civilization to carry—whatever is mentioned in the Puranas and the early Indian texts automatically has scientific validity. The Puranas were texts that broadly sang praises to various Hindu gods, but there were sections that dealt with secular subjects as well. Other scholars have suggested that epics like the Mahabharata (variously dated from 3102 b.c. to ~950 b.c.) remain the most important source of India’s cultural geography and that these sources are authentic, for there are names and descriptions that are verifiable even today, though many names mentioned in these cannot be identified now (see Bhardwaj 1983, 15). As such, there were genuine reasons for Europeans to write afresh the history of the already chronicled Himalayan geography beyond the problems of translation and transliteration. In the course of time, the names and de-

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scriptions of places from about 2,500 years or more ago were lost, or the landscape underwent morphological changes. The challenge today is to scrutinize these ancient descriptions and analyze them objectively so as to either unearth their relevance or dump them as a myth. Yet another subject of confusion concerns mentions of four great rivers— “Sita, Alaknanda, Chaksu and Badra”—in ancient Indian texts such as Vishnu Purana. Allen quotes the original text, “After washing the ‘lunar orb’ the Ganga alights on the summit of Meru, circles the mountain and then divides into four mighty rivers that flow to the four quarters of the earth” (Allen 1982, 16–17), but he does not provide any solution or clue as to by which names these rivers might be known today. Other scholars have also made reference to the four great rivers of this region with a better explanation (Pranavananda 1949, 14–15). “The Tibetan Kailas Purana,” writes Pranavananda, “says that the Ganga had at first descended from Kailas to the spring Chhumik-thungtol; that four rivers emerged out of this spring . . . through the Lake Manas.” These four rivers are described as (1) Ganga (Chhu) or Sutlej which flows to the west, (2) Sindu or Karnali which flows to the south, (3) Pakshu / Vakshu or Brahmaputra which flows eastward, and (4) Sita, Indus or Sindh, which flows northward and then to the southwest. It is not clear whether the two sets of “four great rivers” originating from Kailash-Manasarovar are same with different names, as can happen in the absence of properly documented or missing records. Some scholars, who find India’s geographical description in the Vedas and Puranas fascinating, seem to offer different solutions to the conundrum. Graham Chapman, for instance, suggests that the Sita “has been identified with the Yarkand and the Chaksu with the Oxus” (Chapman 2009, 16), but Badra’s identity remains to be confirmed. There is some confusion with respect to Mount Meru itself—the mountain mentioned in the Puranas as the regional source of the four major rivers. If Mount Meru is indeed the Kailash, and Sita and Alaknanda are mentioned as flowing east from Meru, their designation as such poses a huge problem of either the wrong river nomenclature or the understanding of geography. In that sense Pranavananda’s classification holds more promise and validity. Yet there are examples where mythical references have proven to be right. Recent scientific investigations have shown beyond doubt that mythical Saraswati river, which is associated with the Hindu legend of flowing parallel to Indus, did indeed form a part of the Indus Valley hydrological system and watered the Harappan land, though it may not have had glacial origins in the Himalaya and was essentially a monsoon-fed river (Clift et al. 2012; Giosan et al. 2012).

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Why did rivers and geography in general arouse so much interest in the ancient Indian texts? Was it necessitated by the prevalent cultural tradition of pilgrimage—tirtha yatra among Hindus? Scholars of Indian cultural geography affirm that we cannot neglect the importance of ancient texts as sources of India’s geography. The Mahabharata not only provides information on the geography of sacred places but also describes names of places of lesser importance in a proper sequence so as to suggest a general direction for a traveler (Bhardwaj 1983, 15–17). Bhardwaj, however, laments that neither the Mahabharata nor the Puranas provide any details about the physical setting, population, or relative distances of these places, which makes the information rather disappointing (Bhardwaj 1983, 16). The author however cautions that knowledgeable Sanskrit scholars must engage in detailed study of these texts before modern geographers can make any valid generalizations. The European scholars and travelers must be credited with filling the knowledge gap from eighteenth century onward. Like elsewhere in the world, the rivers in the Indian subcontinent became main sites for human habitation. In Chapter 2, the intricate relationship between the Himalayan rivers and formation of the Indo-Gangetic Plains will be discussed. We have briefly touched upon the establishment of the vast urban centers in Indus Valley and Harappan civilization along the river courses of the Indus and Ganga rivers. These rivers have shaped and had an enriching influence on the human communities of the Indian subcontinent. Equally well known is the fact that the urban epicenters that flourished along the Himalayan river courses in the Indo-Gangetic Plains declined in size and were ultimately abandoned as the rivers progressively dried (Giosan et al. 2012). The criticality of water as the pivotal resource for the survival of human communities may have been responsible for pragmatic reverence for rivers that developed, as well as the progress of the institution of pilgrimage to the Himalayan rivers. The Himalaya’s sacredness is, therefore, also connected to its being the perennial source of water. This life-sustaining virtue of the Himalaya is captured eloquently by Sir Muhammad Iqbal, the twentieth-century legendary poet of the Indian subcontinent. In a befitting lyrical rendition he wrote an ode to the Himalaya and eulogized the mountain as the “wall” of India, elevating it to such heights that no other mountain in the world could achieve. Besides describing the luxuriant valleys and their unique floras and the roaming clouds over the Himalayan skies, Iqbal (1924; for English translation see Khalil 1992) writes, “To the outward eye you are a mere mountain range / In reality you are our sentinel, you are India’s rampart.” In concluding his poem, Iqbal seeks an answer from the Himalaya, the same answer we search for today:

The Himalayan Memoir

O Himalah! Do relate to us some stories of the past, When your valleys became an abode of Man’s ancestors; Relate something of the life without formality, Which was not stained by the rouge of sophistication.

57

chapter two

Tectonic Serendipity The main elevation of the Himalayas was an event witnessed by the earliest men. — Augusto Gansser

The Continent Adrift The northernmost parts of the Himalaya, which are largely flat, possess a vast diversity of marine fossils that date to the Cambrian to Eocene times. How did the topmost section of the mountain come to possess such old marine fossils? In other words, what explains the presence of an ancient marine environment on the top of a young mountain? How did they get there? Such questions prompt curiosity, surprise, and awe. That the Himalaya formed about 55 to 40 million years ago (Ma) is something most people would not consider with a nonliving system of rocks. Yet the Himalaya are comparatively younger than most of the mountain ranges on Earth, such as the Aravallis lying south of the Himalaya (~4,000 Ma) and the Appalachians of North America (480–440 Ma) (Pandit 2013). We are aware that plants and animals grow and undergo changes in shape, size, and traits, but do mountains do the same? The short answer is yes, they do. In that sense, mountains can be said to have a life of their own. The Himalaya is one such mountain system, the youngest and the highest on Earth. Although today the Himalaya rise higher than any other mountain, this range rose up to replace the ancient Tethys Sea. The Himalaya grew through similar mechanisms as many other mountain ranges such as the Alps and the Andes, but continuous debate and still-developing evidence attest to the complexity of the Himalayan saga.

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59

Cited as an archetypical example of continent-to-continent collision, the history of this convergence continues to present puzzles, even to expert geologists. For a biologist, a policy-maker, or a citizen this might present a fundamental question: why is it so important for them to comprehend the geological background of the Himalaya’s birth? The answer, put simply, is that a methodical, comprehensive study of the Himalaya’s formation can open new vistas of knowledge, and allow interdisciplinary thinking that spans biological evolution and human cultural ecology. Notably, the geographic extent and uplift of the Himalaya represent one of the most profound and unparalleled geophysical changes that Earth has witnessed for over 1 billion years (Harrison et al. 1992). By transforming the landscape of the Asian continent, the Himalaya also contributed to the cooling of the regional climate—and indeed that of the world (Raymo and Ruddiman 1992). The world before and after the birth of the Himalaya was remarkably different, at least in terms of its ushering in climate and global change toward the middle of the Cenozoic era. The intensification of the monsoon, the formation of glaciers and a network of freshwater rivers and lakes, the establishment of varied ecosystems and rich biodiversity, and even the progression of humankind and its cultural divergence are all beholden to the Himalaya. Furthermore, all that the Himalaya represents is linked to the crucial events of its birth. Therefore, the development of the Himalaya tells a fascinating and important story that spans millions of kilometers and an equal number of years. To state that the Himalaya’s formation is simply the result of a collision between two continents obscures the complexities of this momentous episode in Earth’s history as well as the scientific difficulties of unraveling events that transpired around 55 to 40 Ma. The idea of moving continents, which represented a historical revolution in Earth science, proved most useful in explaining the formation of the Himalaya. In 1912, Alfred Wegener, a German geophysicist and meteorologist, proposed the radical idea of continental drift. For Wegener, the continents on Earth, like boats on a sea, joined together and drifted apart over geological time. He argued that all the continents on Earth were once joined as a single supercontinent, which broke up and drifted apart. He referred to these jointed continents as Urkontinent, and later as Pangaea (Wegener 1912). Initially a number of geologists criticized Wegener’s theory; the majority of the criticism, however, came from geophysicists of the Northern Hemisphere because they could not figure out how the mechanisms would work. On the other hand, Southern Hemisphere geophysicists accepted Wegener’s theory because it made the interpretation of the stratigraphic record much easier (Andrew Knoll, OEB, Harvard University, personal communication). About three

60 Eon

Natural Phase

Era

Period

Epoch Holocene

Quaternary

Age (Ma) 0.0117

Pleistocene 2.58 Pliocene Neogene Miocene

Oligocene

Phanerozoic

Paleogene

Jurassic

Permian Carboniferous Devonian Paleozoic Silurian Ordovician Cambrian Neo-proterozoic Meso-proterozoic

Hadean

Semi-arid climate with meandering Himalayan rivers Collision of the Indian and Eurasian plates; formation of the Himalaya

56.0

Deccan volcanism; K-T mass extinction events; formation of Deccan fossil deposits

66.0

Indian plate starts drifting northwards; early biotic exchanges involving India, Africa, Madagascar, South America and Asia

145.0 201.3 252.17 298.9 358.9 419.2 443.8 485.4 541.0 1000

Break-up of Gondwanaland Break-up of Pangaea; evolution of mammals and dinosaurs Formation of Pangaea Diversification of early reptiles, amphibians and insects Radiation of jawed fish; evolution of forests Evolution of first land plants Diversification of jawless fish; appearence of early vertebrates Radiation of animals in ocean including the earliest fish Evolution of multi-cellular organisms Evolution of eukaryotes

1600 Paleo-proterozoic

Archean

Himalayan uplift continues; onset and intensification of SW Asian monsoon; formation of glaciers, perennial river system and sedimentation; proliferation of C4 plants, grasslands replacing forests in foothills; herbivores replacing tree-dwelling animals.

33.9 Eocene

Cretaceous

Triassic

Proterozoic

23.03

Paleocene

Mesozoic

Human transformation of the Himalayan landscape Ice age followed by weakening monsoon, reshuffling of floras and arrival of humans Rapid uplift of Himalaya and the Tibetan Plateau

5.333 Cenozoic

Major Events

2500 4000 4600

Evolution of prokaryotes Earliest records of sedimentary rocks and fossils (stromatolites) Formation of the Earth

table  2.1. Geological time scale with major evolutionary events. Dates in the time scale are sourced from current International Chronostratigraphic Chart, version 2016 / 04 (Cohen et  al. 2013); K-T, Cretaceous–Tertiary; Ma = million years ago.

and a half decades later, more modern scientific tools have provided substantive evidence for Wegener’s explanation. By the 1970s Wegener’s idea had been developed into the widely accepted theory of plate tectonics. How was the challenge of tracking the movement of Earth’s plates met? One of the major developments in the field of geophysics was the use of paleomagnetism data to trace the movement of Earth’s plates. Paleomagnetism studies can illustrate the drifting of continents during millions of years of Earth’s history because rocks chronicle the magnetic field direction of a location on a continent. Rocks hold the memory of these shifting directions as a function of time, and the direction and intensity of Earth’s magnetic field are also recorded in sedi-

61

Tectonic Serendipity

ment or in other paleogeological materials. These records form the basis for reconstructing Earth’s past behavior and the location of its plates, thus providing a reasonable picture of the movement of the plates in space and time. In a fascinating study using a robust paleomagnetic database, Torsvik et al. (2012) have made a sequence of Earth’s paleogeographic reconstructions dating from the Late Cambrian (~500 Ma) to the Palaeogene (~25 Ma). Major events and location of different continents during this period summarized here are largely based on these reconstructions. Between the late Cambrian (~500 Ma) and late Ordovician (~450 Ma) periods, three major plates—Laurentia, Baltica, and Gondwana—occupied Earth’s northern, equatorial, and southern belts, respectively. Around ~300 to 250 Ma, these plates combined into a supercontinent, Pangaea, which started breaking up around the Triassic-Jurassic period (~200–150 Ma) into the northern Laurasia and southern Gondwanan plates (Table 2.1 and Fig. 2.1). Clearly,

LAURASIA NORTH CHINA SOUTH CHINA

PANGAEA

EAST GONDWANA WEST GONDWANA

200 Ma LAURASIA

150 Ma EURASIA

AFRICA

AFRICA

INDIA

SOUTH AMERICA

INDIA

ANTARCTICA

100 Ma

50 Ma

figure 2.1. The drifting continents and the making of the Indian subcontinent. The polarity and location of Earth’s magnetic poles have shifted over the last 200 million years. The time-series images were generated using the 2015 open-source Gplates 1.5 software, and the polar wander data and seafloor spreading records are from Seton et al. (2012). Ma = million years ago.

62

Natural Phase

Pangaea did not constitute the entire continental crust of the earth, and some blocks were independent of Pangaea at all times, including the north and south China blocks. Pangaea, it has been estimated, reached its maximum size of 160 million km2 around 250 Ma during the late Palaeozoic and early Mesozoic periods and in its intact state constituted 93 percent of the continents and around 30 percent of the earth’s surface (Torsvik et al. 2012). An early Ordovician (~480 Ma) reconstruction of Gondwana shows it to be spreading from the equator to the South Pole, including what are today the Arabian, African, and Indian plates (see Torsvik and Cocks 2011). Further consolidation of Pangaea’s growth occurred during the late Carboniferous period with the collision of Gondwana, Laurasia, and the intervening plate fragments. In terms of spatial extent, Gondwana at the time of early Palaeozoic was the largest continental accretion, occupying nearly 100 million km2 area and covering approximately 20 percent of the earth’s surface (see Torsvik et al. 2012). During the early Jurassic period (~200 Ma), Gondwana witnessed its first major breakup as a result of the positioning of the Central Atlantic Magmatic Province, heralding the split between Gondwana and Laurasia and subsequently the opening of the Central Atlantic Ocean around 195 Ma (Deenen et al. 2010; Labails et al. 2010). The second major breakup of Gondwana around the Jurassic period involved the separation of the east (Africa and South America) and west Gondwana (Madagascar, India, East Antarctica and Australia). West Gondwana split into India and Australia, and the subsequent course of events brought about the split of the East Antarctica block from the India-Australia block around 130 Ma. This was followed by India breaking off from Australia, and finally India and the Seychelles drifting off Madagascar around 85 Ma. Researchers contend that at the same time, around the late Jurassic and early Cretaceous periods, the Chinese block fused with Eurasia (Torsvik et al. 2012) (see Fig. 2.1). The stage, therefore, was set for the northward traveling Indian plate to collide with the Asian plate and the Himalaya to emerge.

The Colliding Continents The journey of the Indian plate to the north from the southernmost neighborhood of Antarctica, spanning a distance of nearly 6,500 km, was made at speeds varying from 4.5 to 6.5 cm per year between the present and 55 to 35 Ma, respectively (Molnar and Tapponnier 1975). The rate of the movement and the timing of the Indian plate are much debated. Kumar and

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63

associates showed that the Indian plate initially migrated at rates of 18 to 20 cm per year after its breakup from Gondwanaland, and subsequently it slowed to 5 cm per year after its collision with Eurasia (Kumar et al. 2007). Others have reported divergent results that indicate that the initial drift rate of the Indian plate was 5 cm per year after its breakup from Gondwana, but around 90 to 80 Ma the speed suddenly tripled to 15 cm per year (Cande and Stegman 2011; Jagoutz et al. 2015). Despite these deviations in the reported speeds of the Indian plate, one thing is certain: once the two continents collided, the stage was set for the emergence of the youngest but loftiest mountain chain in the world (see Fig. 2.1). From various geologic reconstructions, several researchers have suggested the age of India-Asia collision to be around 55–50 Ma, around early Eocene. Subsequent estimates, based on studies using magnetic anomaly data, brought the collision timing down to about 40 Ma. Even as the debate continued, there was very little progress until 1980s, but the next two decades witnessed more reliable and precise geological data suggesting that not one, but a two-stage collision occurred. An understanding developed with scientists suggesting a “soft collision” around 50 Ma, followed by a “hard collision” that took place around 25 and 20 Ma (see van Hinsbergen et al. 2012) (Fig.  2.2). Other researchers have suggested that the Himalaya formed after the convergence of a northward-drifting Indian plate with the northern proto-Tibetan landmass in the soft collision stage during the late Cretaceous to Paleocene times, and after the formation of the crustal fracture in the Indian plate and subsequent subduction of the Indian plate along this fracture during the hard collision stage (Miocene onward) (Powell and Conaghan 1973). Therefore, the present-day elevation of the Himalaya is a synergistic outcome of uplift during underthrusting along the deep crustal fracture and the continental collision (Powell and Conaghan 1973). There is no disagreement on the fact that the Indian and the Asian plates collided, but where and when this collision occurred represents an ongoing debate. Despite the use of the best available tools and techniques, the interwoven nature of the gigantic mountain building enterprise complicates its comprehension, but the youth of the Himalaya is an advantage. Studying such a monumental mountain-building event as it continues to progress provides many more avenues for investigation than would be available for an older range. Seismicity in the region, crustal motion changes, and sea-floor magnetic stripes provide a wealth of information on the Himalaya’s past that is unavailable for most mountain ranges on Earth (Harrison et al. 1992). To develop a realistic model of the events and consequences of continentto-continent collision, researchers have made critical assessments of the

64

Natural Phase

A. 90 Ma (Cretaceous)

B. 80 Ma (Cretaceous)

Eurasia

Eurasia

30˚N

30˚N

0˚

0˚

Africa

Africa

30˚S

India

30˚S

India Australia 0˚

60˚E

C. 50 Ma (Eocene)

Australia 0˚

120˚E

60˚E

D. 40 Ma (Eocene)

Eurasia

120˚E

Eurasia

30˚N

30˚N

India India 0˚

0˚

Africa

Africa

30˚S

30˚S

Australia

Australia 0˚

60˚E

120˚E

0˚

60˚E

120˚E

figure 2.2. Collision between the Indian subcontinent and Eurasian plates. (A, B) Two almost-parallel northward dipping subduction zones (marked with triangles) during the early Cretaceous allowed these plates to converge at speeds up to 130 mm / year, 50 to 100  percent faster than observed anywhere today. A continental and oceanic Greater India Basin (GIB) also extended for nearly 3,000 km. (C, D) Rapid convergence ended in the Eocene as the Greater India Basin collided with a string of south Asian islands and then crumpled into Eurasia, leading to the rise of the Himalaya (see van Hinsbergen et al. 2012; Jagoutz et al. 2015). Plate reconstructions have been built using the Gplates 1.5 software, and the data records are from Seton et al. (2012). Ma = million years ago.

geographic extent of the two colliding blocks, their location in history, and the rate and direction of their movement. This has been the case in particular for the Indian continental block, also referred to as the Greater India Basin (GIB) (van Hinsbergen et al. 2012). The first problem to be tackled was to define the northern boundary of the GIB before its collision with the Asian plate. The second difficulty related to the general direction of the

Tectonic Serendipity

65

GIB. Between the two phases of collision, as described previously, the GIB appears to have undergone several motions of direction and speed. The most recent work on the GIB hypothesis and the attendant issues of the size and speed of the Indian plate are adequately discussed by van Hinsbergen and colleagues (2012). Ali and Aitchison (2005) offer an equally comprehensive review of this subject that discusses the strengths and weaknesses of nearly thirty different studies and proposals on the GIB from 1924 to 2003. Despite the vast complexity and numerous uncertainties associated with the formation of the Himalaya, different avenues of investigation have shown the same general outline of the mountain range’s history (see Ali and Aitchison 2005). About 140 Ma the Indian plate was positioned at and spread somewhere north of Antarctica, between 55° and 35° South latitude and 15° and 60° East longitude. The exact measurements of India’s length and breadth at that point in time are not known, so the reconstructions of the magnitude of subduction of the Indian plate under the Asian plate differ. Numerous authoritative works are available on the formation and evolution of the Himalayan mountains and the Tibetan Plateau (Wadia 1957; Gansser 1964; Molnar and Tapponnier 1975; Tapponnier, Peltzer, and Armijo 1986; Yin and Harrison 2000). The scientific effort of the last several decades matches the gigantic changes in the Asian continent, which resulted in the formation of the greatest assemblage of peaks represented by the Himalaya and the earth’s highest plateau—the Tibetan Plateau. The tectonic serendipity, in a sense, is exemplified by the breaking away of the Indian plate from Gondwana; unlike its sister cratons (ancient parts of the earth’s continental crust that have remained stable since Precambrian times) which continued into the Southern Hemisphere— Madagascar, East Antarctica, and Australia—the Indian plate undertook a long and in many ways eventful northward journey to strike the Asian plate and dock itself there, firmly sutured by the Himalaya. Geologists have classified the Himalayan mountain ranges into four major subzones based on morphotectonic zonation. These four zones from south to north are (1) the Siwaliks, (2) the Lesser Himalaya, (3) the Higher (Greater) Himalaya, and (4) the Tethys Himalaya (Valdiya 2001, 3). Each of these physiographic domains of the Himalaya is characterized by its varied elevation, which increases from south to north.

