Entre tropicalité et Anthropocène : « nature » et « culture » dans l’Inde hindoue

Abstract

Wouldn't an explanation for the difficulties of national parks in India be cultural? Doesn't this model correspond to an imported vision of the world opposing humans and nature, different from the dominant representations in India? This text begins by evoking the impossibility of a true dichotomy between nature and culture in the country of Hanuman and Ganesh (the monkey and elephant gods), in a culture that is dominated, according to Descola (2005), by an “analogism” far from the “naturalism” of the contemporary West. Then we do more than qualify this state of affairs, by showing how ambiguous religious values are in terms of “environmental protection”. To an adaptation to the environment, which corresponded to a specific relationship to “tropicality”, has been added an attempt to control it, causing the ravages that the notion of Anthropocene underlines. Thus the third part of the text illuminates the Anthropocene as seen from India by “situating” it historically, socially and spatially.

Keywords

• India
• nature-culture
• Descola
• analogism
• national parks
• conservation