The Rain Dance The common sense or general perception surrounding mountains is that they are cooler regions compared with the plains, but when that argument

66

Natural Phase

is extended to suggest that general cooling followed the formation of mountains on Earth, problems arise. Like other complex scientific conundrums, understanding Earth’s atmosphere and its drivers is a multifaceted and intricate exercise. Mountain formation as one of the important forcings of Earth’s atmosphere gained currency in the late 1980s. To begin with, the evidence came from purely geological studies, but with computer simulation coming of age in the early 1990s, it became possible to model the dynamics of global climate through the ages. Early researchers proposed distinctive effects of mountain building and plateau uplift on climate around the middle and late Cenozoic in southern Asia and the American West (Ruddiman and Kutzbach 1989). That these changes on Earth’s surface heralded changes in regional and global climate is a matter of debate. Some researchers have suggested that global cooling in the Cenozoic period may have resulted from the uplift of the Tibetan Plateau and the attendant positive feedback, including tectonically driven increased rates of denudation and chemical weathering followed by drawdown of atmospheric carbon dioxide (Raymo and Ruddiman 1992). Others, however, reject the hypothesis that the ultimate cause of Cenozoic climate change was only the tectonically driven late Cenozoic uplift and that a changing climate could itself have affected processes driving the uplift of mountain ranges (Molnar and England 1990). Therefore, the connection between late Cenozoic climate change and tectonic uplift, and between climate change and increased erosion rates associated with isostatic adjustments and tectonic uplift, is a complex riddle with no straightforward answers. The late Cenozoic global cooling could have increased precipitation and mechanical erosion, which through isostasy might have created mountain ranges with higher peaks and deep valleys instead of straightforward uplift resulting in climate changes and the typical negative feedback mechanism (Raymo and Ruddiman 1992). Debate aside, there is general agreement that the climate profile of Asia during the Cenozoic period underwent a dramatic shift, from displaying a zonal pattern to a broad monsoon-dominated pattern (see Table 2.1). The Himalaya and the Tibetan Plateau uplift, with an average elevation of ~5,000 to 6,000 m, has had a significant impact on global atmospheric circulation. Combined with the attendant increase in chemical weathering rates, a drawdown of carbon dioxide ensued that resulted in global cooling (Raymo et al. 1988; Raymo 1991). It is beyond the scope of this book to engage in a discussion of chemical weathering, flux, and carbon dioxide dynamics and their impact on the climate or vice versa, but there is certainly evidence that the Asian climate is significantly affected by the size and elevation of the Himalaya and the Tibetan Plateau.

Tectonic Serendipity

67

Numerical climate models, using phasewise increases of mountain– plateau elevation, have shown that the uplift is linked to the monsoon as well as to the glaciation in the Northern Hemisphere (Zhisheng et al. 2001), emphasizing the wider role of the Himalaya in the global climate beyond Asia. The mechanisms that explain the effect of the uplift of the Himalaya and the Tibetan Plateau on the regional climate can be summarized as mechanical effects of the uplifted region on the atmospheric circulation that manifest in splitting the surface westerly winds into northern and southern slices. This results in blockage of the cold continental air flow southward to the Indian subcontinent, and creation of an enhanced pressure gradient from the heating of the Tibetan Plateau in summer, which regulates the summer monsoon (Ruddiman and Kutzbach 1989; Prell and Kutzbach 1992; Raymo and Ruddiman 1992). The initiation of the Indian summer monsoon and the role of the Himalaya in it are a matter of some debate. Various researchers have reported that the Indian monsoon began in the Miocene epoch (~25–20 Ma) (Zhisheng et  al. 2001; Harris 2006; Favre et al. 2015) and that the high elevation of the Himalaya alone was sufficient to cause the precipitation (Boos and Kuang 2010). Others have argued that the monsoon commenced in the Palaeocene epoch when the Indian plate reached the Tropic of Capricorn, ~60 Ma (Saha 1993; Patnaik et al. 2012). Monsoon climates exist in other parts of the world as well, such as central Africa, America, southeast Asia, and northern Australia; this sort of climate is characteristic of the regions with land–sea thermal contrasts that lead to differential heating of land and sea surfaces followed by rainfall. The scale and extent of a monsoon varies according to the geographical location. At the middle latitudes, the monsoon system is weak because of continual jet stream dynamics; at the low latitudes / tropics, they become dominant (Andrew Bush, University of Alberta, personal communication). Thus, even if the Indian monsoon originated long before the Indian-Asian plate collision in the Eocene epoch, it intensified only after India reached its present-day latitudinal location during the Miocene epoch and after the significant elevational rise of the Himalaya (Boos and Kuang 2010; Chen, Liu, and Kutzbach 2014; Caves et al. 2015). Simultaneous with the strengthening of the monsoon system, facilitated by the Himalayan uplift, the land areas to the north and west of the Himalaya became drier, including the Central Asian region. The high-elevation Himalayan ranges forced the moisture-laden winds to precipitate, causing heavy rainfall on the southern upwind side, while the northern downwind side of the interior Eurasian regions became essentially a rain shadow zone (Broccoli and Manabe 1992).

68

Natural Phase

A. January

Precipitation (mm/month) 0

B. July

50

100

150 200

250 300

350 400 450

figure 2.3. The south Asian monsoon today. Darker colors indicate greater precipitation, and arrows show prevailing winds. (A) During the winter, variable northeast winds bring little precipitation. (B) In the summer, warm, moist air from the southwest Indian Ocean blows toward the Indian subcontinent, dramatically increasing precipitation across India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, and Myanmar. The January and July wind and precipitation data are averaged from 1981–2010 (International Research Institute for Climate and Society, Columbia University 2015).

The Himalayan and the Trans-Himalayan countries from east to west— Burma, India, Nepal, the Tibetan Autonomous Region (TAR), China, Pakistan, and Afghanistan—are influenced by three major climatic systems that are controlled largely by the uplifted region of the Himalaya, namely, the midlatitude westerlies, the monsoon, and the regional climatic variability associated with the El Niño–Southern Oscillation (Benn and Owen 1998, 2002). The monsoon in the present-day Indian subcontinent is characterized by high rainfall during June to September and a drier spell between October and May each year (Fig. 2.3). In essence, formation of the Himalaya altered the climatic profile of the Indian subcontinent in a major way that had far-reaching effects on the land and life in the Himalaya and its immediate neighborhood. The summer monsoon ensures abundant rainfall, which induces high erosion and altered geomorphology of the southern Himalayan landscape, producing a variety of landforms and edaphic or soil conditions spurred by erosional activity.

Glaciers—the Himalayan Hydrological Estate Besides presenting a formidable barrier to the movement of winds and clouds, the Himalaya unfolded a new regional as well as global climatological and hydrological order. The new set of geophysical conditions en-

Tectonic Serendipity

69

gendered by the extensive elevational profile of the Himalaya included the intensification of the monsoon, the formation of glacier-river systems, and the establishment of elevational gradients ranging from tropical to alpine. The first glacial formation in the Himalaya seems to be linked to the global cooling and widespread glaciation in the northern hemisphere during the late Neogene period (10–3 Ma). Unlike other regions of the world such as Europe and North America, formation of a continuous ice sheet during the Last Glacial Maximum has not been reported in the Himalaya; most of the glaciers are reported to have advanced within an average 10 km of their present-day terminal margins during various periods of glaciation in the Himalaya (Owen, Finkel, and Caffee 2002). The eastern Himalayan glaciers may have advanced nearly 15 km and reached elevations of 2,730 m, while the western Himalayan glaciers advanced to maximum 40 km, reaching elevations as low as 850 m (Owen, Finkel, and Caffee 2002). Whether there indeed was any climatic deterioration in the Neogene period that led to glaciation in various parts of the earth is unclear; the idea has been seriously challenged by the evidence of glaciation during the late Paleozoic era (Hay et al. 2002). Even though widespread glaciation during the Proterozoic era (~2500–570 Ma) and specifically during the “snowball Earth” periods of the Neo-proterozoic period (~1,000–650 Ma) point toward glaciation in the absence of mountains, large-scale glaciation may not have begun until 3.2 Ma in the Northern Hemisphere (Hay et al. 2002). Glaciers are nature’s mechanism of storing water in frozen form, which is gradually released over time giving rise to perennial rivers. Where and how are glaciers formed? Glaciers typically are located at high latitudes and altitudes. Snow and ice accumulation are influenced by the quantity of moisture in air, the lapse rates (decreases in temperature with gain in elevation), and precipitation. The summer monsoon and associated seasonal variations in precipitation in the Himalaya hold the key to glacial accumulation in the region. The mass of glaciers accumulates as well as ablates during the summer monsoon period in the Himalaya due to higher precipitation and temperatures during these months (Benn and Owen 1998). Interestingly, the monsoon has a more pronounced influence on glaciation in the eastern Himalaya, for the maximum precipitation occurs in the summer; therefore, higher snow accumulation results during this period (Benn and Owen 2002). On the other hand, in the western and northwestern Himalaya, more snowfall and ice accumulation occurs during the winter, with midlatitude westerlies providing the requisite moisture (Benn and Owen 2002). Understanding the link between the two contrasting precipitation systems and their timing in the Himalaya is important, for it could provide clues to the initiation of glaciation in the Himalayan region. Geologists opine

70

Natural Phase

that during 3–2.5 Ma and around 0.8 Ma there was renewed and considerable tectonic activity in the Himalaya along its various faults, which substantially lifted the mountain range to the heights that created conditions for diversion of the even flow of moist winds, inducing precipitation in the form of snow, so most of the Himalayan peaks became snow covered (Valdiya 1999). There is ample discussion in the literature that the Himalayan glaciers may have formed around or immediately after the Pliocene epoch. The nature and extent of Quaternary glaciation in the Himalaya have been studied in detail by Lewis A. Owen and his colleagues since the late 1980s, presenting an exhaustive assessment of the past and present glaciation in the Himalaya, its dynamics, and its linkage to the climate settings (e.g., Owen, Derbyshire, and Fort 1998; Benn and Owen 1998; Owen, Finkel, and Caffee 2002; Owen et al. 2005). The Himalayan glaciers are an important water resource and hold the key to water availability in south and southeast Asia. The Himalaya and the Tibetan Plateau, the Hindu Kush and Karakoram ranges, and the Pamirs are home to the biggest glaciated areas outside the polar regions of the earth. The estimates of the number and spatial extent of these glaciers in the Himalaya vary. Some estimates suggest that there are about 15,000 glaciers (Bajracharya, Mool, and Shrestha 2007), but more recent assessments have recorded 20,812 glaciers in the Himalayan region (Cogley 2011). The current spatial extent of the Himalayan glaciers is estimated to range from 43,178 km2 (Cogley 2011) to ~126,200 km2 (World Glacier Monitoring Service 1989). The coverage of glaciers to the northwest of the Himalaya—the Hindu Kush and Karakoram—is less than the main Himalaya, but their average thickness is double (~160 m) that of the other Himalayan glaciers (~80 m) (Cogley 2011). These glacier fields constitute Asia’s vast hydrological estate, so the region is also referred to as the water tower of Asia. Despite the importance of this hydrological estate, long-term methodological study of the Himalaya’s glaciers has been complicated by the fact that pre-1970s literature is based mostly on anecdotal observations by naturalists or explorers (Vohra 1980; Owen, Derbyshire, and Fort 1998). Even though the International Commission on Snow & Ice came into existence in 1894 after the creation of an International Glacier Commission with the objective of “inciting and spreading the studies of changes in the size of glaciers,” Himalayan glaciers were ignored by the international scientific community. Few systematic investigations of their nature, number, or extent have been performed. Notwithstanding its preeminent position as the earth’s Third Pole, the Himalaya was not even mentioned at the International Commission on Snow and Ice of the International Association

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of Hydrology at the 14th General Assembly of the International Union of Geodesy and Geophysics in 1967. This does not mean that the Himalayan glaciers did not attract the attention of explorers; rather, the methodical investigations on the origins and dynamics of these glaciers had to wait until the late 1950s. Among the early research on the Himalayan glaciers was the work of Wissmann (1959), followed by the efforts of an international institution, the International Hydrological Decade, later known as the International Hydrological Programme. A hiatus of nearly two decades ended with renewed efforts in estimating the glacier coverage of specific basins or mountains, such as the Mount Everest region (Müller 1980), as well as the size of specific Indian Himalayan glaciers (Vohra 1980). In India, glacier inventory research was coordinated and performed by the Geological Survey of India (GSI) and a number of workers connected with that organization (Kaul 1999; Raina and Srivastava 2014). Research on the inventory of glaciers in China was performed between 1978 and 2002, following the recommendations of the International Commission on Snow and Ice (Shi, Chaohai, and Ersi 2010). More recently, the International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD) in Kathmandu, Nepal, has been engaged in inventorying the glaciers of the Himalayan region across Bhutan, Nepal, India, and Pakistan. Recent reports from ICIMOD suggest that the three most important river systems, namely, the Ganga, Brahmaputra, and Sind, have 6,694, 4,366, and 5,057 glaciers, respectively. These glaciers occupy 32,182 km2 of geographic area (Ganga = 16, 677 km2; Brahmaputra = 6, 579 km2; Sind = 8, 926 km2) and contain total ice reserves of 3,421 km3 (Ganga = 1971 km3; Brahmaputra = 600 km3; Sind = 850 km3) (Qin 1999).

A New Hydrological Order After the formation of the Himalayan mountain range, the newly fashioned geophysical profile of the Indian subcontinent around the Miocene-Pliocene epochs had all the components of an elaborate perennial drainage network. A vigorous monsoon, extensive glacial fields, wide-ranging slopes, and continuing uplift of the terrain all contributed to the development of a wide network of rivers and the formation of new drainage divides along the southern slopes of the Himalaya. However, questions remain on the nature and extent of pre-Himalayan rivers on either side of the Tethys Sea. Were there any rivers on the Indian plate before the formation of the Himalaya? What direction did they flow

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in, and what was the extent of the river network? Developing an understanding of these facets is necessary because the formation of the river profiles and basins in the present-day Indian subcontinent is linked to the uplift of the Himalaya; this information also holds the key to the future courses of the Himalayan rivers and the development of their basins, including their influence on human activities such as agriculture. Geologists have investigated sediments deposited millions of years ago across the plains of the Indian subcontinent and shown that indeed there were rivers on the Indian plate before the Himalayan uplift. Stratigraphic studies across geological formations in the present-day Himalayan nations, from Nepal in the east to Pakistan in the west, present the ages of fluvial sediments ranging from the late Cretaceous-Paleocene (~60 Ma) to the middle Eocene (~41 Ma) ages; this evidence suggests an existing preHimalayan fluvial system in the Indian subcontinent (DeCelles et al. 1998). The extent of an antecedent drainage network in the Indian subcontinent may not be very clearly known to the experts, but that a pre-Himalayan freshwater drainage network did exist has their unequivocal support. As to the direction of flow of these channels before the Himalayan uplift, a number of studies based on the sedimentary records provide evidence that the rivers in the north of the Indian subcontinent had different directions of flow compared with the present day river systems. Studies in the lower part of Central Nepal, 200 km west of Kathmandu, show that the thick sandstone deposits establish the existence of a drainage channel that flowed east to west from the present-day water divide between the Ganga and Brahmaputra to the Indus foreland (DeCelles et al. 1998). These deposits represent remnants of an axial fluvial system (flowing parallel to the basin axis), which preceded but was similar to the modern Ganga River, albeit in an opposite direction—from east to west-southwest (DeCelles et al. 1998). These large transverse channels likely drained into an east-southeastward flowing paleo-Ganges (Ganga) River, and the current flow of Ganga River from west to east would only have begun around 15 Ma (DeCelles et al. 1998). The flow reversal was aided by the elevated southern Aravalli Range, which forms the present water divide between the Sind and Ganga basins (DeCelles et al. 1998). There are suggestions that a northward dipping Indian landmass had freshwater channels draining into the Tethys Sea, but a momentous event— signifying a major shift in hydrological regime of the Indian subcontinent—led to the reversal of drainage from a pre-Himalayan south-north flow since the Middle Proterozoic through Early Eocene times to a north-south, northsoutheast direction in the Late Eocene as the Himalaya uplifted (Valdiya 2010).

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A new hydrometeorological regime and the post-Pleistocene fluvioglacial environment in the Himalaya and Tibetan Plateau came to harbor the headwaters and basins of ten major river systems. However, the most prominent rivers of the Himalaya and the Tibetan highlands, which essentially flow across the Plateau and toward the east and west on the southern flank of the Himalaya, are the Sind, Brahmaputra, and Ganga. The present basin of the Sind is spread across Tibet, India, and Pakistan, and that of the Ganga is spread across India and Nepal, while the Brahmaputra covers Tibet, India, and Bangladesh. These rivers, through an elaborate drainage network, have developed into large river systems. As many as twenty-seven sub-basins and major catchments have been identified that drain the southern Himalayan front, extending from the Indus in the west to the Tsangpo / Brahmaputra in the east (Bookhagen and Burbank 2010). The three basins are spread over a geographic area of nearly 2.6 million km2 (Ganga = 1,086,000 km2; Sind = 930,000 km2; Brahmaputra = 580,000 km2) (Pandit and Grumbine 2012). These figures establish the pivotal role of the HimalayaTibet region as the fountainhead of water drainage system and its importance in the daily lives of billions of people, and therefore the need for safeguarding the mountain chain.

The Indo-Gangetic Plains Due to the vast glacier fields perched permanently at the origins of the river channels, a perennial supply of water from the Himalayan mountains is ensured. The Himalayan rivers swell during the summer monsoon with contributions of glacial melt and rainfall, making these channels a potent medium for transporting enormous quantities of water and degradational material into the lowlands south of the Himalayan mountains. Over millennia the widespread hydrological network, facilitated by a generous monsoon climate, has brought down huge quantities of eroded material from the Himalayan slopes, filling up the trench or wedge created by the colliding Indian-Eurasian plates and the withdrawing Tethys Sea. The basin that developed on the southern flank, adjacent and parallel to the Himalaya in the north, is known as the Himalayan foreland basin. This foreland basin is a belt of alluvial plains, ~400–450 km wide, ~2,000 km long, and hundreds of kilometers deep. The present-day Gangetic Plains formed as a result of the development of the foreland basin system. This basin appears to have developed over a period of at least 30 million years, beginning in the early Oligocene epoch (Singh 1996). The age of the basin is typically based on the evidence of the presence of mountains (the Himalaya in the

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immediate north), deformed foreland basin deposits south of the mountain (Siwalik Hills), a depositional basin (the Gangetic Plains), and a southern peripheral cratonic bulge—a part of the fore bulge (Bundelkhand Plateau) (Singh 1996; Sinha et al. 2005). Clearly, the pre-Himalayan drainage network could not have been as elaborate or anywhere close to what the post-Himalayan hydrological system has evolved into. The absence of pronounced relief, monsoon, and glaciers on the Indian plate before the Himalayan uplift amounted to significantly lesser and limited-duration water availability, which would have been a major constraint for a wide-ranging hydrological network. Therefore, the synergistic impact of formation of the Himalayan and Tibetan highlands became central to the evolution and development of the vast fluvial system to the south of the Himalaya. With the extensive spread of alluvial plains and plenty of water available from east to the west, the stage was set for the human species to inhabit the area and initiate an enterprise that has not looked back since. It may be useful to sound a word of caution here lest the reference to a “stage being set” is misconstrued as a part of any intelligent design. What I wish to convey here is that various random events at the end of Pleistocene glaciation culminated in a set of geophysical and biological assets that the human species has found handy to exploit, with subsequent prosperity. Without the Himalaya, the Indian subcontinent would be an arid landmass, poor in soil and water resources, which would have made it difficult for the human enterprise to thrive and engage in the pursuits of agriculture, industry, and, more importantly, reflective vocations. The interconnectedness between the Himalayan fluvioglacial system and the northern Indian subcontinent plains fructified in social and cultural expression, and in what are now known as the oldest and most elaborate urban centers of the Indus Valley civilization. The two principal sites of this civilization developed on the floodplains of Sind and to a small extent Ganga river in the Indian subcontinent: Harappa and Mohenjo-daro (present Pakistan). Both are ostensibly linked to the Himalaya’s rise and the geophysical changes that ensued. A generation of humans, who are believed to have witnessed both the final uplift of the Himalaya as well as the Pleistocene glaciation that ended 12 thousand years ago (kya), seem to have made a rather quick progression from being hunter-gatherers to complex urban dwellers by about 10 kya. In nearly 2 thousand years, human communities dwelling in the riparian areas of the Himalayan rivers had acquired the skills of refined pottery making, agricultural practices, architectural designs, metal hardware, and kiln-fired brick-making. Archaeological evidence from the Harappan sites suggests that the annual agriculture

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surplus was stored in specially designed large granaries; the rich agriculture production indeed was the outcome of plentiful waters and sediment that the Sind River brought along from the Himalaya. Thus, a well-oiled social organization marked by a highly productive economy paved the way for various cultural pursuits. Such was the flourishing of the Indo-Gangetic civilization, molded by the rise and ebb of the fulsome Himalayan waters, as recorded in the glorious literary heritage of the two great Sanskrit epics, the Ramayana and the Mahabharata. The former is believed to have been composed in the eastern Gangetic plains around present-day Indian Uttar Pradesh and Bihar, and Nepal. The Mahabharata, on the other hand, was composed or played out toward the western side, around the banks of Yamuna River, the largest tributary of the Ganga. The river banks were to become important centers of philosophical and spiritual writing and debate. The scholarly pursuits of men and women in science, medicine, mathematics, geography, literature, and art are, therefore, inextricably linked to the Himalaya. This singular outcome of tectonic serendipity distinguishes the march of Indian civilization to its remarkable heights from that of other cultures. Accurate scientific knowledge of the Indian subcontinent’s past with reference to the Himalaya is, therefore, central to any long-term planning of human enterprise in one of the most densely populated regions of the world. It is crucial to remind ourselves that the prosperous human populations in the northern Indian plains may have disappeared largely due to what transpired in the Himalaya—so the criticality of the Himalayan perennial rivers in view of global climate change assumes even more significance.

chapter three

Intercontinental Biological Highway The Himmaleh was known to stoop Unto the Daisy low Transported with Compassion That such a Doll should grow Where Tent by Tent—Her Universe Hung out its Flags of Snow — Emily Dickinson

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he Himalaya has a life of its own, residing in its dynamics of rise and tumble, in the movement of its rocks, glaciers, rivers, and in its biological diversity, including the human communities that have inhabited it for millennia. Life in the Himalaya is manifest in the multiple dimensions of its form, function, and evolutionary dynamics. The interconnectedness between the biological, geological, and social components of the system, and the complexity thereof need to be explored. The linkages between the geological buildup of the Himalaya and the evolution of novel terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems within its landscape will be traced in this chapter. In doing so, we will explore the answers to many questions about the diversity and distribution, macroecological patterns, rich biodiversity, and endemism of the Himalayan biota. What was the biotic profile of the pre-Himalayan Indian subcontinent, particularly during upper Cretaceous? How did biodiversity organize itself in various Himalayan biomes from the Oligocene–Miocene epochs onward? What were the possible biogeographic sources and routes of biotic exchange to and from the Indian subcontinent, including the Himalaya? How, in view of the newly evolved ecosystems colonized by alien floras and faunas, is the Himalaya today one of the global biodiversity hotspots and an epicenter of endemism? Why is the eastern Himalaya richer in endemism and biological diversity than the western Himalaya? What role did Pleistocene glaciation play in the shuffling and reshuffling of Himalayan biodiversity?

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How has climate change affected the diversity and distribution of Himalayan biological communities in the past and present? The plate tectonics model discussed in Chapter 2 is at the heart of the geobiological understanding that has been developed for the Himalaya. It explains the Indian subcontinent’s journey after its separation from Gondwanaland to its current position in Asia, as well as the formation of the Himalaya. The progression of life in the Himalaya is inseparable from its history, notably the breakup of Gondwana and the northward movement of the Indian plate during the Cretaceous–early Palaeogene time span of 120–50 million years ago (Ma). All the fossil evidence and present-day biotic records of peninsular India as well as the Himalaya must be examined in that light. Developing a comprehensive view of life in the Himalaya depends on the comprehension of its geohistorical legacy, which is complex and confounding. The geobiological understanding of the Himalaya we have developed so far is largely due to rapid advances in scientific techniques, including stratigraphy, paleomagnetics, paleobiology, and the more recent computer-aided theoretical morphology techniques. Earth scientists use stratigraphy to study the nature of rock layers (strata). With the help of modern-day isotopic age-determination techniques, scientists can trace changes of the earth’s paleo-environment. Equally important is the role of oxygen isotopes that directly encrypt a climate signal in their composition (Andrew Knoll, OEB, Harvard University, personal communication). For example, analysis of the 18 O / 16O ratio in sediments can provide a direct clue to past temperatures. It is, therefore, possible to reconstruct the dates of breaking up and fusion of continents on the earth’s crust and corroborate the dates of lifeforms associated with these continents. Similarly, biostratigraphy uses the information gathered from fossils sandwiched in rock or sediment layers to determine the age of the depositional event and the environment. Paleobiology deals with the study of nature and the form of fossils hidden in the earth as sediment deposits and rocks. Additional techniques are now available to reveal the age and evolutionary history of past lifeforms, including modern computer-aided data storage, sharing, and manipulation, rigorous statistical testing tools, and resampling protocols such as bootstrapping and rarefaction. A computerbased technique, theoretical morphology, enables us to model various existing forms of a biological remnant and from it generate a host of hypothetical ones to compare, allowing us to trace the possible variant morphologies that were likely to have existed in the past. These tools and techniques bring to life comatose fossils, providing them with form and age, and making them into a window to the past geographic position of the earth’s continents and their climates and biogeographic linkages. Most of these

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techniques have been employed in the last four decades to decipher the march of life in the Himalayan mountains.

Pre-Himalayan Biodiversity Pre-Himalayan biotic diversity of the Indian subcontinent is critical to understanding present and past biodiversity distribution in the Himalaya. The Himalaya’s spatial relationship with the Indian plate is key to unraveling the biodiversity of the mountain range. To develop an understanding of the extent of biotic relationship between the Indian plate and the Himalaya, we need to raise a number of questions. What was the nature of biotic diversity of the Indian plate? Was it rich in biodiversity in the past? What was the extent of endemism? To answer these questions, it is important to decipher whether the Indian plate remained isolated for long periods during the drift. After the Indian plate separated from Gondwanaland, it possessed varied biota; among the flora, the most noticeable element was that of Glossopteris (extinct seed ferns). Paleogeographic reconstructions, based on numerous Himalayan sedimentary sequences from Kashmir in the west to Nepal in the east, have provided evidence of distinct Glossopteris flora of Gondwanan origin (Stöcklin 1980). Glossopteris flora in Kashmir and northeastern India represent the northernmost limit of this flora (G.V.R. Prasad, University of Delhi, personal communication). The faunal elements on the drifting Indian plate were represented by “leptodactylid, hylid and ranoid frogs, madtsoiid and nigerophiid snakes, pelomedusoid turtles, mesosuchian crocodiles, abelisaurid dinosaurs, and gondwanathere mammals” (Prasad and Sahni 2009). The diverse nature of pre-Himalayan Indian subcontinent’s biota is known to be largely the result of continual biotic exchanges to and from other continents.

Early Biotic Exchanges While adrift, the Indian plate developed biogeographic links with other regions and acquired many African, Madagascarian, and Laurasian elements (Krause and Maas 1990; Prasad and Sahni 1988; Chatterjee and Scotese 1999, 2010). The discoveries of Laurasian biota among the vertebrate fossil assemblages of the late Cretaceous Indian peninsula demonstrate the connections of the Indian plate to the northern continents prior to its accretion to the Asian plate (Sahni and Bajpai 1991; Prasad et al. 1994). Similarly, studies on paleo Indian flora have yielded a wealth of evidence regarding

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these acquired African, Madagascarian, and Laurasian elements. Chief among the immigrant plant taxa were species of Palmoxylon and Palmocarpon, Palmocaulon, Palmophyllum, and dicotyledonous families such as Flacourtiaceae, Guttiferae, Tiliaceae, Elaeocarpaceae, Simaroubaceae, Burseracea, Sapindaceae, Anacardiaceae, Leguminosae, and Combretaceae (Lakhanpal 1970). What were the possible routes that facilitated biotic exchanges between India, Africa, Madagascar, and Australia on the one hand and Laurasia on the other? The discovery of Gondwanan faunal taxa of the late Cretaceous period suggests that southern immigration events to the Indian plate likely occurred prior to its separation from Africa (Prasad and Sahni 1999). Alternatively, these taxa may have traveled across an existing land bridge between South America and India / Madagascar via Antarctica and the Kerguelen Plateau around 80 Ma (Sahni 1984; Krause et al. 1997). Faunal similarity in fish and turtle genera from the upper Cretaceous between peninsular India and Niger, as well as between Indian fauna and those of south central Bolivia, provide evidence of India’s biogeographic connections on the far southwestern side (Sahni, Rana, and Prasad 1987). An interesting theory of India’s pre-Himalayan link with Laurasia suggests the existence of an island arc system, represented today by the Dras volcanics of Kashmir and by the Iran-Afghan plate located in the northerly neighborhood of the drifting Indian plate (Sahni, Rana, and Prasad 1987). The small size of nearly all Laurasian immigrant biota illustrates their migration from the north across now-destroyed volcanic islands and the Kohistan and Dras island arcs (Prasad and Sahni 1999). These links were strengthened further at the end of the Indian-Asian plate collision, and the emergence of the Himalaya facilitated post-Eocene biological exchanges. Notably, PermoCarboniferous plant fossils and marine faunas reported from various localities across the Lesser Himalaya also have Gondwanan affinities (see Stöcklin 1980; Kumar, Farooqui, and Jha 2011), illustrating the historic biotic linkages of the now uplifted Himalayan landscape. The existence of an island arc stretching from India’s southeastern shores to Australia has also been suggested (e.g., Ali and Aitchison 2008; Rust et al. 2010). The Cretaceous– Tertiary period in the Indian subcontinent, therefore, presents a mix of biota from Southern and Northern Hemisphere continents.

Biotic Depauperation Often discussed in India’s biogeographic discourse is a view that, despite its long journey in isolation, the Indian plate did not develop high endemic

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biota. If the Indian plate experienced a protracted phase of isolation, before its accretion to Asia, the resident biota of the Indian subcontinent may have been unique, with high endemism in accordance with the Theory of Island Biogeography (MacArthur and Wilson 1967). What then are the reasons behind poor endemism? The lack of endemism may have arisen as a result of (1) a lack of geographic isolation and continual biotic exchanges (Briggs 1989; Rust et al. 2010), (2) Cretaceous–Tertiary mass extinctions (Duncan and Pyle 1998; Khosla and Sahni 2003), or (3) extinctions caused by climatic vagaries due to drifting landmass (Raven and Axelrod 1974; McLoughlin 2001). Because the Indian fossil record shows similarities to both Gondwanan and Laurasian plant and animal groups, this evidence contests the theory of complete isolation and instead supports the Indian peninsula’s linkages with both northern and southern continents during its traverse (Sahni 1984; Rust et al. 2010). The occurrence of a high faunal similarity at generic and family levels between India, Africa, and Madagascar points to a lack of endemism on the Indian peninsula during the Cretaceous–Paleocene boundary period (Sahni 1984; Sahni, Rana, and Prasad 1987). Furthermore, the discovery of Laurasian linkages in faunal taxa from the Upper Cretaceous Indian Peninsular sequences, including “Myobatrachinae frogs, Pelomedusid turtles, titanosaurid and abelisaurid dinosaurs, and Sudamericidae mammals with Gondwanan affinities, and pelobatid and discoglossid frogs, anguid lizards, palaeoryctid mammals, and charophytes,” points to biotic exchanges into India from the north and south (Chatterjee and Scotese 1999; Prasad and Sahni 1999). Equally, persuasive evidence indicates that massive biotic extinctions occurred on the Indian plate during the Cretaceous–Tertiary event because of the near-simultaneous impact of a meteorite and large-scale Deccan volcanic eruptions (Duncan and Pyle 1988; Negi et al. 1993; Khosla and Sahni 2003). Moreover, prodigious latitudinal and climatic changes associated with vagaries of the continental plate movement might have obliterated a majority of native taxa on the Indian plate (Raven and Axelrod 1974; McLoughlin 2001). These vicissitudes of the drifting Indian plate restrict us from comprehending the likelihood of a historic high endemism on the Indian plate. However, some ancient Gondwanan taxa did manage to survive these catastrophic events, and these then dispersed into Asia while the Indian plate was adrift and after it collided with Eurasia in the Eocene period (McKenna 1973). This has now been famously termed the “Out-of-India hypothesis” (Bossuyt and Milinkovitch 2001; Karanth 2006).

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The Out-of-India Hypothesis The Out-of-India hypothesis explains the Gondwanan origin of biotic elements and their dispersal into Asia after rafting on the Indian plate. The fossil record of Lagerstroemia (Lythraceae; Liu, Zetter, and Ferguson 2007), the phylogenetic analyses of the tropical tree family Dipterocarpaceae (Dayanandan et al. 1999), and the molecular clock independent dating estimates of the family Crypteroniaceae (Conti et al. 2002; Rutschman et al. 2004) support the hypothesis. Among the animal taxa, the Out-of-India hypothesis is supported by molecular dating–based phylogenetic studies of ranid frogs (Bossuyt and Milinkovitch 2001), acrodont lizards (Macey et al. 2000), and ratite birds (Cooper et al. 2001), as well as the fossil records of ranoid frogs (Bajpai and Kapur 2008). An extension of the Out-ofIndia hypothesis explains the presence of placental mammals on the Indian plate that ferried on it from eastern Africa via Madagascar, followed by an extended period of isolation that resulted in endemism and subsequent dispersal to Asia (Krause and Maas 1990). However, some researchers have found the fossil evidence for the Outof-India hypothesis to be weak, and they have questioned the reliance on taxa such as Mongolianella, as this taxon belongs to the region “from Barremian (~129.4 Ma) to Albian (~100.5 Ma) rocks of Mongolia” (Prasad and Sahni 2009). The Cretaceous and early Tertiary periods of the Indian subcontinent may be marked by a lack of endemism, but the early Eocene epoch presents a sharp contrast in terms of its biotic uniqueness. Some authors have referred to the India of the post Cretaceous–Tertiary extinction period as one of the many Noah’s Arks, a “ferry” transporting elements of the Gondwanan and southern continent to Asia (McKenna 1973). Others argue that India remained isolated for several million years, which promoted allopatric speciation and high endemism during the Eocene epoch (Russell and Zhai 1987; Chatterjee and Scotese 2010). Evidence based on Eocene Tetrapod fauna found 43 percent endemic families, 55 percent families with Asian linkage, and merely 1  percent with a Gondawanan link (Chatterjee and Scotese 2010). Fossil sequences of floral and faunal elements of Eocene-Miocene India have been described from the northeast hill ranges, and the Lesser Himalaya and Siwaliks. Prominent among these are Eocene leaf impressions of taxa such as Nelumbium, Trema, Neolitsea, and Grewia and a host of ferns and angiosperm families such as Bombacaceae (Lakhanpal 1955a,b; Banerjee 1964). Some reports have also suggested biotic exchanges of India with southeast Asia along the marine shoreline of the Tethys Sea. Whether this migration

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route existed before the India-Eurasia collision or developed after the collision is debatable, but there is an abundance of fossil evidence suggesting exchanges that involved both Palaeogene and Neogene taxa between the two regions. Investigations of fossil wood from Upper Tertiary sediments of the Arunachal Pradesh Siwaliks have yielded a number of closely related members of Dipterocarpaceae and other important taxa, including Malayan Sindora, providing evidence of biotic exchange between southeast Asia and India (Mehrotra, Awasthi, and Dutta 1999). Similarly, Grewia, a well-known taxon from Palaeogene India, is also found in Neogene southeast Asia; Gluta, a well-distributed taxon in the southeast Asian Palaeogene, is also recorded in Neogene India (Bande and Prakash 1986). These floral elements exemplify the early two-way exchanges between India and southeast Asia. Earlier reports proposed that Dipterocarpaceae during the Paleogene period (25–66 Ma) was represented by Dipterocarpus and Hopea in southeast Asia but was absent from India, suggesting that this and other plant taxa likely migrated to the Indian subcontinent from southeast Asia during the Neogene period (Lakhanpal 1974; Bande and Prakash 1986; Srivastava and Mehrotra 2010). However, in light of recent fossil evidence of Asian dipterocarps from ~53 Ma in the sediments of western India, researchers support the view that dipterocarps may not have originated in southeast Asia but instead were part of western Gondwanaland and likely dispersed from India to southeast Asia (Dayanandan et al. 1999; Ducousso et al. 2004; Dutta et al. 2011). This finding changes the direction of the migration route but upholds the view that exchange between the two regions did take place. Plant families of the tropical lowland rainforest trees, Dipterocarpaceae and Crypteroniaceae, have aided in the elucidation of the Gondwana–India–Southeast Asia biogeographic history (Ashton and Gunatilleke 1987; Dayanandan et al. 1999; Conti et al. 2002). In short, various paleobiological and paleobiogeographic accounts of the Indian plate from the late Cretaceous to late Miocene times can be summarized in the following broad outline about its biota. In contrast with what might be expected for a drifting isolated plate, India lacked high biotic endemism. For the reasons discussed earlier, Gondwanan and Laurasian elements populated the Indian subcontinent before India’s accretion to Eurasia. Additionally, floral and faunal elements from present-day South America, Africa, and Madagascar traveled to Asia by the northward-drifting Indian plate, which acquired biota from Africa and Madagascar on the west and southeast Asia on the east. However, some researchers question the tenability of the western linkage as well as the possibility of biotic exchange between India and Africa around the Cretaceous period because

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of the paucity of evidence for the claimed therian mammal phylogenetic relationship and the existence of a wide marine space between the two continents (Prasad and Sahni 1999). These authors instead favor biogeographic linkages between India and Eurasia during the late Cretaceous period (Prasad and Sahni 1999). Finally, the early biotic exchanges between India and other continents mostly constituted small-sized animals that could tolerate the salinity of the intervening shallow sea, the surmountable barrier to migration. These animals likely used sweepstake processes after the sea level changes. The creation of transient land connections in the form of island arcs in northern as well as southern hemispheres facilitated biotic exchanges (see Prasad and Sahni 1999; Ali and Aitchison 2008).

The Complex and Extended Elevational Gradient We discussed the geological processes responsible for the Himalayan elevational uplift in Chapter 2. However, an equally vital subject of discussion is the elevational history of the Himalayan gradient through geologic time with respect to its development as the largest biodiversity gradient on Earth. The plethora of evidence accumulated on this subject over the past decades illuminates our understanding of the Himalayan biological contour developed through ages. Morphotectonic, geochemical, magnetostratigraphic, oxygen isotopebased paleoaltimetry, and paleobotany techniques have yielded equivocal information on the Himalaya’s paleoelevation (Wang et al. 2008). Studies based on carbon and oxygen isotopic analyses of paleosols, carbon isotopic composition of fossil tooth enamel, and further paleontological evidence have also been helpful in the reconstruction of the paleoelevation of the Himalaya and Tibet (Garzione et al. 2000; Wang, Deng, and Biasatti 2006). Despite levels of sophistication in the scientific investigations and analyses, research opinions differ due to the lack and impossibility of direct paleoelevation measurements. As an example, in the extensively researched Tibet region there are divergent views on its elevational history. Some authors, based on oxygen isotope estimates of paleoaltitude, suggest that the highlands reached their average elevations of over 4,000 m about 35 ± 5 Ma (Rowley and Currie 2006); others, based on a combination of highresolution magnetostratigraphy and biostratigraphy studies, suggest that the Plateau reached this elevation around 25.5–19.8 Ma (Sun et al. 2014). Yet others claim that the present elevation of Tibet was attained ~11 Ma, as shown by investigations of oxygen isotopes of paleocarbonates (Garzione et al. 2000), or ~7 Ma as revealed by carbon isotope evidence preserved in

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the tooth enamel of horses and rhinos inhabiting the area (Wang, Deng, and Biasatti 2006). Isotopic and sedimentological investigations of the Bengal Fan clastic sediments indicate that the Himalaya attained its present-day elevation around 17 Ma (France-Lanord, Derry, and Michard 1993). An interesting geodynamic modeling study by Jean-Louis Mugnier and Pascale Huyghe (2006) performed an analysis of drill holes, seismic lines, dated sections outcrops, and balanced cross sections in the Ganga basin. The study concluded that several orogenic processes in Tibet induced a kilometer-scale elevational increase in the southern Himalaya, causing the topographic appearance of a distinct Himalayan belt before 15 Ma (Mugnier and Huyghe 2006). The first Himalayan elevational uplift occurred before 17–15 Ma, but researchers have argued for another, more recent Pleistocene elevational push (Gansser 1964). The most recent episodic uplift of the Lesser Himalaya subprovince occurred as late as the Holocene epoch (Valdiya 1993, 2002). In light of the equivocal evidence of the episodic elevational uplift, building a biotic profile along the Himalayan elevational gradient is a challenging task.

A Paleo-Biological Himalayan Sketch Geological, biological and climatological proxies allow us to build a realistic past elevational profile of the Himalaya. For example, there is geobiological evidence that a major climate change occurred in this region during Miocene epoch, which indicates that the present stupendous elevations of the Himalaya likely developed around the Oligocene epoch. The characteristic features manifested as an expansive vertical temperature zonation and distinct vertical and horizontal precipitation belts across the Himalaya. The dynamic relationship between climate and biota through ages can be inferred from the paleobiological record in fossils and sediments. Until the close of the Oligocene epoch, the gradually uplifting Himalayan slopes had a predominantly Indian peninsular flora and fauna, indicating a tropical environment with slowly developing subtropical conditions in the north. The Miocene epoch heralded a change in the climate as well as in the Himalayan biota. Sedimentological and paleoecological researchers have presented evidence of the changing elevation, climate, and biotic profile of the Himalaya between the Miocene and Holocene epochs. Prominent among such researchers is Birbal Sahni, whose pioneering work in paleobotany in the early twentieth century earned him the honor of being the first Indian botanist to be elected as a Fellow of Royal Society of London. He founded the Institute of Palaeobotany at Lucknow, India,

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in 1946, which was renamed as the Birbal Sahni Institute of Palaeobotany after his death in 1949. Sahni nurtured the institute into a prominent school, inspired a generation of young scholars, and made major contributions to our understanding of the past biological profile of the Indian subcontinent and the Himalaya. Sahni’s work on sediments of the Kasauli beds in Himachal Pradesh is among the most important research contributions on Himalayan paleobiology. He described angiosperm leaf fossils of a palm, Sabal major, and freshwater molluscs dating back to the mid-Miocene (Sahni 1953). Following Sahni’s work, researchers from the institute and other institutions continued biostratigraphic investigations on the Subathu-DagsaiKasauli Succession in the Shimla Hills of Himachal Pradesh (Singh 1978). This succession represents a complete depositional sequence without a time break, as evidenced by its fossil groupings. The fossil assemblages in the Subathu sediments represent an open tidal sea environment characterized by trace fossil associations of the marine invertebrate taxa such as Thalassinoides, Chondrites, and Tigillites. Dagsai sediments reflect an intermediate estuarine environment bearing burrows of Thalassinoides and Chondrites (Singh 1978). The more recent Kasauli sediments signify an alluvial environment represented by horizontal burrows of insects such as crickets and beetles (Singh 1978). Additional detailed and integrated sedimentological and structural investigations on the Himalayan fossil sequences were updated to a Kasauli-Dagshai-Subathu-Singtali succession, with respective ages of Lower Miocene to Middle Miocene (~23–10 Ma), Upper Eocene to Upper Oligocene (~40–23 Ma), Palaeocene to Middle Eocene (~65–40 Ma), and Upper Cretaceous to Paleocene (~88 or 75–65 Ma) (Table 3.1) (Najman et al. 1993). Analyses of lithostratigraphic and biostratigraphic accounts show that marine life existed in the region up to the middle Eocene epoch. Terrestrial systems replaced the marine environments with biotic elements of a fluvial landscape in a semiarid climate lasting up to the Upper Oligocene epoch, which changed to humid conditions by the middle Miocene epoch (see Table 3.1). Miocene vegetation megafossil evidence, based on stray wood elements, leaf impressions, and a limited number of flowers and fruits, has been assembled from across the Indian Himalayan states, from the west to the east (reviewed in Srivastava et al. 2014). The fossil assemblage of the current Lesser Himalaya, comprising taxa that include Chukrasia tabularis, Ficus sp., Kayea floribunda, Mallotus philippensis, Mesua ferrea, Persea lanceolata, and Phyllanthus reticulatus (Srivastava et al. 2014), reflects a wet tropical environment during the early Miocene epoch. Coinciding with the evergreen moist deciduous taxa were Acrostichum aureum, Garcinia

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Table 3.1. Summary of geological formations, age, and depositional environment based on the sedimentological and structural study of the Lesser Himalaya. Geological Formation Kasauli Dagshai

Subathu Singtali

Geological Age

Age (Ma)

Lower to Middle Miocene Upper Eocene to Upper Oligocene Paleocene to Middle Eocene Upper Cretaceous to Paleocene

~23–10 ~40–23

~65–40 ~88(?) or 75–65

Environment Humid climate, braided fluvial regime Semiarid climate, meandering fluvial, and floodplain regime Shallow marine Shallow marine

Note: Modified after Najman et al. 1993.

speciosa, and Gluta tavoyana, indicating a tropical coastal riverbank environment, which alludes to the presence of a sea near these Lesser Himalayan environs (Srivastava et al. 2014). Floristic changes in the middle to late Miocene epoch including the appearance of several evergreen and moist deciduous taxa have been reported; a number of these taxa prevalent in the Siwaliks are distributed in wetter regions of the present Indian subcontinent. The majority of the Siwaliks fossil taxa suggest a warm climate with a year-round high rainfall environment, compared to today’s subtropical, cooler, and drier climate. The discovery of Ficus palaeoracemosa from the Kasauli Formation supports the view that tropical and humid conditions existed during the early Miocene epoch (Srivastava, Srivastava, and Tiwari 2011). The present-day Kasauli region lies in the Lesser Himalaya at an elevational range of about 1,500 to 2,000 m. It is reasonable to suggest that Kasauli experienced a tropical climate and lower elevation during the early to middle Miocene epoch. Consequent to the Himalayan uplift, much of the prevailing Miocene flora of the present Lesser Himalayan region could not keep pace with changing climate at higher elevations and got restricted to the warmer southern plains. Fossil evidence comprising subtropical and temperate elements, such as Trachycarpus (Lakhanpal et al. 1984) and Prunus (Guleria et  al. 1983), from Miocene sediments in the Ladakh-Karakoram region points to the appearance of cooler climate conditions during that period (Srivastava et al. 2014). These temperate elements are reported to have migrated into the Himalaya from the neighboring Chinese region where such flora dominated in the Tertiary period (Mehrotra et al. 2005).

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The Miocene-Pleistocene vegetation profile of the Himalaya, based on a palynological study of the Surai Khola region in central Nepal, fully captures the evolving Miocene landscape of the Himalaya (Hoorn, Ohja, and Quade 2000). Forests occupied most of the tropical zone (up to 1,000 m) during the middle to early late Miocene (~11.5–8 Ma) epoch. They were replaced by grasslands during early to late Miocene (~8–6.5 Ma) epoch. Grasslands dominated the Himalayan foothills from the late Miocene to the Pliocene / early Pleistocene (~6.5–100 290

4,000 7 150 556 — 0 12 20 48 42 35

40–50 15.91 25 32.01 — 0 4 2.22 27.43 ~42 12.1

Note: Modified from Pandit, Manish, and Koh 2014.

mixed broad-leaf coniferous forests with a host of combinations (for an authentic account of the subcontinent’s forest types, see Champion and Seth 1968). The Himalayan subtropical forests (500–1,500 m) are characterized by dry summers, with temperatures going up to 40°C, followed by monsoon rains between late June to early September. In the western Himalaya, sal (Shorea robusta) forests dominate the landscape at these elevations. Besides sal trees, forests of khair (Acacia catechu) and shisham (Dalbergia sissoo) are common in the warmer and drier pockets. Tree species like Adina cordifolia, Aegle marmelos, Albizia lebbeck, Anogeissus latifolia, Eugenia oogenensis, Garuga pinnata, Mallotus phillippensis, Terminalia bellerica, and T. tomentosa are interspersed with sal throughout the subtropical zone. Chir pine (Pinus roxburghii) forests make their appearance toward the higher elevations in this belt. As in the western Himalaya, sal forests dominate the central Himalayan subtropical landscape, with pockets of khair and shisham well represented. Terminalia bellerica, T. chebula, and T. tomentosa comprise the other constituents of these forests. Tree species like Adina cordifolia, Amoora decandra, Anogeissus latifolia, Careya arborea, Eugenia oogenensis, Kydia calycina, and Semecarpus anacardium along with sal constitute the forest vegetation of the subtropics of the central Himalaya. Pinus roxburghii forests are seen toward the higher elevations in this zone.

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The subtropical zone in the eastern Himalaya reaches marginally higher, up to 1,800 m, with sal dominating the vegetation along with Mesua assamica (=Kayea assamica) and Mesua ferrea. Other tree components of the vegetation include Albizia procera, Bombax ceiba, Careya arborea, Duabanga grandiflora, Elaeocarpus rugosus (=Elaeocarpus aristatus), Gmelina arborea, Mallotus philippensis, Oroxylum indicum, Terminalia spp., and Toona ciliata. Notably, Quercus lamellosa is associated with the subtropical Mesua forests toward the higher elevations in the eastern Himalaya. The temperate or montane zone in the Himalaya extends between elevations of 1,800–3,300 m. The forest vegetation of this zone is characterized by oaks in the western and central Himalaya with Quercus floribunda, Q. leucotrichophora, Q. semecarpifolia, and Q. lamellosa dominating this elevational belt. Rhododendrons are a key species of the temperate forests in the Himalaya though the western Himalaya has fewer species than the central and the eastern region. The western Himalayan landscape presents one of the most beautiful sights to the visitor’s eye in the spring (February to April) as the Himalayan slopes appear painted in dark red by the blooming Rhododendron arboreum. Toward the upper reaches (~2,800 m), deodar (Cedrus deodara), fir (Abies pindrow), and spruce (Picea smithiana) forests make up the bulk of the forest vegetation, and Betula utilis occupies higher elevations. The secondary scrub in this region is colonized by bushes of Berberis spp. and Prinsepia utilis. In the Eastern Himalaya, the temperate elevational belt toward the lower elevations has mixed stands of evergreen oak forests of Quercus lamellosa and Q. cerris (=Q. languinosa) and the deciduous forests of Acer campbellii, Magnolia campbellii, and Lithocarpus pachyphylla. In the higher elevations (~2,800 m), the mixed oak-lauraceous forests are dominated by Quercus lamellosa, Rhododendron spp., Abies delavayi, Abies densa, Betula utilis, Tsuga dumosa, and Larix griffithii. The alpine and subalpine regions at elevations of 3,800 m and above are characterized by dry alpine scrubs with scattered bushy forms of Rhododendron, Juniperus recurva, Cotoneaster microphyllus, and Cassiope fastigiata. These alpine scrubs are often an intermix of the bushy forms and a herbaceous undergrowth of species of Anemone, Epilobium, Geranium, Caltha, Primula, and Ranunculus. Among the birds and animals, the Himalayan treepie (Dendrocitta formosae), Yellow-eyed babbler (Chrysomma sinense), tigers, and the Asian elephant characterize the fauna of elevations up to 900 m. Wild boar (Sus scrofa), the Himalayan griffon vulture (Gyps himalayensis), and the Himalayan tahr (Hemitragus jemlahicus) are the characteristic taxa of the subtropical zone (900–2,000 m). Himalayan musk deer (Moschus leucogaster), takin

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(Budorcas taxicolor), koklas (Pucrasia macrolopha), and the Himalayan monal (Lophophorus impejanus) are typical of the temperate regions (2,000–3,800 m) in the Himalaya. The Himalayan blue sheep (Pseudois nayaur) is generally seen above tree line inhabiting open grassy slopes at elevations of 2,500–5,500 m. The snow leopard (Uncia uncia), Himalayan musk deer (Moschus leucogaster), Himalayan snowcock (Tetraogallus himalayensis), and Himalayan pika (Ochotona himalayana) are some of the key species of the higher elevations (3,800–5,000 m) in the Himalaya. There are, however, species that either occur in the western or the eastern Himalaya; the Himalayan brown bear (Ursus arctos isabellinus), Himalayan blue sheep (Pseudois nayaur) and Himalayan tahr (Hemitragus jemlahicus) are well represented in the western Himalaya, while the Mishmi takin (Budorcas taxicolor taxicolor), Hoolock gibbon (Hoolock hoolock), and red panda (Ailurus fulgens) are conspicuous faunal elements of the eastern Himalaya. The aquatic faunas of the Himalayan rivers are equally unique and diverse. The Brahmaputra and Ganga rivers are home to many an endangered species, such as the Gangetic dolphin (Platanista gangetica), gharial (Gavialis gangeticus), and golden mahseer (Tor putitora). Overall, the Himalayan rivers harbor nearly 298 freshwater fish species, of which twentynine are known to be endemic (Bhatt, Manish, and Pandit 2012). Even though the Himalaya is poor in fish endemism compared with the Western Ghats region, rich biodiversity in most of the faunal taxa is because the Himalaya forms a transitional zone between Palearctic and Oriental biogeographic realms, and also for the biogeographic linkage it has to the Ethiopian realm in the southwest. The rich biodiversity, endemism, and higher rates of habitat loss in the Himalaya make the region one of the global biodiversity hotspot. However, this unique biodiversity is being threatened by the burgeoning human population, deforestation, climate change, urbanization, and widespread hydropower and infrastructure development. Urgent pragmatic conservation measures are required to arrest this trend.

II CULTURAL PHASE

chapter five

The First Axe After bowing down to the memory of the heroes of yore, continue to move at a fast pace; Drink of the waters of the holy rivers Saraswati and Ganga before coming to rest on the Himalaya. — Kalidasa

The Peopling of the Himalaya The natural phase of the Himalaya concluded with the end of the most recent glacial period or the last glacial maximum 18 to 24 thousand years ago (kya). The biota that survived glaciation upheaval gradually diversified, and with climate warming the Himalayan slopes were recolonized by forest vegetation. Ancient Indian texts such as the Rig Veda refer to these landscapes as aranya; this expression, besides defining the landscape as forested, also connotes abundance of resources, fertility, and prosperity. Therefore, the human association with and dependence on the forests in this region is well documented and has a long history. A realistic understanding of the human activity altering the natural Himalayan landscape would help us reconstruct the magnitude of environmental change in the region during the Holocene. To trace the history of human arrival in the Himalaya it is important to review the available evidence from multiple sources. The arrival of humans in the Himalaya and the Tibetan Plateau has been intensely debated among historians, anthropologists, linguists, and human geneticists. The arriving humans at these elevations had to endure extreme weather conditions characterized by low temperature, intense aridity, and oxygen deficiency (hypoxia). Archaeological evidence supports the presence of the earliest humans in the Tibetan highlands during Paleolithic times (>21 kya), while genetic studies based on mtDNA and Y chromosome

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indicate a more recent Neolithic (8 strikes the Himalaya (Wyss 2005; Gupta and Gahalaut 2014). The purpose of these quantitative and predictive exercises is to generate awareness among people and policy-makers for preparedness when the disaster strikes. Clearly, earthquakes cannot be prevented from hitting the Himalaya, but the awareness of these likely hazards is important for making informed decisions. The recurring concerns in studies of Himalayan earthquakes relate to high-density human populations, excessive use of poor building constructions, changeover from traditional construction materials (wood and stone masonry) to low quality cement / concrete structures, and lack of awareness among common citizens and governments about earthquakes. The growing human population coupled with the poor design and construction of residential and public buildings, which are likely to fail in event of a major earthquake, are the main determinants of the scale of disaster in the Himalaya. Schools, hospitals, and mega-engineering projects such as dams are the most critical structures, and they must adhere to the highest and the best standards of building construction. How do we secure large human populations in the Himalaya from disasters arising from earthquakes? Most Himalayan nations have institutional mechanisms in place for disaster mitigation, but there is an urgent need to intensify efforts to avoid the risks that accompany earthquakes as much as is possible. Preparedness at the individual, community, state, and national levels is the first requisite. To be prepared for an event requires an adequate infrastructure for earthquake monitoring in the Himalaya using seismological and GPS networks and earthquake warning systems (Gupta and Gahalaut 2014). The need for information sharing across the nations and among the vulnerable population groups cannot be overemphasized. There is a lot that needs to be done to bring scientific information to masses in a form they can easily grasp. Use of social media to broadcast occasional earthquake-related information along with the measures for preventing disasters would find greater acceptability among the masses. Experience gained from the recent large earthquakes in Pakistan, India, and Nepal Himalaya points to several lacunae in the strategies and infrastructure in the system charged with the responsibility of dealing with disaster preparedness, awareness, and mitigation. A number of studies have investigated the causes, consequences, and preparedness of the governments in the event of a disaster in the Himalayan region (see Rossetto and Peiris 2009; Ainuddin and Routray 2012). These studies have drawn several conclusions: (1) The handling of information regarding disaster preparedness and the

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impact therefrom continues to be carried out with a reactive, top-down approach. There is little involvement of the stakeholders at grass-roots level; (2) serious gaps exist between the goals of government institutions and the needs of the vulnerable communities (Ainuddin and Routray 2012); (3) major flaws exist in the seismic codes in some nations (e.g., Pakistan), and there is noncompliance with building codes even in the state-owned institutions (hospitals, schools, administrative buildings) that are crucially important during earthquakes (Rossetto and Peiris 2009). For an effective response to prevent earthquake-related disasters, researchers have recommended the institutionalization of disaster management practices at the local levels as an effective policy instrument (Ainuddin and Routray 2012). Setting up community-based management institutions in coordination with NGOs and national disaster-management authorities at the provincial and village levels would yield better results in earthquake hazard-prone areas. Similarly, researchers from the Indian Himalaya have recommended construction of earthquake-resistant buildings using retrofitting techniques and using traditional indigenous materials and techniques (Gupta, Sinvhal, and Shankar 2006). Formulating earthquake preparedness programs, identifying landslide-prone areas at the village level, and making such information available to local populations who must be encouraged to avoid such locations are some suggested measures by these researchers. In the situations when a disaster strikes, a dedicated health-delivery system to treat the personal injuries and permanent handicaps, which also includes counseling for the victims who must deal with the psychological trauma of the death of their loved ones, must be in complete readiness at all times. A recent study of Nepal after the 2015 earthquake has recommended better response coordination between the national governments and the relief teams carrying out the initial rescue efforts (Sharma 2015). The author suggested that the hospital and medical infrastructure in the earthquakeprone areas needs to be bolstered for tackling a high number of causalities after an earthquake at any time of the year. Lack of adequate health-care infrastructure across nations in the Himalaya exposes the vulnerable populations to severe disadvantage in times of crisis such as the earthquakes. This major lacuna in the policy needs the urgent and serious attention of decision-makers. Floods Despite the sobering figures of human losses and homelessness caused by Himalayan floods, these disasters do not attract as much attention from policy-makers, perhaps because of their seasonality. Governments deem it reasonable to only respond if and when a flood situation arises, rather than

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keeping floods on a constant watch list. A recent study by ICIMOD found that, with the exception of China, most of the Himalayan nations “generally lack policies, strategies, and plans specifically dealing with flash floods” (Shrestha and Bajracharya 2013). In view of the Himalayan region’s predisposition to frequent floods, distinctive strategies are required for monitoring, surveillance, and data collection, analysis, dissemination, and public awareness about these regional hydrometeorological events. Flood forecasting is an integral part of these strategies. For improved precision in flood forecasting, it would help to generate databases and carry out monitoring at different spatial scales, such as the watersheds of the major tributaries of the Indus, Ganga, and Brahmaputra rivers. The availability, dependability, and sharing of hydrometeorological data are still the most formidable challenges in the Himalayan region. Delinking these aspects from the geopolitics of the region would be a great service to humanity. Efforts of the Himalayan nations and their respective institutions, including the independent organizations, to manage flood databases for the Himalayan region are still not up to international standards. The common refrain of the governments and autonomous institutions that “it has already been done” may be our undoing. If it were so, why do Himalayan floods continue to kill thousands and make millions homeless year after year? Thus, the first important step involves an emphasis on real-time event monitoring, reliable data generation, and the sharing of data among upstream and downstream nations on a regular basis. Broadcasting information and ensuring its delivery to the target populations when needed forms an important part of the chain. For a better response to floods and preparedness at different stakeholder levels, a more sophisticated understanding of the characteristic signs of extreme hydrometeorological events—such as magnitude, timing, and duration—needs to be developed for an early warning system at the scale of a watershed (Elalem and Pal 2015). Equally important is to understand and assess the vulnerability of human communities to flood disasters; such evaluations would include assessments of the socioeconomic drivers of human populations, including demography, economic profiles, quality of the dwellings or properties, and the capability of institutional mechanisms to effectively respond to the disasters (see Eakin and Luers 2006). According to ICIMOD, the Himalayan region is one of the poorest in the world, with one-third to half of the population living below poverty line, which makes it particularly vulnerable to flood risks (Shrestha and Bajracharya 2013). They also note that the Himalaya’s high population growth rates—and the highest population densities in the world (180 persons / km2 at places)—produce a double whammy: resource scarcity (land and water)

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on the one hand, and a heightened vulnerability to natural disasters arising from the poor economic conditions on the other. These basic realities necessitate that local district level administrators be equipped with interactive databases on the Geographic Information System–Management Information System (GIS-MIS) platform that are continuously updated. These tools would vastly enhance our capability to respond effectively and timely to potential flood risks. Although flood prevention in the Himalayan region may be a difficult goal to achieve, given the uncertainty of natural events, the demographic and socioeconomic conditions, and our current technological capabilities, the pursuit of ideas to enhance our hydroclimatological forecasting competencies is worthy of our effort. Higher investments in surveillance and monitoring of hydrometeorological phenomena as well as maintaining the human resources and institutions for forecasting are urgently needed. Moreover, real-time interstate and intergovernmental communications about dynamic weather and hydrological conditions must receive high priority; a command control system between the states and nations in the river basins, from second- or third-order streams up to the deltaic regions, must be equipped with hotlines so that information is relayed both seamlessly and responsibly. Effective and fast communication can save lives, property, and livelihoods. The discussions that surround the floods in the Himalaya at present are not about prevention, but postflood management. This must change—postevent actions are uncontrollable and dynamic, so no level of preparedness will ever deliver justice to the affected populations. It is like trying to catch a bullet—an environmental emergency situation can, within hours, transform into a medical emergency and quickly end up as a grave human tragedy. To reduce the human losses and misery that follow floods, the following actions should be considered for adoption or strengthening: (1) well-equipped institutional mechanisms capable of monitoring the dynamic weather and hydrological events that end up as floods, (2) better-quality and efficient mitigation measures, (3) a responsible and effective interstate and international communication infrastructure with a command control system, linked at the back-end with flood monitoring institutions / mechanisms and at the front-end with the various stakeholders, including the likely affected populations, (4) strict enforcement of land-use control along riparian and vulnerable catchment areas, and (5) establishment of institutional and administrative mechanisms that are charged with the responsibility of spreading awareness about the flood events, and undertaking regular campaigns in this regard, especially during the vulnerable seasons. For better and more effective outcomes, the decision-makers must seek out the

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cooperation of local NGOs, civil society groups, and media in delivering information about general flood awareness and the real-time dos and don’ts. The variation in flood seasonality between the western and eastern Himalayan regions (as discussed in Chapter 9) needs to be considered in regional flood management policies and plans. High incidence of floods in the western Himalaya during the winter–spring season compared with the summer–autumn season in the eastern Himalaya must be kept in mind while formulating management plans. Seasonality complicates the impact of flood disasters for the communities at risk as well as for the nations in terms of their preparedness to deal with the aftermath. For instance, in countries such as Afghanistan, Pakistan, and the northwestern states of India (Jammu and Kashmir, Himachal Pradesh, and Uttarakhand), the challenge of a flood could be complicated by the colder temperatures during the winter–spring season. In India’ eastern sector, Bangladesh, and Nepal, the higher temperatures during the summer–autumn flood cycle could pose very different problems from the floods. The available information on human mortality in these regions after floods reveals this stark contrast: more people die of pulmonary pneumonia in the western Himalaya due to the cold, while deaths in the eastern region are mostly caused by gastrointestinal and malarial complications. These observations demand regional strategies and distinctive preparedness plans in our flood-response systems. Climate Change The Himalaya plays a significant role in shaping the global climate and the regional climate of Asia, including the Indian summer monsoon (Zhisheng et al. 2001). It is feared that the cumulative effects of warming are likely to impact the nature and intensity of the monsoon, and which may result in extreme hydrological events in south and southeast Asia. An increased frequency of extreme weather events, such as droughts and floods from cloudbursts, is likely in the Himalaya. Agriculture, the major economic activity of the residents in the region, is largely dependent on the Himalayan rivers; climate change could seriously affect Himalayan economic conditions in an already poverty-stricken region. The problem of economic losses among the apple growers resulting from climate change throughout the Himalayan nations is already well known. Climate change also may bring a higher incidence and spread of novel diseases in the Himalayan areas. Additionally, climate change is known to cause large-scale changes in the ecosystem structures and functions in the Himalayan highlands, such as phenological shifts, biotic invasions, and grassland–shrubland transitions, which impact the livelihoods and cultures of the highland Himalayan communities.

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Some of the immediate consequences of climate change summarized here and highlighted in detail in Chapter  9 greatly undermine Himalayan sustainability, so reducing the impact of climate change in the Himalaya warrants a robust response. A multipronged approach for managing the impact is recommended, including (1) a focus on vulnerability reduction among populations, (2) improvement of the resilience and adaptive capacity of local communities, and (3) providing direct financial benefits and access to and delivery of adaptability instruments. Conservation easements in some critical Himalayan areas need to be looked at carefully and seriously. As part of vulnerability reduction measures, innovative programs such as crop insurance to safeguard against extreme weather events would be helpful. For improving resilience and adaptive capacities, facilitating alternative livelihood strategies for the Himalayan people are needed. For instance, incentives may be given to local farmers for shifting to new incomegenerating activities, such as medicinal plant cultivation with market linkages, honeybee products, and horticulture. Adoption of mixed farming, use of climate-resistant crop varieties, and revival of indigenous and traditional sustainable farming practices would be helpful in increasing the resilience and adaptive capacities of local communities. Support for boosting horticulture production (e.g., apples) through aided pollination by honeybees, as successfully demonstrated by ICIMOD researchers, needs to be strengthened and scaled up after its ecological impacts have been studied. The economic well-being of the Himalaya’s vulnerable populations is insurance against any exigencies or risks from hazards. Biodiversity Conservation The first formal conservation policies were implemented in undivided India with the promulgation of the Forest Act (1927). In Nepal, these policies began with the National Parks and Wildlife Conservation Act (1973). In China, the first important conservation policies were outlined in the Environmental Protection Law (1979). In Bhutan, conservation policies were initiated with the passage of the Forest and Nature Conservation Act (1995). Between 1918 and 2007, a total of 483 protected areas, covering 39 percent of the Himalaya’s geographic area, were established by the Himalayan nations (Chettri et  al. 2008). At an aggregate level, the wide protected-area coverage in the Himalaya ranks among the highest in the world; for example, it is approximately 1.5 times greater than that of Central America (Chape et al. 2005; Chettri et al. 2008). However, 90 percent of this protected area lies in China, while the other six nations merely share 10 percent of the protected-area coverage.

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Conventionally, these protected areas were designed for the conservation of a single charismatic species. Some examples of such Himalayan protected areas are the Qomolangma National Nature Reserve (Tibet) for the clouded leopard (Neofelis nebulosa), Hemis National Park (Ladakh, India) for the snow leopard (Panthera uncia), Deosai National Park (GilgitBaltistan, Pakistan) for the Himalayan brown bear (Ursus arctos), Royal Manas National Park (Bhutan) for the Golden langur (Presbytis geei), and Kaziranga National Park (Assam, India) and Chitwan National Park (Nepal) for the one-horned rhinoceros (Rhinoceros unicornis). In recent years, however, the rationale and effectiveness of protected areas to conserve flagship species has been hotly debated (Sharma, Amarasinghe, and Sikka 2008; Brown et al. 2015; Oldekop et al. 2016). Protected areas that form continuous wildlife habitats and involve the local community in their management have proven to be more effective in conserving the species of interest as well as the overall biodiversity as opposed to smaller, isolated areas that are purely state-governed (Chettri et al. 2008). Similar lessons from the Tibetan region have illustrated that when the social concerns of local communities are aligned with the conservation goals, success is assured (Foggin 2008). This also clearly brings out the need for realigning policies of conservation to strike a balance between conservation goals and the developmental aspirations of the human communities within the carrying capacity framework. To measure the response of an ecosystem to natural and human-induced change drivers, including feedback loops at different scales, researchers have recommended the establishment of ecological observatory networks (EONs) at multiple relocatable sites with a three- to five-year rotation (see Keller et al. 2008). These researchers recommend that when equipped with the state-of-the art high-resolution remote sensing facilities, these facilities could record spectral imaging data on key ecosystem properties for ecological forecasting and provide much needed conservation information for policy-makers. The EONs would generate useful ground-level data on various ecosystem attributes, including the role of human integration within the broad framework of biodiversity conservation. In an editorial for the journal Environmental Conservation, Surendra P. Singh made an interesting observation that is worth reproducing here: “The presence of an exploitative human population degrades the natural vegetation, livestock populations aggravate the damage, and promotion of agriculture and a market economy render conservation only a theoretical exercise in such situations” (Singh 1998). May we use this warning to bridge the opinion divide between conservation and development?

chapter eleven

Individuals, Institutions, and Ideals My eye is fixed not on the ending of the book but on the feeling of that ending. — Peter Matthiessen

T

he challenge of securing a sustainable future for the Himalaya, or any other mountain regions for that matter, is daunting because the geological processes and the force of gravity induce instability within the system. Some have referred to these inherent weaknesses in mountains as “uncertainty at all levels” (Ives and Messerli 1989). For the reasons elucidated in Chapter 10, the Himalaya’s limited carrying capacity vis-à-vis the undertakings of human enterprise demands that all efforts be made at the individual (research, education, awareness) and institutional (administrative and financial support, facilitation, law enforcement) levels to ensure that the idea and ideal of sustainability (environmental, economic, and cultural) are followed in letter and spirit through state and public partnerships. Our responses to limit or retard the potential of environmental stressors to ensure the Himalaya’s sustainability require scientific, technological, economic, social, ethical, and administrative interventions, which must be in sync with interstate, national, bilateral, and multilateral networking and cooperation. Free access to data on environmental resources and stressors, and data sharing at all levels, would be the first step in the direction of achieving the goal of Himalayan sustainability. It is useful to review what has already been achieved in this sphere by the various stakeholders in the Himalayan region so that best practices and projects can be scaled up and replicated. For example, Bawa and colleagues (2010) have published an in-depth

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analysis of the environmental policies and need for cooperation between India and China in which they detail how the two countries could learn from each other’s experiences in energy efficiency, poverty alleviation, health care, and environmental conservation with respect to the Himalayan region.

Individuals An important question posed by Julie Battilana (2006) while addressing the issue of paradox in institutional entrepreneurship is, “How can organizations or individuals innovate, if their beliefs and actions are all determined by the very institutional environment they wish to change?” She develops a theory of institutional entrepreneurship by analyzing the enabling role of individuals’ social position and “by explaining how, in some situations, individuals may shape institutions.” Under what situations does an individual attain a higher social position so that his or her performance shapes an institution? Individuals can attain higher social positions through various modes—monarchy, politics, wealth, religion, academics, or any vocation. The common trait needed to achieve a principal position or leadership in any of these domains is an individual’s capacity and capability to play a transformational role in the system. Let us consider some of these individuals from the preceding pages of this book. They should provide an idea about the kind of individuals who can promote change—from the common men and women, to the researchers who have made meaningful contributions to our current understanding of the Himalayan mountains. Such work is vastly important for the mountain’s sustainability. We also find a mix of kings, politicians, philosophers, poets, scientists, social workers, and at times ordinary people who have delivered and shaped the progress of the ideas that define sustainability. In the Himalayan context, the foremost philosophy that comes to mind is Buddha’s middle path as an ideal mantra for sustainability. The pursuit of extreme formulas of development or stasis are both counterproductive. An equally compelling argument is Mahatma Gandhi’s environmental axiom: “There is enough for everybody’s need, but not for everybody’s greed.” This remarkably simple statement perhaps best sums up the path toward achieving sustainability. The operationalization of this concept demands ethical and moral fortitude; and in practice, it is the simplest path to follow. Among the more recent ideas that have emanated from the Himalayan region and attracted global attention is the concept of gross national happiness

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(GNH) introduced by the former king of Bhutan, Jigme Singye Wangchuck, in the early 1970s. GNH adopts a novel approach to development by measuring the state of the nation’s prosperity in combination with the spiritual, physical, social, and environmental well-being of its citizens as well as its natural capital. Since then a number of Western scholars and governments have proposed and adopted variants of GNH. In 2011, the United Nations adopted the Bhutan-sponsored resolution “Happiness: Towards a Holistic Approach to Development,” which, besides acknowledging the inability of gross domestic product to realistically measure a nation’s state of well-being, highlights that “happiness is a fundamental human goal and a universal aspiration.” The Tibetan leader His Holiness the Dalai Lama has consistently emphasized the need for compassion, peace, and happiness, which in a sense combines the ideas of Buddha, Gandhi, and Wangchuk—all incidentally from this region—as central to the idea and practice of sustainability. If one were to add another name to this august group, Aldo Leopold would be my choice. Leopold’s idea of land ethics provides a moral edifice to the scientific framework of sustainability. He termed it an “ecological conscience” in which “conservation is a state of harmony between men and land” (1947, 343; 1938, 145–146). Leopold advocated that more than achieving harmony, everyone must keep striving to achieve this goal. The challenge is to learn to put these axioms into practice, to implement the outcomes of research related to sustainability and replicate the many successful social interventions.

Institutions The number of international institutions with cross-national activities in the Himalaya are limited. The Kathmandu-based International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD) is perhaps the best known among them. A “regional intergovernmental learning and knowledge sharing centre,” it serves eight regional member countries of the Himalayan region: Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, China, India, Myanmar, Nepal, and Pakistan (Sharma and Chettri 2005). ICIMOD has played an important role in initiating a number of pilot projects toward achieving sustainability in the Himalaya and empowering the local communities in the region. It also strives to achieve regional cooperation among the member nations with respect to disaster risk reduction, climate change mitigation, and environmental restoration (International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development [ICIMOD] 2012b). The institution in recent years has provided leadership by highlighting pragmatic approaches to conservation in

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the Himalayan region, such as identifying several transboundary landscapes for the networking of protected areas (PAs) and conservation efforts across the international borders. It has spearheaded initiatives such as the Kailash Sacred Landscape Conservation Development Initiative (KSLCDI), a collaborative effort among China, India, and Nepal; the delineation of the Kanchenjunga Conservation Area (KCA) between India, Nepal, Tibet, and Bhutan; the development of the Hindu Kush Himalaya Cryosphere Monitoring Project; and establishing a Regional Spatial Data Infrastructure to promote better collaboration and data sharing among the various stakeholders. Besides these initiatives, ICIMOD regularly organizes training, workshops, and seminars with lead policy-makers at the ministerial and secretarial levels of the member countries to facilitate dialogue on natural resources and dispute resolution and to ensure better coordinated efforts in biodiversity conservation (Sharma and Chettri 2005; ICIMOD 2012b). Through a combination of research and policy initiatives, ICIMOD has been successful in formulating region-specific REDD+ (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation in Developing countries) community forestry management programs in Himalayan countries, developing a real-time flood monitoring network in Nepal, establishing local governing councils for management of PAs, and influencing national policies to recognize the growing threat of glacial lake outburst floods. ICIMOD has also initiated several pilot projects for increasing the adaptive capacity and resilience of vulnerable communities in the Himalayan region. Aided pollination of apple trees using honeybees was an innovative project taken up by ICIMOD scientists, which has helped farmers across the Himalayan nations. Other international organizations such as the Washington, D.C.,–based The Mountain Institute (TMI) and World Resources Institute (WRI), the Switzerland-based World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) with its regional chapters, and the California-based Community Forestry International (CFI) are also involved in a number of initiatives dedicated to research partnerships and community-level interventions in the Himalaya. These organizations take up pilot projects with the respective member countries and a host of nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) and civil society groups. In 2005, the Chicago-based MacArthur Foundation initiated various conservation programs in the eastern Himalaya by making available grants worth US$3.6 million to regional institutions. The MacArthur Foundation also awarded a research grant of US$450,000 to WWF Nepal between 1978 and 2016. Such financial and research interventions by international organizations have been rewarding for both the local communities and the Himalayan environment. The Mountain Institute carried out a two-year research

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project in Nepal, “Kanchenjunga to Makalu: Conserving Himalayan Landscapes,” with the main aim of reducing deforestation, overharvesting of medicinal plants, and overgrazing, and improving local livelihoods in the region between the Kanchenjunga and Makalu mountains. This project was successfully completed in 2016 and helped to establish homestays, resource-efficient lodge management, and training programs for cultivating traditional plant resources for local use (European Outdoor Conservation Association [EOCA] 2016). Nepal, which has a long history of wildlife poaching, appears to have not recorded any rhinoceros poaching events in the last two years (2014–2016) largely due to initiatives by WWF Nepal and the government of Nepal (World Wide Fund for Nature [WWF] 2016). These international initiatives augur well for the Himalaya’s future and its sustainability. More international collaborations and information sharing between universities, research institutions, and individual researchers need to be forged and encouraged by the Himalayan nations. In majority of the Himalayan nations, environmental governance is largely entrusted to the respective apex state agencies, such as the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change (MoEFCC) in India, the Ministry of Forests and Soil Conservation (MFSC) in Nepal, the State Forestry Administration in China for Tibet, and the Ministry of Agriculture and Forests (MoAF) in Bhutan. Pakistan has an Environmental Protection Agency to look after environmental issues. In India, a host of agencies operate under the MoEFCC, all of which independently look after the research and management of forests and conduct surveys of plant and animal life, wildlife, pollution control, and climate change. Likewise in Nepal, the MFSC supervises independent departments: Forests, Forest Research and Survey, Soil Conservation and Watershed Management, Plant Resources, and National Parks and Wildlife Conservation. In Bhutan the MoAF looks after different National Centres on Biodiversity, Soil Services and Plant Protection. In addition to the national-level bodies, there are provincial or state-level agencies such as pollution control boards and forest departments, which have the responsibility of protecting, monitoring, and managing the environmental resources. However, some experts feel that this plurality of institutions has resulted in interdepartmental confusion and rivalries that result in inefficiency in the enforcement of laws and regulations and undermine the institutions’ important roles (Gulati and Gupta 2003). Having said that, our experience in India with institutions dedicated to the Himalaya is one of satisfaction, but more needs to be achieved. The Wadia Institute of Himalayan Geology at Dehradun is at the forefront of

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research related to earth sciences and glaciology in the Himalayan region. The GB Pant Institute of Himalayan Environment and Development, based in Almora, and its regional centers are engaged in promoting interdisciplinary research on the environment and sustainable development. While these state run institutions have generated useful data and awareness about environment, their research and development efforts need to be backed by more rigor and meet international standards. There is also the need for developing outreach activities so that the fruits of research and development activities are shared and transferred to the Himalayan human communities. A number of other institutions in the Indian government also are entrusted with the responsibility of developing technologies for sustainable development in the Himalayan region. Our institution at the University of Delhi, the Centre for Interdisciplinary Studies of Mountain and Hill Environment (CISMHE), has been at the forefront of studying the environmental and social impact of widespread hydropower development in the Himalaya and advising public and private-sector agencies on Himalayan sustainability. The environment management plans prepared by CISMHE provide a blueprint for a host of policy and technology options that mandate the hydropower developers to earmark adequate funds for economic upliftment, education, training and skill development, and establishing modern health delivery systems for the human communities living in the project watersheds. Funds are also allocated to meet biodiversity conservation goals in the watersheds with the provisos that the active participation of local communities must be ensured and that all the activities under environment management programs are carried out in consultation with and participation of the local communities. Local institutions and communities play a huge role in the governance and management of PAs and in the implementation of conservation efforts in the mountainous regions (Funnell 2001; but see Rangan 1997). The local communities in the Himalaya in the past followed centuries-old customs and traditional practices, which were locally adapted to the environmental conditions and were sustainable. Today some communities still continue such practices (Farooquee, Majila, and Kala 2004). For example in Uttarakhand and Nepal, the forests have been traditionally referred to as Ranivana, implying that the forest, akin to a queen, takes care of the needs of her subjects (local communities) by supplying fodder, timber, fuel-wood, and medicinal plants (Khatri 2008). Clearly, human communities over centuries understood through experience the importance of forest conservation and the negative consequences of their degradation. One way to ensure social regulation to protect forests was to attach sacredness to these areas. Ranivana, therefore, is worshipped as a deity by

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the local communities, and it is the duty of every inhabitant to protect their deity from the negative forces. In this way, numerous forests have been sustainably managed as community forests for centuries. In Bhutan, annual religious festivals such as Bumday, Mang Rimdo, Lochey, Lomba, and Paro Tshechu are held in which the deities associated with the local forests, lakes, rivers, and mountains are worshipped (Choden 2008). These festivals and local veneration prevent people from destroying and polluting their natural resources. However, with market forces catching up, the sustainable traditional practices that were socially enforced through reverence for these spaces are being slowly replaced by more commercial considerations among these communities—Bhutan perhaps remains the only Himalayan exception. I have argued elsewhere that until recently the Mishmi tribal community practiced strict rules for harvesting medicinal plants from the forests—only on certain days in a month and by only a few selected individuals; but since the market-dominated economy took over, the natural populations of these plants have significantly declined (Pandit and Babu 1998). There are numerous local community-based institutions that operate across the Himalaya to ensure sustainable practices. The role of three institutions in as many Himalayan nations deserves a special mention: (1) the Van Panchayats of Uttarakhand, India, (2) the community forestry program of Nepal, and (3) the community-based natural resource management program of Bhutan. These institutions have gained wide recognition and are globally appreciated for their sustainable governance efforts in the Himalayan region (World Bank 2008). Van Panchayats in India’s Uttarakhand Himalaya are village-based autonomous and democratic bodies, each comprising a voluntary group of local people who manage forests in a sustainable manner and share resources equitably (Mishra, Bharadwaj, and Mishra 2008). These institutions have been in existence for about ninety years in the region (Uttarakhand Forest Department 2006). Established by the district-level civil administration with the consent of one-third of the adult local population, these bodies are entrusted with the responsibility of formulating and implementing forest management plans at the village level (Tiwari and Joshi 2015). According to the official estimates, a total of 12,089 Van Panchayats exist at present in the Uttarakhand state, and they manage about 5,449 km2 of forests, constituting nearly 15  percent of the total forest area (Uttarakhand Forest Department 2006). The community-managed Van Panchayats are known to be more effective in conserving forests than the stategoverned ones (Somanathan, Prabhakar, and Mehta 2009; Hussain et  al. 2013). Besides management of forests, the Van Panchayats also effectively

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deliver a host of ancillary services, such as generating income from forest biomass residue, improving local livelihood opportunities, maintaining food security programs, and increasing the carbon sequestration capability of the forests (Tiwari and Joshi 2015). In Nepal, a national community forestry program that was launched in the mid-1970s now involves around 40 percent of the nation’s population, who manage 25  percent of its forest resources (Tiwari and Joshi 2015). Nepal’s community forest coverage program increased over the past three decades, growing from 5,670 hectares in 1985 to 1.18 million hectares in 2005. The number of forest user groups increased from 98 in 1985 to 14,104 in 2005, benefitting over 1.6 million households (Sharma, Chettri, and Oli 2010). The exemplary success achieved under this program encouraged the government of Nepal to adopt a community-based approach for managing its PAs and watersheds as well (Chettri, Shakya, and Sharma 2007). Preliminary reports suggest that the quality of natural resources— land, water, forests, and biodiversity—has been significantly enhanced after the implementation of the community-based forest management in Nepal (Adhikari, Williams, and Lovett 2007). In Bhutan, since 2000 the government has promoted similar experiments involving local communities in the management of natural resources under a community-based natural resources management (CBNRM) program, with appreciable results. CBNRM aims to achieve the twin objectives of the conservation of natural resources and the support of economic wellbeing in rural communities (Temphel and Beukeboom 2006). Bhutan’s CBNRM program is implemented by the Council of Renewable Natural Resources Research of Bhutan with financial support from the Canadian International Development Research Center and advisory support from the Netherlands Development Organisation (Temphel and Beukeboom 2006). Largely implemented by the local stakeholders, CBNRM has the legal backing of the state and ensures the people’s involvement in all aspects of decision-making, from planning and implementation to law enforcement (Barrett et al. 2001; Gruber 2010). As of 2011, the Bhutanese Department of Forests has recognized about three hundred community forests in the country across various Dzongkhags (judicial districts), which engage about 14,000 households (Phuntsho et al. 2011). These joint efforts of Himalayan communities and states have started to yield ecosystem services benefits. There are indications, for example, of a perceptible upturn in water yield from the catchments and wildlife populations in the forests managed under CBNRM in the Dhading district of Bhutan (Fisher, Nepal, and Gurung 2002). However, more empirical evidence of such claims would lend greater credibility and would improve the

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acceptability of such schemes in other Himalayan nations. The CBNRM program has also successfully regenerated degraded forests and slowed down deforestation rates (Anderson et  al. 2013). Besides the ecological benefits, the CBNRM programs have enhanced incomes in the local communities and augmented their community funds (Temphel and Beukeboom 2006). Some researchers, however, have expressed concerns and questioned the concept of promoting privatization and community ownership of forests without adequate state oversight. These arrangements for the fragile and precious natural Himalayan ecosystems could potentially be detrimental in the long run, so the continued role of state control needs to be carefully examined (Rangan 1997). Whatever the mechanisms of forest management, it is vital to ensure that more natural ecosystems in the Himalaya are not converted into human-managed ecosystems such as agriculture lands, urbanized areas, and human-dominated spaces. All efforts should be made to achieve or maintain at least 66  percent forest cover on the Himalayan watersheds, as has been recommended by India’s national forest policy. The reports that the Indian government’s new Forest Policy proposes to abolish the earlier provision of maintaining at least two-thirds of the geographic area under forest cover in the upland regions are worrisome (Sethi 2016). Sustainability efforts necessitate adequate land-use controls along the lines of the forest management strategies of Bhutan, which emphasize local participation. Besides the community groups, a number of NGOs are engaged in the Himalayan region as well, assisting in improving rural livelihoods and raising awareness about benefits of conservation of the Himalaya’s natural resources. Dasholi Gram Swarajya Mandal (DGSM) under the leadership of Chandi Prasad Bhatt, the acclaimed Chipko leader, is one the oldest NGOs in India’s Uttarakhand Himalaya region. DGSM led the campaign against commercial logging in early 1970s and has since adopted watershed afforestation and conservation programs through a number of social and environmental initiatives, including women’s empowerment and sustainable livelihood programs. Other NGOs born out of the Chipko movement such as the People’s Association for Himalaya Area Research (PAHAR, the acronym being a vernacular expression for “mountain”) have played key roles in raising public awareness about the need to preserve the Himalaya, its natural resources, and traditional knowledge. Led by Shekhar Pathak, an eminent Himalayan historian, PAHAR publishes books, journals, and other material on environmental awareness in the local language for better reach and action. PAHAR also undertakes expeditions to spread awareness about the need

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to protect the Himalaya; the most famous of these is the Askot-Arakot Expedition. Another offshoot of the Bhatt-led DGSM is the Himalayan Action Research Centre (HARC), which helps implement sustainable agriculture in the mountains through social, economic, and technological interventions. HARC has succeeded in the economic upliftment of rural villages in some of the most backward regions of the upper Yamuna and Ganga watersheds. The Bangalore-based Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and the Environment (ATREE) has developed into an institution of excellence, where application-based environmental research, practice, and advocacy are perfectly blended under the overall leadership of an accomplished academic, Kamal Bawa of the University of Massachusetts, Boston. ATREE regularly takes up research and extension work in the Indian Himalaya, though most of its work is focused on the eastern Himalaya and the western Ghats region (see Bawa, Joseph, and Setty 2007). In an editorial in Science, Bawa and associates have argued for the need for new knowledge institutions who work efficiently and effectively when partnerships are forged between government, nongovernment, and community-based organizations (Bawa, Balachander, and Raven 2008): Flexible mandates, freedom from bureaucratic control, and a focus on specific problems, such as the harmonization of rural livelihoods and conservation at specific sites (for example, in the Western Ghats and Eastern Himalaya biodiversity hot spots), have been critical for forging frameworks to implement work that is relevant to the identified societal needs. Collaboration with appropriate institutions in the developed world that entails integration of different knowledge systems, mutual respect, and symmetrical partnerships adds a global perspective that is important for sharing knowledge and resolving global problems.

Among other prominent NGOs working in the region are the Himalayan Trust, the Institute for Himalayan Conservation, Resources Himalaya and the National Trust for Nature Conservation in Nepal, and the Royal Society for Protection of Nature and Bhutan Trust Fund for Environmental Conservation in Bhutan. These NGOs also serve as catalysts by giving voice to the local people’s concerns and bringing their problems to the notice of the political and civil administrative establishments (Oli 2004). Networking among NGOs has the potential to offer a common platform to promote sustainable projects and activities among the various stakeholders and to generate a collective understanding of the problems and their sustainable solutions in the Himalaya.

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Networking Areas Two networking areas are identified here to serve as examples of what could be achieved through mutual cooperation among the nations in the Himalaya: (1) a water resources network and (2) a PA network. Others that potentially could be added include (1) a glaciers and glacial lake observatory network, (2) a natural hazards monitoring and surveillance network, (3) an environmental research institutions network, and (4) an NGO and community-based initiatives network. The transboundary nature of the Himalayan rivers requires that multilateral agreements be formulated between the member countries as part of a river resources management initiative. Various aspects of water resources—such as flood forecasting, flood warnings, risk management, and mitigation of climate change—need to be addressed jointly by the Himalayan nations. Multilateral agreements allow the member nations to judiciously use their water resources for poverty-alleviation programs. India and Bhutan, for instance, initiated cooperation with the commissioning of the Chhukha hydropower project on the Wang Chhu or Raidak River (a tributary of the Brahmaputra River) in 1974. The project was financed by the government of India on a 60  percent grant / 40  percent loan basis at an annual interest rate of 5 percent payable over a period of 15 years (Dhakal and Jenkins 2013). The power-sharing agreement was such that about 75 percent of the total power generated would be exported to India. Bhutan earned revenue from the export of the electricity, while India benefitted from the cost-effective availability of much-needed power. Bhutan’s per capita gross domestic product, which was the lowest in south Asia in 1980, shot to the top position in the Ganga-Brahmaputra-Meghna region in 2008 as a direct result of the revenue generated from electricity exports to India (Biswas 2011). Electricity export now contributes nearly 40 percent to the national revenue of Bhutan (Singh 2013). Buoyed by the success of this project, the two nations have agreed to two more joint endeavors, the Kurichu and Tala hydropower projects. Likewise, in 2014 India and Nepal signed a US$1 billion deal to construct a 900 MW hydro project on the Arun River in Nepal. Under the power-sharing agreement, India will receive about 78 percent of the total electricity generated, while Nepal gets 22  percent of the share (AFP 2014). The environmental downsides of hydropower generation in the Himalaya were discussed in detail in Chapter 8, but there is no denying that the Himalayan nations must provide their citizens with adequate access to energy and also sustainably use their natural resources to generate economic activity and ensure human development.

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Providing electricity to Himalayan communities would potentially ease the pressure on forests by reducing fuel wood consumption. To amass greater benefits through the sustainable use of river waters, a Himalayan River Commission (HRC) should be set up by the Himalayan nations on the lines of the Mekong River Commission (MRC). Even though there are presently a number of bilateral treaties on river water sharing between different Himalayan nations, they are marred by political disputes and disagreements. A larger regional body like an HRC could potentially reduce the chances of such bilateral disagreements. Just as the MRC plays a key role in decision-making, policy formulation, joint management, and sustainable development of Mekong River resources, an HRC could potentially achieve the same. Under such an institutional mechanism all the member countries would make joint decisions on several key issues, such as hydropower development, flood management, fisheries development, and environmental monitoring. Himalayan water holds the key to south Asian economic prosperity, so its judicious use and distribution rationalization must be prioritized. Collaborative institutional arrangements about river water use could actually reduce the need for each nation to have so many dams on the Himalayan rivers. The second area of cooperation toward Himalayan environmental sustainability involves the management of PAs. These conservation areas in the Himalaya are generally managed as isolated islands with few opportunities for species dispersal and inter-PA biotic connectivity, which are essential for long-term survival of species (Sharma and Chettri 2005). The Himalayan nations are gradually beginning to facilitate connectivity between isolated PAs, but if more isolated or standalone PAs could be interconnected into a PAs network, the enhanced spatial continuity and extent would considerably augment the carrying capacity of these habitats. This would thereby support larger wildlife populations and also allow certain sustainable human activities. These conservation area networks could be created within a Himalayan nation or among the nations. For instance, the Forest and Nature Conservation Act (1995) in Bhutan was a landmark legislation that made community-based management of natural resources a legal condition; the entire land area was to be protected under a national system of PAs, which were to be linked by natural forest corridors and buffer zones. Since 2004, Bhutan has adopted a new policy of conservation complexes and corridors within the PA network (Nature Conservation Division [NCD], Bhutan 2004; Phuntsho et al. 2011). It is well known that most PAs in the Himalayan region have transboundary geographic extents: the Mount Everest–

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Qomolangma Nature Preserve, Sagarmatha, Makalu-Baru, and Langtang National Parks (Nepal–China), the Kanchenjunga Conservation Area (Nepal–India–Bhutan), Namdapha National Park and Gaoligongshan National Nature Reserve (India–China), and the Toorsa Strict Nature Reserve (India–Bhutan). These overlapping transnational PAs not only share common biodiversity components but also have resident human communities with shared cultures and traditions. It is thus pragmatic to delimit conservation areas using ecosystem boundaries rather than geopolitical ones. There is already some thinking on this front, which needs support and strengthening. Transboundary collaborative conservation initiatives such as the Kailash Sacred Landscape Conservation Initiative (KSLCI) and Kangchenjunga Landscape Conservation and Development Initiative (KLCDI) have already been envisaged. Researchers at ICIMOD have identified five additional potential transboundary conservation areas within the Himalayan region: Wakhan, Karakoram-Pamir, Everest, BrahmaputraSalween, and Cherrapunjee-Chittagong (Molden and Sharma 2013). In all such transboundary initiatives, the general focus is to establish coordination and participation between the national governments, NGOs, regional stakeholders, and PA management authorities for effective biodiversity conservation and management. The main focus of these initiatives is to implement a landscape-based conservation approach by strengthening transboundary regional cooperation and building a legislative framework for its implementation. To this end, research institutions within each participating country are entrusted with the responsibility of implementing conservation strategies and environmental monitoring (ICIMOD 2012a). KLCDI, for instance, envisions the interconnectivity of fourteen isolated PAs through six “conservation corridors” in the region (see Phuntsho, Chettri, and Oli 2012). However, these networking projects are still in a fledgling stage, and much work needs to be done for their consolidation and operationalization. Numerous hurdles (geopolitical concerns and differences) still need to be overcome for the success of these transboundary conservation initiatives. Linked to the transboundary conservation proposals is the need for involvement of local human communities as equal stakeholders in conservation and the management of PAs. The widely practiced legislative framework bans human activities inside the designated PAs and prohibits the use of their natural resources, including in the areas immediately outside the PA boundaries within which human activities are strictly limited (Sharma, Chettri, and Oli 2010). There is merit in not allowing free-for-all exploitation of natural resources within these PAs, but under the existing regulatory

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laws the human communities residing in and around these PAs have felt progressively marginalized. Over time, this state of affairs has generated resentment against both officialdom and the biodiversity that is targeted for conservation. Effective conservation of biodiversity inside and outside PAs is known to succeed when following a participatory approach and engaging with the local human communities (Berkes 2007; Chettri, Shakya, and Sharma 2007; Andrade and Rhodes 2012). In view of the successes achieved with participatory approach in conservation, new policies among the Himalayan nations allow the local people’s participation in such programs. For instance, the National Forest Policy (1988), Biological Diversity Act (2002), and Wildlife Protection Act (2002) in India emphasize communitybased conservation of forests and PA resources. Khangchendzonga National Park was redesignated as Khangchendzonga Biosphere Reserve in 2000 to permit local community participation in conservation efforts (Phuntsho, Chettri, and Oli 2012). In Nepal, the Himalayan National Park Regulations (1979) provide for use of natural resources by the local communities for their daily subsistence needs.

Caring and Sharing: The Way Ahead Now is the most appropriate time to consider some out-of-the-box, longterm solutions for Himalayan problems. No self-respecting nation can afford to or should wait for tragedies of Himalayan proportions to recur, or worse turn a blind eye to the harsh ground realities. The scars from the death and devastation that have been witnessed over the years should serve as a grim reminder that urgent action must be initiated to mitigate the ongoing Himalayan misery. The time is ripe, but it is running out. A proactive, integrated policy on the Himalaya that sets aside regional geopolitical irritants is in order. The basic idea is to safeguard the inherently unstable Himalayan slopes and the resident human populations who live on and of them. One of the long-term sustainable solutions is to evolve a system of environmental easements for the local citizenry in the Himalaya. This economic intervention would secure the Himalaya, its human populations, its ecological integrity, and the perennial waters and biodiversity alike. It would serve the twin benefits of protecting the fragility of the mountains as well as addressing the social concerns of the local people by providing economic incentives without harming the mountain environment. It is absolutely vital that we protect human lives and their precarious habitats. The public benefits of conservation easements are a realistic solution

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to the economic and ecological woes of the scarred Himalaya. There are likely economic arguments to be made in opposition to this idea, but we need to bear in mind that the cost of easements could be a small fraction of the expenditures generally needed for emergency response after floods and earthquakes. Easement support would enable the inhabitants to build sturdier, earthquake-resistant dwellings and also to pursue vocations that are less detrimental to the Himalayan environment. The current estimates of losses due to natural hazards run in billions of dollars across the Himalayan nations. What price can we put on the incalculable loss of human life and the misery that follows? Conviction and foresight would be the hallmark of preparations designed to meet the challenges of climate change, which will likely exacerbate the impact of precipitation and floods in the Himalaya. Make no mistake, the nature-generated but human-made disasters that have afflicted the Himalaya are not one-off events. A number of complex, climate-driven changes, including glacial lake outburst floods, are likely to increase in the Himalaya and have the potential to wreak havoc and destroy human life, property, and engineering structures such as (dams), roads, and bridges. What are the benefits of conservation easements? Because these are legally binding instruments (as in other parts of the world) and are registered in the name of a title-holder, the family, heirs, and the legal assignees would continue to receive benefits. However, this provision cannot be a permanent entitlement: over a period of time, as the people’s economic conditions improve, they would enhance their education and training skills and pursue other avenues for livelihood. The easement tool would be particularly useful in the areas that are most vulnerable to landslides or are in the vicinity of PAs, wildlife migration corridors, high tourism centers, and directdraining catchments of rivers, natural lakes, and dam reservoirs. In addition to paying economic benefits, the conservation easement would allow a landholder to carry out certain sustainable activities on his or her land. The processes and norms of evaluation for easement amounts are internationally well known, but a legal framework regarding changes of land ownership and continuation of the original purpose of the easement would have to be put in place in the Himalaya, keeping in view the local conditions. Ideally, women should be the title-holders and the easement beneficiaries in each household, for better social, economic, and environmental results. For effective coordination and efficient implementation, environmental easements could be linked to afforestation and catchment area treatment programs for which funds are made available by public and private agencies like hydropower companies that are beneficiaries of watershed resources. The financial outlays of these programs are usually generous, which could

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be successfully used by ensuring the participation of local communities and credible NGOs with the oversight of local civil authorities. If carried out properly, these funding programs could help alleviate the economic profiles of the resident populations in the watersheds; the hydropower infrastructure in turn would benefit from the protection of the catchment in terms of a lower incidence of landslides, lower siltation rates of reservoirs, and cleaner water. If the communities in the watershed are cared for and the economic benefits of conservation are shared with them, there will be less resentment and opposition to both development and conservation programs. Thus, we can create a win-win situation for the environment and development.

Conclusion The limited carrying capacity of the Himalaya requires that all-out effort be made to pursue transnational participation and cooperation and intergovernmental support to enforce policies concerning land-use and administrative accountability. Bilateral and multilateral cooperation on river regulation, water resource use, and biodiversity conservation along with the associated data sharing needs to be integral to the Himalayan developmental process. Tackling critical issues such as natural hazards, climate change, poverty, biodiversity loss, and loss of ecosystem services also require a transnational effort involving consultation and an exchange of ideas between policy-makers and experts. A multitude of government organizations, NGOs with local, national, and international mandates, and community-based organizations exist in each Himalayan nation. These institutions now need to enter an active networking phase. Instances of interpolicy conflicts between different implementing agencies in the Himalaya have surfaced occasionally (see Gulati and Gupta 2003), but the time for such discordant tendencies is over. Partnerships and networking among the national, regional, local institutions and NGOs is crucial for a sustainable Himalaya. That said, a pragmatic assessment indicates heavy odds against multilateral efforts unfolding any time soon. The main challenge is to convince the various stakeholders of the importance and need for a safe space for the Himalaya. It cannot be purely a science and technology endeavor or only a resource management–driven enterprise. Ethics must remain the cornerstone of any workable solution matrix. The road ahead is not easy. Himalaya, as it is known to its common folk, deserves to be perceived as Asia’s collective consciousness by the nation-

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states. The words of Aldo Leopold should serve as our guiding light: “We shall never achieve harmony with land, any more than we shall achieve justice or liberty for people. In these higher aspirations the important thing is not to achieve, but to strive” (1949, 156). A paradigm shift in policy is urgently warranted. It is foolhardy to think of the mountain region as another Karachi, Delhi, Mumbai, Beijing, or Shanghai. This does not mean that the local inhabitants are condemned to live a marginal existence. Conservation easements are a way out of this conundrum. Some less-informed groups would like to push a business-asusual development agenda for the Himalaya and raise the emotive issue of “people’s right to development.” A perfect answer to that is Mahatma Gandhi’s famous rebuttal when asked whether free India would realize the same standards of living as England: “It took Britain half the resources of the planet to achieve its prosperity. How many planets will a country like India require?” As I have suggested elsewhere, “If the people of the Himalayas were more aware of the geological vulnerability and ecological fragility of their mountain home, they would surely force more compliance of laws and regulations to protect it. India and other affected countries should include in their school curricula basic knowledge of the geology and ecology of the Himalayas. If students are taught about their environment, they will feel more connected to the land and be more aware of its pulse” (Pandit 2013, 283). These seeds of contemplation must be sown in the Himalayan schools across the nations. His Holiness the Dalai Lama (2103), while talking to school students, had the following to say: In the past, India exported ideas. Buddhism, for example, spread across the whole of Asia. Now we need you to serve the world by sharing ahimsa and religious harmony. In the normal run of things to export you have to increase production, so who will produce the ahimsa and religious harmony for export? It will have to be young people like all of you. This is an example of the opportunity you have to create a better world. We really need to make an effort to spread inner peace through education.

That sums it all up—a peaceful Himalaya is the safest Himalaya!

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Acknowledgments

My earliest attempt to write an acknowledgment was in my graduate dissertation days; my mentor, VK, had a clear instruction: “Always be liberal with acknowledging people’s contributions.” In writing this book, which involved consideration of disparate areas of study, there have been countless individuals (too many to be identified individually) who shaped my ideas during my Himalayan journey. The book, therefore, follows a synthetic approach, and I see myself essentially as a narrator of the ideas, events, processes, and patterns that have shaped my understanding of the Himalaya. My earlier researches on the causes and correlates of rarity of endemic Himalayan plants (1986–2000) laid the foundations for my future substantial engagement and association with such international scholars as William Kunin, Michael Pocock, and Steven White (2006–2014). The earliest of my works that explicated the relationship between diploidy and rarity in plants appeared in Evolutionary Ecology Research (2006) thanks to the fortitude and editorial decision of Michael Rosenzweig. This was followed by an analysis of global data sets examining the influence of polyploidy (Journal of Ecology, 2011) and genome sizes (New Phytologist, 2014) in plant invasiveness. These ideas find mention in this book when it explains plant colonization of the Himalaya and the ongoing processes of biological invasion in the region. This book presents my understanding of the Himalaya developed over the past three decades (1980–2013) of learning in the field and under the tutelage of a remarkable human being and my teacher, Virendra Kumar (VK). Our joint effort to present the interconnected and complex nature of the Himalayan mountain ecosystem appeared as a book chapter in Conservation Biology: Voices from the Tropics

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(2013) at the invitation of two eminent scholars in conservation science, Peter Raven and Navjot Sodhi. We lost Navjot in the middle of the production of the book, and Peter asked me to write a tribute in the volume, in which I elucidated the immense contribution of Navjot to conservation science and his influence on my own research. A more elaborate discussion of the ecological transformation of the Himalaya was presented in BioScience (2014), coauthored with an established young conservation scientist, Lian Pin Koh, and a promising younger scholar, my graduate student Kumar Manish. The years 2012 and 2013 were greatly rewarding. I and my collaborator Edward Grumbine brought out a detailed analysis of the Himalayan dams and their impact on terrestrial ecosystems in a 2012 article in Conservation Biology followed by an article in Science (2013) outlining the ecological, social, and policy dimensions of hydropower development in the Indian Himalaya. Investigations of the effects of dam building in the Himalaya were ongoing in my lab—Himalaya Lab at the University of Delhi—over the past two decades, with nearly half a decade of varying stints with the University Scholars Programme at the National University of Singapore. These two great institutions have sustained me academically over the years and provided the necessary freedom to pursue my research on the Himalaya. Some remarkable individuals at these institutions—Moonis Raza, Upendra Baxi, V.  R. Mehta, Abhai Man Singh, Sampat Tandon, Deepak Pental, Dinesh Singh, Hugh Tan, Navjot Sodhi, Peter Pang, Kang Hway Chuan, and John Richardson—have been generous and more than willing to accommodate my demands on their intellectual and infrastructural resources. Life in the Himalaya was conceived at the University of Delhi, incubated at the National University of Singapore, and took physical form at Harvard University. I am greatly indebted to these great institutions. After our Science article published in 2013 focused global attention on the Himalayan dams, Jane Qui was instrumental in egging me on to take the Himalaya story forward internationally. This effort came to fruition in a World View article in Nature—“The Himalayas Must Be Protected” (2013). Within a week of its publication, Michael Fisher of Harvard University Press contacted me about writing a book, which is now in your hands. Janice Audet, who replaced Michael as my editor, was remarkably encouraging throughout. I also thank Susan Boehmer, Stephanie Vyce, and Lauren Esdaile of Harvard University Press for their help from time to time. I am grateful to the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University for the Radcliffe Fellowship award from 2015 to 2016. The stay at Radcliffe was hugely rewarding and productive, and I thank Dean Lizabeth Cohen and Judith Vichniac—the twin Radcliffe peaks—and the generous donors of the Hrdy Fellowship for their support and the gift of unencumbered academic freedom to write this book. I acknowledge with joy the care that Sharon, Rebecca, Mervi, and Katie took to make my academic life productive at Radcliffe. Thank you Asma Shariff and the human resources and information technology teams at Radcliffe for responding warmly whenever I approached you for help. Radcliffe offered itself as an amazingly free-spirited space with Fellows from across the disciplines— surgeons, chemists, cosmologists, mathematicians, historians, musicians, filmmakers, poets, journalists, and many more. The freewheeling discussions with these

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colleagues were a great influence on the way this book finally took shape. I thank Tina Duhaime for the wonderful exchanges we had on how to understand and explain the role of the brain in the human tendency to hoard, which has put our planet in peril. I gratefully acknowledge the erudite questions that Michael Pollan raised on the way food is produced, marketed, and consumed and how these are the key to Earth’s sustainability. I thank Raúl Jiménez for some radical solutions to depopulate the crowded spaces on Earth, and his outstanding cosmologist wife, Licia Verde, for tempering some of those views. Thank you, Sarah Howe, Ross Gay, and Alice Lyons for your wonderful poetry of Nature. I would also like to thank Elliott Colla, Robert Huber, Kristiana Kahakauwila, Philip Klein, Mitchell Luskin, Lesley Sharp, Sharon Weinberger, Reiko Yamada, and Esti Yeger-Lotem for their company and useful discussions on varied topics over the year. I am grateful to Paul Beran and the Academic Ventures team at the Radcliffe Institute for their generosity of mind and heart in agreeing to fund my exploratory seminar proposal born of this book. The proposal was made jointly with Andrew Knoll, and we were subsequently joined by Charles Davis and Robin Hopkins from Harvard University, and Oliver Jagoutz and Taylor Perron from MIT. I owe them all deep gratitude for the exciting discussions we had and continue to have on the role of morphotectonics and climatic events in the evolutionary divergence of the Himalayan flora. A preview of these ideas is contained in this book. I am fortunate to receive able guidance from some of the best thinkers in biology and conservation sciences of today. I thank Peter Raven, Kamal Bawa, and Stuart Pimm for their valuable thoughts and generous support in my academic ventures. I record my deep appreciation for Yogeshwar Kumar, Chandi Prasad Bhatt, Shekhar Pathak, and Professors J. S. Singh, S. P. Singh, and Bob Wasson for sharing their insights on varied aspects of the Himalaya over many years of my association with them. Manish has considerably contributed to this effort by way of assisting with reading and editing, and I thank him for his generous help and patience. I acknowledge the assistance of Carolyn Gigot, my undergraduate research partner at Harvard, who assisted with Figures 2.1 through 2.3 and with editing the first couple of draft chapters of the book. I also want to thank my former and present colleagues Arun Bhaskar, Ajay Jain, Madhav Bisht, Jay Bhatt, Dinesh Nautiyal, and Dorji Dawa associated with CISMHE (Himalaya Lab), University of Delhi, and my graduate students Shiva Sharma and Yasmeen Telwala, who have contributed to my work on the Himalaya from time to time. I acknowledge the competent assistance of Rajendra Mehta and Ajay Gaur over the past two decades at my lab. Thanks also to Inderjit Singh, G. Prasad, Devesh Sinha, and Monica Singhania, my colleagues at the University of Delhi, for their valuable discussions. I am grateful to the three reviewers of the manuscript engaged by Harvard University Press, who graciously waived their anonymity: Andrew Knoll, Andrew Bush, and Trevor Price. Their valuable comments and suggestions have helped improve the manuscript, and any omissions are purely on my account. I am forever indebted to my sister Jaya, who has always stood behind me like a rock, from my school days onward, and believed in the choices I made. I acknowledge with affection the role of her husband, Moti Lal, who was instrumental in putting

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me on the path to scholarship. Finally, and most importantly, thanks are due to my wife, Rachna, and our two amazingly gifted and precious children, Janhvi and Neil. The three of them have made sacrifices in many ways to let me pursue my passion, and they believed in whatever I chose to do. Rachna took leave from a demanding job to travel with me to Cambridge, and she took charge of the household and ensured that the manuscript was delivered on time. She additionally served as my first reader, so a special thanks to her for all the days and nights she put into reading and editing the manuscript.

Index

Abhinavagupta, 168 Abhisara, 168 Abor, 28, 29 Adaptation, 10, 104, 111, 140, 208; physiological, 6; evolutionary, 11, 208; cultural, 44; ecological, 98 Adaptive radiation, 6, 111, 113 Adinath, 45 Advaita, 185 Aerosols, 178, 232; aerosol pollution, 234 Afforestation, 158, 293, 299 Afghanistan, 68, 223, 232, 233 Africa, 48, 62; biotic exchange, 60, 78, 79, 80, 81, 82; breakup of Gondwana, 62; monsoon climate, 67; human migration, 124, 125, 127, 128, 129, 241 Agriculture, 7, 8, 9, 13, 20, 31, 72; slash and burn, 129, 134, 140, 142; settled, 133, 136; productivity, 234, 248; sustainability, 240, 254, 268, 294 Akbar, 53 Aksai Chin, 165, 166, 171, 172 Alien floras and faunas, 76, 246 Alien invasives, 103, 245, 246, 247, 248, 249, 254 Alien species, 102, 243, 244, 248, 249 Alluvial environment, 85 Alluvial plains, 73, 74

Almora, 187, 290 Alps, 3, 58, 94, 108, 109, 115; alpine vegetation, 116; alpine meadows, 130, 252, 253, 254, 267; alpine pastures, 240, 247 Alter, Stephen, 1, 21 Altitude, 24, 103, 140, 179, 205, 251 Ananda, 41 Andes, 3, 58, 109, 175 Annapurna conservation area, 184 Antarctica, 22, 61, 62, 65, 79, 179 Anthropocene period, 271, 272, 273 Aquatic ecosystems, 6, 76 Aranya, 123 Aravalli, 58, 72 Arunachal Pradesh, 38, 167; Coptis teeta, 26; tribes, 27, 167; fossil wood, 82; precipitation, 100; military, 165, 166; road, 176, 177; dams, 202, 206, 209 Ashoka, 168 Ashtapada, 45 Atmospheric brown clouds, 178 Australia: Gondwana breakup, 62, 65; monsoon climate, 67; biotic exchange, 79; alien flora, 246 Autosomal microsatellites, 7 Badra, 55 Badrinath Temple, 156, 185, 186

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Index

Bahuguna, Sunderlal, 159 Balochistan, 90 Bangladesh, 12, 73, 222; per capita surface water availability, 12; Brahmaputra, 73; sea level rise, 222; flood, 223, 224, 225, 282; freshwater resources, 236; irrigated land, 236; transboundary water imports, 236; population growth, 237; meat consumption, 239 Basins: Brahmaputra, 6, 73, 116, 229; Ganga, 6, 73, 74, 84, 116, 133, 202, 234; Yellow River, 7, 129; Nile-EuphratesTigris, 7, 136, 137; Indus (Sind), 72, 73, 100, 234; Baspa, 221; Chenab, 221; Parbati, 221; Teesta, 270 Bawa, Kamal, 2, 294 Bay of Bengal, 52, 97, 222 Beijing, 301 Bhagavad Gita, 51 Bhairav, 43, 44 Bhatt, Chandi Prasad, 147, 148, 149, 293 Bhikhshu, 48 Bhutan, 3; dams, 10, 204; gross national happiness, 13, 287; precipitation, 100; human migration, 129, 131, 133; yaks, 137; military, 172; hydropower, 195, 237, 295; flood, 225; glacial lake, 227, 228; irrigated land, 236; livestock, 240; Jigme Singye Wangchuk National Park, 242, 284; apple cultivation, 254; conservation policies, 283, 296; Kanchenjunga Conservation Area, 288, 297; Ministry of Agriculture and Forests, 289; communitybased natural resources management, 291, 292; festival, 291; forest management, 293 Biodiversity, 4, 6, 7, 13, 38, 205; ecosystem services, 12, 271; buildup of, 59, 76, 95, 104, 109, 110, 113; hotspot, 76, 110, 115, 116, 117, 163, 172, 243, 244, 250, 266, 267, 294, 297; pre-Himalayan, 78; gradient, 83, 100; Pleistocene glaciation, 108; conservation, 116, 163, 172, 211, 269, 277, 283, 284, 288, 290, 298, 300; aquatic, 207; loss of, 238, 246; native, 240, 244; grazing, 240, 242; exotic, 243; climate change, 250, 251, 254, 273 Biogeography, 21, 22, 106, 110; biogeographic links, 77, 78, 79, 83, 95, 115; biogeographic history, 82, 83; biogeographic regions, 96, 101, 109, 119, 243, 244 Biomes, 13, 76, 100, 116, 238, 266, 267

Biosphere Reserve, 23, 24, 247, 298 Biota, 6, 76, 275; exchange, 6, 78, 79, 95; evolutionary divergence, 33; preHimalayan, 78; Cretaceous–Tertiary, 79; endemic, 80; immigrant, 96, 110, 113; adaptation, 98; colonization, 100; flux, 102; mammal, 105; evolution, 115, 116; dispersal, 125; native, 203; benthic, 208; biotic invasion, 243, 282 Birch, 51, 95, 135 Black carbon, 10, 178, 179, 195 Bodhs, 45, 46 Böns, 45, 46 Bordak massacre, 28, 29 Brahmaputra, 5, 26, 28, 38, 51, 167; sediment, 6, 98; origin of, 53, 55; geographic area, 73; biome diversity, 116; dams, 200, 202, 209; water flow, 230, 236; discharge, 231; hydrological profile, 234; irrigation, 236; hydropower, 237, 295; floods, 280 Brahmin, 44, 168 Brundtland Commission, 262 Buddha, 14, 163; native, 46; teaching, 168, 287; successor, 169; middle path, 286 Burma, 2, 68, 96, 127, 129, 145 Carbon dating, 136 Carbon dioxide, 6; silicate weathering, 66, 97; global cooling, 66; greenhouse gas, 97; photosynthetic system, 98, 99; pollutant, 178; emission, 182, 193, 197; global average level, 264 Carbon sequestration, 12, 98, 244, 292 Carbon sink, 266, 267 Carrying capacity, 265, 266 Carson, Rachel, 158 Cedar, 114, 115 Cenozoic era, 59, 60, 66, 91, 97, 98 Chaksu, 55 Chamoli, 43, 147, 149, 150, 151 Chenab, 221, 230, 231 Chhota Nagpur, 106 China, 3; militarization, 9; Tibet, 9, 48, 165, 173, 174, 175; war with India, 10, 172, 173; hoolock gibbon, 30; Buddhism, 46, 47; cultural linkage, 49; rivers, 51; climatic systems, 68; glaciers, 71; primates, 90; Polygonatum tessellatum, 111; Rhododendron, 112; spiny frogs, 115; human migration, 129; animal domestication, 136; geopolitical conflicts, 164, 165; border conflicts, 166, 167, 171, 177; road

Index building, 173, 174, 175, 176, 177; People’s Liberation Army, 173, 174, 175; railway, 174, 175, 176; dams, 177, 190, 191, 198, 199, 204, 209; electricity consumption, 192, 193, 196; GDP growth, 192; geopolitics of river waters, 209; Renewable Energy Law, 211; reservoir-induced seismicity, 218; floods, 223, 225, 280; glacial lakes, 227; meat consumption, 239; apple cultivation, 254, 256; conservation policies, 283; environmental policies, 286; Kailash Sacred Landscape Conservation Development Initiative, 288; State Forestry Administration, 289; national parks, 297 Chipko, 8, 147; movement, 9, 22, 147, 148, 149, 150, 151, 152, 156, 157, 158, 159; committee, 147, 150, 151; leaders, 148, 159, 293 Chromosome, 103; Y-, 7, 123, 128, 129; numbers, 23, 25, 151; homologous, 25 Cirque lakes, 227 Civilization, 5, 51; Indus Valley, 5, 56, 74; Mayan, 8; Tibetan, 48; Indian, 54, 75; Harappan, 56; Indo-Gangetic, 75; Paleolithic and Neolithic, 141; Asian, 167 Climate change, 75; impacts, 7, 12, 77, 119, 237, 250, 251, 253, 254, 255, 256, 267, 268, 282; glacial lake outburst flood, 11; climate-water-food-energy nexus, 12; Cenozoic cooling, 66; extinctions, 124, 204; disaster, 214; glacier melting, 219, 221, 222, 227; floods, 223, 224; invasion, 243, 244; agriculture, 250, 252, 254; responses, 252; apple production, 255; adaptation, 256; challenges, 269, 299; interconnectedness, 272; change drivers, 273; hazard, 277; mitigation, 287, 295; management, 289, 300 Cloudbursts, 11, 155, 156, 213; flood, 154, 227, 274; Kedarnath tragedy, 185; episodic, 224; natural hazard, 257; climate, 266; extreme weather, 282 Community, 207, 257, 261, 270; structure, 9, 12, 87, 206, 207, 240, 267; dynamics, 88; forest, 131, 142, 144, 291, 292, 293; institutions, 279, 291; management, 284, 288, 291, 292, 296; organizations, 294, 300 Community-based natural resources management, 292, 293

357

Conservation, 13, 14, 32, 110, 164, 207, 269, 300; easements, 13, 242, 283, 298, 299, 301; in situ, 35; endangered species, 43; value, 116, 145, 172; measures, 119; Act, 157, 296; campaign, 159; managers, 163; debate, 163; efforts, 172, 288, 290; areas, 184, 243, 288, 296, 297; biodiversity, 211, 277, 283, 284, 288, 290, 297, 298; wildlife, 241; water, 249; policies, 283, 284; goal, 284; approaches, 287, 297, 298; program, 288, 293; association, 289; natural resources, 292, 293; institutions, 294; initiatives, 297; corridors, 297 Cretaceous–Tertiary mass extinctions, 80 Dalai Lama, 174, 287, 301 Dams, 4, 13, 274, 296; dam building, 10, 11, 189, 191, 199, 200, 202, 203, 208, 266; reservoirs, 189, 299; rivers, 189, 226; multipurpose, 190; irrigation, 190; benefits, 190; removal, 191; controversies, 200; Himalaya, 200, 201, 202, 228; density, 200, 202, 203; extinctions, 203; ecological impacts, 204, 205, 206, 207, 208; geopolitical, 209, 212; disaster, 215; seismicity, 215, 218; failure, 223, 224, 228, 266, 267; moraine, 227, 228; overtopping, 228; floods, 274 Darjeeling, 10, 181, 246 Darshan, 32, 186 Darwin, Charles, 275 Deforestation, 7, 8, 9, 13, 119, 150, 153, 163, 289; rates, 141, 250, 293; commercial, 142; unsustainable, 145; background, 204; watersheds, 213; floods, 226 Degradation, 73, 142, 151, 172, 213, 250, 290; forest, 142; ecological, 153; ecosystem, 163, 200, 237; land, 178; habitat, 206, 243; environmental, 211, 262, 263, 264, 269 Dehradun, 179, 289 Deodar, 99, 115, 118, 144, 145 Devi, Gaura, 148, 154, 158 Dickinson, Emily, 20, 36, 76 Dinosaurs, 60, 78, 80 Disasters, 11, 191, 200, 213, 215, 223, 228, 257, 278, 299; natural, 223, 281; man-made, 224; floods, 225, 280, 282; hydrometeorological, 277; vulnerability, 277; mitigation, 278; preparedness, 278; earthquakes, 279; management of, 279; risk, 287

358

Index

Disturbances: abiotic, 102; ecosystem, 103; regional, 104; Kashmir, 181; habitat, 206, 243, 246; human, 243; ecological, 244 Divergence: evolutionary, 6, 21, 33, 105, 109, 110, 115, 151, 155, 172; cultural, 59; flora, 102, 112, 113; population, 104, 105, 111; bird, 105; Pleistocene glaciations, 105; rhododendrons, 112; rates, 113 Diversity: cultural, 6, 12, 44, 266; biological, 6, 76, 77, 96, 117, 200, 207; species, 7, 116, 243, 275; community, 7; ethnographic, 44; faunal, 89; vertebrate, 92; avifaunal, 112; biome, 116, 267; genetic, 125, 128; ethnic, 268 DNA, 7, 115, 123, 124, 125, 136 Domestication: horse, 49, 136; animal, 132, 133, 135, 136; yak, 139, 140 Dras island, 79 Dwarika, 185 Earthquakes, 16, 17, 203, 214, 215, 217, 257, 266, 267; hazard, 11, 277; vulnerability, 11; earthquake-prone zone, 22, 175; reservoir-induced seismicity, 215, 218, 224; floods, 227; catastrophes, 265; management, 277, 278, 279, 299 East India Company, 49, 52, 53, 170 Ecology: impacts on, 10, 141, 175, 178; Himalayan, 22, 100, 175, 301; cultural, 59; big cats, 90; Chipko, 159; river, 191 Economy: local, 10, 12; yak, 139; Tibet, 173; China, 176; tourist, 180; waterfood-economy nexus, 236, 266; agrarian, 238; pastoral, 252; national, 254; market, 284, 291 Ecosystem service, 238, 266 Ecotourism, 184 Electricity, 192, 193, 195, 197, 198, 296; supply, 11, 235; dams, 189, 191; consumption, 192, 196, 198; generation, 192, 193, 195; demand, 196; infrastructure, 196; export, 295 Emission: vehicular, 178, 183; fossil fuel, 178, 179, 192, 195; carbon dioxide, 182; greenhouse gas, 193; reduction, 197 Endangered species: Golden mahseer, 10, 119; Gangetic dolphin, 11, 119; Coptis teeta, 26; Mishmi takin, 32; Gharial, 119; snow leopard, 240

Endemic species, 7, 10, 26, 27, 32, 100, 110, 111, 113, 114, 203, 244, 248, 250, 252, 253; birds, 7; flora, 12; families, 81; taxa, 110, 113, 252; fish, 119 Energy: climate-water-food-energy nexus, 12, 234, 266; ambient, 114; solar, 178; consumption, 192; policy, 195; generation, 197, 212; sources, 197, 198; alternatives, 197; source, 211; security, 211, 235; requirements, 237; efficiency, 286; nexus, 295 Eurasian plate, 5, 60, 61, 73; collision with Indian plate, 63, 64, 80, 82, 272; biogeographic linkages, 83; human dispersal, 125 Evapotranspiration, 228, 235 Evolution, 33, 60, 103, 104; C4 photosynthetic pathway, 6, 98; ecosystems, 6, 76; landscape, 6; adaptations, 11, 208; floral, 19, 21, 109, 110, 112, 113, 151; Homo sapiens, 44, 127; species, 44, 105, 109, 112, 113, 115 Exotic invasives, 102, 247 Extinction: dams, 10, 203, 204, 206, 207, 208; mass extinctions, 60, 80; climate, 80; Cretaceous–Tertiary, 81; primates, 91; faunal, 95, 104, 242; Larix griffihiana, 100; Pleistocene, 104, 105, 106, 109; rates, 105; wild horse, 136; cultural, 252, 253; climate change, 264, 272 Fish: keystone species, 10; disjunct distribution, 107; freshwater species, 119; endemism, 119; breeding, 190; loss, 207, 208; migratory, 208 Floodplains, 28, 92, 125; Sind, 74; Ganga, 74 Floods, 222; fatalities, 223; deforestation, 226; glacial lake outburst floods, 227, 228; climate change, 252, 266; management, 279, 280 Foothills, 11, 130, 144, 232; forests, 60; grasslands, 87, 94; C3 and C4 vegetation, 95, 98; climate change, 99; human migration, 127; emissions, 179; dams, 203; exotic invasives, 247 Fossil fuels, 178, 179, 192, 193, 195 Fossils, 33, 60, 77, 80, 84, 88, 132; wood, 7, 131; marine, 58; vertebrate, 78, 90, 91, 93, 94; plant, 79, 85, 103, 104, 112; tooth enamel, 83; invertebrate, 85; Siwaliks, 86; temperate, 86; pollen, 89,

Index 130; pantherine, 90; fauna, 90, 91, 92, 93, 94, 95, 99; soils, 95, 99; Homo habilis, 124; Homo heidelbergensis, 124 Gandhi, Indira, 20, 22, 157, 200, 262 Gandhi, Mahatma, 190, 261, 286, 301 Ganga, 5, 6, 8, 51, 55, 56, 155, 294; origin of, 2, 53; dolphin, 11; Valley of Flowers, 23; monsoon, 28; Bhagavad Gita, 51; temple, 54; glaciers, 71, 229; drainage channel, 72; geographic area, 73; civilization, 74; Mahabharata, 75; watersheds, 84, 98; biomes, 116; endangered species, 119; Kalidasa, 123; archaeological sites, 133; deforestation, 143; pilgrims, 185; dams, 200, 202; floods, 226, 280; water discharge, 230, 231; ecosystem services, 234, 235; irrigation, 236; hydropower, 237, 295 Ganga Chhu, 53 Gangotri Temple, 53, 54 Gaumukh, 53 General Reserve Engineering Force, 33, 34 Gharial, 119 Gibbon, 30, 119 Gilgit-Baltistan, 284 Glacial ablation, 10, 179, 252 Glacial lake outburst flood, 213, 224, 226, 227, 228, 267, 299; climate change, 11; hazards, 210, 277; vulnerability, 266; cloudburst, 274; threat, 288; observatory network, 295 Glacial refugia, 111 Glaciation, 69, 70, 123, 124, 272; Pleistocene, 6, 74, 76, 104, 105, 106, 107, 108, 109, 115, 151; Northern Hemisphere, 67, 69; Paleozoic, 69; Proterozoic, 69; Quaternary, 70, 111, 114 Glaciers, 10, 68, 69, 70, 71, 73, 74, 76, 250; formation of, 6, 59, 60, 218, 272; melting of, 9, 178, 180, 218, 221, 222, 227, 231, 232; Third Pole, 51; retreat of, 109; water availability, 228, 229, 230 Global warming, 13, 180, 227 Glossopteris flora, 78 Goldthread, 27, 35, 36 Gondwana, 61, 90; breakup of, 60, 62; plates, 61; spread of, 62; India, 63, 65, 77, 78; Cretaceous, 79; fossil taxa, 80; Dipterocarps, 82 Gopeshwar, 150, 159 Grasslands: expansion of, 90, 99, 104; ecosystem, 94; vegetation, 95, 98, 99;

359

C4 plants, 95, 98; animals, 95; fragmentation of, 136; restoration of, 249; conservation of, 269 Greater India Basin, 64, 65 Greenhouse gas, 97, 193, 197, 198 Gross domestic product, 13, 236, 240, 287, 295; economic growth, 192; energy consumption, 192; income, 194 Gross National Happiness, 13, 286, 287 Groundwater: recharge, 219; discharge, 234 Gupta, Vasu, 168 Gurkha, 143 Hemkund Sahib, 187 Hill stations, 10, 181, 183 Himachal Pradesh, 242, 256; Kasauli succession, 85; rainfall, 100; dams, 200, 202; invasives, 246; flood, 282 Hindu Kush, 3, 52, 70, 220, 221, 288 Hindustan, 182 Hooker, J. D., 1 HUGO Pan-Asian SNP Consortium, 125, 128 Human demography, 12, 280 Hunter-gatherer communities, 7, 74, 129, 132 Hydroelectric projects, 204, 270 Hydrology, 23; dams, 208; seasonal, 218; climate change, 221, 229; catchment, 249; geology-hydrology-climate dynamics, 266; connectivity, 274 Hydropower, 11, 119, 203, 205, 208, 299, 300; generation, 190, 194; installed capacity, 194; land use changes, 204; forest submergence, 204; geopolitical concerns, 209; development, 210, 211, 212, 214, 270, 273, 290, 296; energy, 235, 237 Hypsometric curves, 98 Ice age, 60; Pleistocene, 106, 108; theory, 107, 108; biotic extinctions, 109; genetic reshuffling, 116 India, 8, 19, 24, 28, 30, 34, 57, 109, 116, 239, 286; scholars, 3, 47, 56; monsoons, 5, 67, 68, 132, 133, 134, 229; human migration, 7, 123, 124, 125, 126, 127, 128, 129, 135, 137; military, 9, 10, 164, 165, 166, 167, 168, 169, 170, 171, 172; roads, 10, 174, 175, 176, 177, 178, 179; dams, 10, 190, 191, 192, 193, 194, 195, 196, 197, 198, 199, 200, 201, 202, 203,

360

Index

India (continued) 204, 205, 206, 209, 211, 222; national parks, 11, 284; surface water availability, 12; government, 19, 23, 288, 289, 290, 293; Planning Commission, 19; Red Data Book, 25; northeast, 26, 27, 30, 112; ancient, 46, 53, 56, 123; Devanagari script, 46, 47; traditions, 47, 48, 50; animal domestication, 49; rivers, 51, 55, 56, 71, 72, 73, 74; Kalidasa, 52; civilization, 54, 75; India-Asia collision, 63, 64, 272; Mahabharata, 75; biodiversity, 76, 77, 78, 79, 80, 84, 85, 95, 97, 99, 100, 117; Out-of-India hypothesis, 81, 82, 83; fossils, 85, 86, 90, 91, 92, 93, 94; tourism, 180, 181, 182, 183, 184, 185, 186, 187; earthquakes, 213, 214, 215, 218, 278, 279; floods, 223, 224, 225, 282; glacial lake outburst floods, 227, 228; freshwater resources, 229, 232, 233, 235, 236; population growth, 237; livestock, 239, 240; human–wildlife conflict, 242; alien invasives, 244, 245, 246; Van Panchayat, 291 Indonesia, 124, 125 Indus (Sind), 5, 56, 221, 231, 235, 280; origin of, 51, 55, 167; basin, 73, 100; agriculture, 132; deforestation, 143; dams, 200, 202; floods, 225; discharge, 229; water flow, 230; human population, 234; irrigation, 236 Indus Valley civilization, 56, 74, 132, 136: Harappa, 56; Mohenjo-daro, 56, 74 Invasion: invasive polyploids, 25, 26, 103; ecosystem services, 244; watershed hydrology, 249 Invasive species, 241, 244, 245, 246, 248, 275, 276 Iqbal, 5, 15, 17, 56 Isotopes, 77, 83, 99, 136 Jagannath, 185 Jain, 43, 45 Jammu and Kashmir, 15, 36, 38, 96, 147, 168, 170, 171; Hindus, 16; Younghusband, 18; Amarnath, 43; bhairav, 43; temples, 50; sedimentary sequence, 78; Dras volcanics, 79; Karewa deposits, 87; mammals, 94; Larix griffithiana, 99; kingdoms, 143; Aksai Chin, 166, 171; Rajatarangini, 168; Saivism, 168; rulers, 168, 169; Buddhism, 169; India-Pakistan conflict, 171; tourism, 180, 181, 184;

earthquake, 215; floods, 223, 282; alien flora, 244, 246; malaria, 256 Japan, 46, 96, 197 Jhum, 8, 129, 142 Jintao, Hu, 175 Juniper, 130, 131, 135 Kailash, 16, 43, 45, 46, 50, 51, 53, 55 Kailash-Manasarovar, 45, 46, 53, 55 Kalidasa, 5, 52, 123, 127 Kanchenjunga, 288, 289, 297 Karachi, 278, 301 Karakoram, 70, 86, 221, 222, 297 Kathmandu, 71, 72, 279 Kedarnath: Temple, 185; tragedy, 213, 228 Keystone species, 10, 12, 112 Kumaon, 132, 142, 143, 146 Kumar, Virendra, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 27; Planning Commission, 23; Valley of Flowers, 23; Uttarakhand Biosphere Reserve Report, 23, 24; polyploids, 25, 26; invasiveness, 25, 26 Kumar, Yogeshwar, 20, 24, 148 Kumarsambhava, 5, 51 Kunlun, 175, 221 Kuznets, Simon, 262, 263 Kuznets Curve, 262 Ladakh, 18; Miocene sediment, 86; rainfall, 100; Aksai Chin, 165; tourism, 181; Hemis National Park, 284 Land use: change, 7, 9, 131, 204, 205, 206, 207, 208, 214, 226, 237, 238, 239, 241, 244, 248, 253, 256, 267, 273, 281, 300; control, 186, 267, 281, 293 Last glacial maximum, 7, 114, 220; ice sheet, 69; peopling, 123, 133, 135 Laurasia, 61, 90; split, 62; biotic exchanges, 78, 79, 80, 82 Leopards: snow leopard, 45, 90, 119, 240, 241, 242; clouded leopard, 284 Lhasa, 243; first train, 9, 163, 172; People’s Liberation Army, 9, 173; population, 173; rice transport, 174; roads, 175; railway, 175 Macroecological patterns, 6, 25, 76, 100 Mahabharata, 43, 48, 54, 56, 75 Maika, 150, 154, 158 Malaria, 256, 282 Malayan archipelago, 92, 94, 106 Manali, 10, 181 Mantra, 47, 262, 286

Index Mao Tse-tung (Mao Zedong), 9, 173 Maruti, 10, 180, 181, 182, 183, 184 Matthiessen, Peter, 1, 18, 45, 285 Mayodia Pass, 31, 32, 33, 34 McMahon Line, 165, 166 Meghna, 236, 295 Mekong, 5, 51, 128, 230, 234, 296 Milarepa, 45, 46 Military, 9, 10, 17, 49, 159; Gurkhas, 143; India-China, 166, 172, 173, 174; India-Pakistan, 172, 173, 174; Tibet, 172, 173, 174; roads, 177, 180 Mitochondrial DNA, 123, 124, 128 Moksha, 5, 43, 45, 48, 49, 51 Mongolia, 50, 81 Monsoons, 5, 28, 31, 60, 66, 74, 234; intensification of, 6, 59, 69, 71, 101, 109, 113; onset of, 60, 67, 97, 102, 109, 110, 113, 272; climates, 67, 73, 99, 100; vegetation, 88, 95, 117, 144; landscape evolution, 113; biological diversification, 114; seasonality, 214, 224, 232; floods, 225, 226, 228; climate change, 282 Morphotectonic processes, 6, 65, 83, 109, 110, 112 Mountbatten, Lord, 170 Mussoorie, 10, 181, 182, 183, 184 Myanmar, 3, 172, 177; hoolock gibbon, 30; human migration, 127; British, 165; China, 166, 167; floods, 223 Nainital, 10, 179, 181 Nanda Devi, 42, 43 Naro Bonchung, 45, 46 National parks, 11; Valley of Flowers, 20; Jigme Singye Wangchuk, 242; Rajaji, 247; Corbett, 247; Chitwan, 284; Deosai, 284; Hemis, 284; Kaziranga, 284; Namdapha, 297; Royal Manas, 284; Khangchendzonga, 298 Nazrul-Islam, Kazi, 5 Nehru, Jawaharlal, 171, 190 Nepal, 3, 34, 37, 45, 68, 96, 135, 186, 294; dams, 10; stratigraphic studies, 72; Ganga, 73; sedimentary sequences, 78; vegetation, 87, 99, 130; fossils, 90, 91, 131, 134; human migration, 129, 130; yaks, 137; Gurkhas, 143; military, 172; rail, 177; tourism, 183, 184, 187; dams, 195, 204; earthquake, 215, 278; floods, 224, 225, 282; glacial lakes, 227, 228; freshwater resources, 232, 233; groundwater, 234; population growth, 237;

361

livestock, 240, 244; climate change, 251; apple cultivation, 254; cultural change, 268; China, 269; conservation policies, 283; national parks, 284, 297, 298; wildlife poaching, 289; community forests, 290, 291, 292 Nilgiri, 106 Nirvana, 43, 48 Nomadic communities, 4, 125, 137, 139, 269 North America, 25, 105, 276 Northern Hemisphere, 59, 67, 69, 79, 83, 97, 109 Nuclear: fuel, 192; disaster, 197, 198; power, 197 Nunatak hypothesis, 108 Oak, 35, 88; forest, 34, 101, 118; vegetation, 89; logging, 143, 146 Orogenic: processes, 84; events, 101 Out-of-India hypothesis, 80, 81 Pakistan, 3, 186, 237; military, 9, 10; dams, 10, 204; water availability, 12; climate, 71; glaciers, 71; stratigraphic studies, 72; fossils, 90, 91, 94, 99; fauna, 90, 92; vegetation, 98, 99; conflicts, 164, 166, 167, 168, 169, 172; Kashmir, 170, 171; roads, 177; tourism, 184; earthquake, 215, 278, 279; floods, 223, 224, 225, 226, 282; glacial lakes, 227; freshwater resources, 232, 233; irrigation, 236; agriculture, 236; meat consumption, 239; livestock, 240, 251; apple cultivation, 254, 255, 256; national parks, 284 Pamir, 70, 220, 221, 297 Panchayat, 144, 155, 291 Panchen Lama, 137 Pangaea, 59, 60, 61, 62 Parasnath, 106 Parvati, 16, 17, 45, 168 Pastoralism, 132, 133, 137, 141, 269 Pasture, 134, 173, 240, 242, 247, 248 People’s Liberation Army, 9, 173, 174, 175 Permafrost, 134, 175 Phenological changes, 252 Photosynthesis, 99 Photosynthetic pathway (C3, C4), 6, 60, 92, 95, 98, 99 Phylogenetic: reconstruction, 33; analyses, 81; studies, 81, 95; relationship, 83; trees, 113; investigations, 115 Pilgrims, 5, 43, 53, 185, 228

362

Index

Planning Commission: India, 19, 23, 148, 157, 196, 198; Pakistan, 236 Pleistocene glaciation, 6, 74, 76, 104, 105, 106, 107, 108, 109, 115, 151, 272; divergence, 105; extinctions, 105; cycles, 106; refugia, 111 Pollen record, 99, 102, 131, 133 Pollution: air, 10, 178, 193, 194, 195; vehicular, 180; aerosol, 234 Polyploid, 25, 26, 103, 109, 111, 112 Potential flood volume, 227, 228 Pranavananda, Swami, 2, 53, 55 Predation: ecological processes, 104; snow leopard, 240; protection from, 242 Primate, 90, 91 Project-affected families, 199 Protected areas, 11, 241, 247, 283, 284, 288 Puranas, 48, 54, 55, 56 Qandahar, 169 Qinghai, 105, 129, 175 Quaternary period, 60, 70, 111, 113, 114 Rainforests, 32, 82, 101, 130 Rajatarangini, 168 Ramayana, 48, 75 Rapoport’s rule, 24 Rare species, 11, 172 Rawancandra, 169, 170 Relic: cultural, 50; genetic, 124; forest, 130 Religion, 43, 47, 48, 184, 185, 286 Reni, 8, 158; Chipko, 149, 150, 151, 154, 155, 158; forest, 149, 150, 151, 154, 155; women, 154 Rhinoceros, 11, 284, 289 Rhododendron, 7, 22, 34, 35, 106, 116; forests, 87; divergence, 112, 155; keystone species, 118; pollen, 131; scrub, 133 Rinchan, 169, 170 Rishabdev, 43, 45 Rivers: perennial, 6; Brahmaputra, 6, 11, 28, 38, 55, 71, 98, 119, 167, 200, 202, 229, 230, 234, 236, 280; Ganga, 6, 11, 28, 51, 53, 54, 55, 71, 72, 98, 119, 123, 200, 202, 229, 230, 231, 234, 236, 280; Yellow, 7, 129; dams, 10, 11, 189, 190, 191, 195, 198, 201, 202, 206, 207, 208, 209, 228, 274; Alaknanda, 23, 55, 151, 157; Dibang, 26, 33, 34, 229; Deopani, 31, 33; Ithun, 33; Pindar, 43; Indus

(Sind), 51, 55, 71, 132, 167, 200, 202, 229, 230, 231, 232, 234, 236, 280; Irrawaddy, 51, 230; Salween, 51, 128, 230, 234; Mekong, 51, 128, 230, 234; Yangtze, 51, 128, 230; Yamuna, 51; Sita, 55; Chaksu, 55; Badra, 55; Saraswati, 55, 123; monsoon-fed, 55; glaciers, 69; pre-Himalayan, 71, 72; Indo-Gangetic plains, 73, 74, 75; peninsular, 107; Narmada, 107; Tapti, 107; Godavari, 107; Gilgit, 130; Jhong, 131, 134; Rishi Ganga, 155; pollution, 187; Colorado, 215; floods, 222, 223, 226; flow, 230, 233; Amu Darya, 230; Tarim, 230; irrigation, 236; freshwater resources, 236; food security, 237; runoff, 249 Ruderal species, 131, 248 Sagarmatha, 188 Saivism, 168 Sanskrit, 3, 46, 51; Buddhism, 47; scholars, 56; epics, 75; Rajatarangini, 168 Satopanth Glacier, 179 Satpura hypothesis, 107 Schaller, George, 1, 45 Seismic: lines, 84; proneness, 210; activity, 213; vulnerability, 266; codes, 279 Seychelles, 62 Shah, Bulbul, 170 Shankaracharya, Adi, 184, 185 Shillong, 26, 106 Shimla (Simla), 85, 165 Shiva (Siva), 16, 17, 43; Mahashivratri, 16; Amarnath Cave, 43; culture, 44; Hindu, 45, 48; Sati, 168 Shruti, 47, 48 Sichuan, 218 Sikh: ruler, 170; pilgrim, 185; temple, 187 Sikkim, 26, 175, 270; tourism, 184; dams, 200, 202, 206; glaciers, 221, 229; landslides, 226; glacial lake, 228; climate change, 251, 254 Silicate weathering, 6, 97 Singh, Surendra P., 284 Smriti, 47, 48 Snowmelt, 179, 229, 230, 231, 234, 236 Solar: energy, 178; alliance, 197; power, 197 South Africa, 248, 249 Southern Hemisphere, 59, 65, 79, 83 Speciation, 32, 104, 110; allopatric, 81, 105; rhododendrons, 112; events, 113, 115; speciation pump, 266 Srinagar, 171

Index Srong btsan Sgampo, 46 Steppes, 87, 136 Subalpine forest, 87 Subduction of Indian plate, 63, 65 Subsistence agriculture, 142 Subtropical forests, 87, 94, 117 Suhadeva, 169 Sustainable, 8, 277, 285, 296, 299, 300; future, 4, 193; living, 4, 12, 13, 261, 262, 263, 264, 265, 266, 267, 268, 271, 274; development, 12, 13, 163, 261, 290; policies, 13; resource use, 141; barter system, 180; hydropower, 210; human–wildlife coexistence, 241; farming, 283, 294; practices, 291; governance, 291; livelihood, 293; solution, 294, 298 Swaminathan, M. S., 20, 157 Tabula rasa hypothesis, 108 Tagore, 5 Tahr: Himalayan, 106, 118, 119; Nilgiri, 106 Takin, 32, 34, 118, 119 Tantraloka, 168 Temperate forests, 36, 94, 112, 118 Temperate species, 106, 111 Temple mountains, 49, 50 Temples, 38, 50, 169; Shiva, 17; Hindu, 51, 53; Gangotri, 53, 54; Badrinath, 156, 187; Kedarnath, 185; Sikh, 187; dams, 190 Tethys: Sea, 5, 58, 71, 72, 73, 81, 127; Himalaya, 24, 65, 230 Third Pole, 51, 70, 218 Tibet: uplift, 5, 60, 66, 67, 90, 97, 115; peopling of, 7, 8, 123, 124, 125, 127, 128, 129, 130, 131, 140; People’s Liberation Army, 9, 173, 174, 175; dams, 10, 204, 209; British, 17, 165; Buddhism, 46, 47; civilization, 48; rivers, 51, 73, 74, 167, 233, 235; formation of, 65, 97; monsoons, 67, 68; glaciers, 70, 218, 220, 221; “out of Tibet” hypothesis, 94; glaciation, 105; endemism, 111; spiny frogs, 115; yaks, 133, 137, 139; pastoralists, 134, 137; domestication, 139; roads, 176, 177, 178; tourism, 180, 181, 184; glacial lakes, 227, 228; rainfall, 230; livestock, 240; climate change, 251, 252, 253, 269; nature reserve, 284; Dalai Lama, 287 Tigers, 118, 241, 242, 247

363

Timberline, 24, 87, 100 Tinsukhia, 27, 28 Tourism: leisure, 10; religious, 10, 184, 185, 186, 187, 188; infrastructure, 22; industry, 138, 180; economy, 159, 180, 184; Maruti, 180, 181, 183; ecotourism, 184 Tribal communities, 129, 167, 291 Tribes, 27, 29, 44, 129, 139, 170 Tropical forests, 87, 92, 94, 98, 99 Tsangpo, 53, 73, 209 Ungulates, 136, 240, 253 Upanishads, 14, 184 Uplift: Tibet, 5, 60, 66, 90, 111, 115; Himalaya, 59, 60, 63, 67, 68, 71, 72, 74, 79, 83, 84, 97, 98, 115; Lesser Himalaya, 84; rates, 208 Urbanization, 4, 11, 119, 239, 244, 266; tourism, 186; forest cover loss, 204, 214; species loss, 209; floods, 214 Urkontinent, 59 Uttarakhand: Valley of Flowers, 20, 23; Biosphere Reserve, 23, 24; Nanda Devi, 42; Raj Jat Yatra, 43; Chipko, 147, 149; touristm, 181; dams, 200, 202; floods, 223; Van Panchayats, 291 Valley of Flowers, 20, 22, 151; biosphere reserve, 23; solid waste, 187; alpine pasture, 247; endemic species, 248 Vedas, 47, 55, 123, 185 Vicariance, 6, 44, 105, 110, 114, 116 Vishnu Purana, 55 Wangchuk, Jigme Singye, 242, 287 War: India–China, 10, 165, 167, 176; World War I, 146; British–Sikh, 170; India–Pakistan, 171 Ward, Frank Kingdon, 1, 20, 36 Water discharge, 214, 229; fish species richness, 208; flood, 222; snowmelt and glacier melt, 230, 231; groundwater, 234 Watershed, 28, 154, 208, 213, 226, 248; rivers, 33, 98, 143, 280, 294; damaged, 154, 155, 156; moment, 157; biodiverse, 163; management, 211; yields, 248; vegetation, 249; invasives, 249; ecosystem responses, 273; scale, 276, 280; management, 289; project, 290, 292; afforestation, 293; resources, 299; populations, 300

364

Index

Wegener, Alfred, 59, 60 West Bengal, 174, 175 Western Ghats, 106, 107, 108, 119, 200, 294 Wildlife, 11, 38, 273, 284, 289; hunting, 8, 289; wildlife park, 32, 33, 34; biology, 43; human–wildlife conflicts, 239, 240, 241, 242, 247, 266, 267, 273; populations, 247, 292, 296; invasion, 247; conservation, 289; migration corridors, 299 Wood, 125, 128, 136, 142, 253, 278; fossils, 7, 82, 85, 131; climate, 99; hardwood,

103, 144, 146; firewood, 142; fuel-wood, 154, 184, 248, 273, 290, 296 Woodlands, 11, 99, 100, 131, 136 World Bank, 193, 196, 228, 232, 233, 236 Yaks, 12, 133, 134, 136, 268; as keystone species, 12; economy, 12; pastoralists, 133, 139; importance of, 137, 138, 139, 140, 253; livestock, 240, 252, 254 Younghusband, Francis, 1, 17, 18 Zeus, 44 Zulju, 169