Seeds of strife

At first glance, courtesy of Google Earth, a thick green cover is what distinguishes Madras Christian College (MCC) from the concrete jungle of Tambaram, a suburb in Chennai. Zoom further in and you see a train of buildings guarded by trees that are strikingly dissimilar to each other — a stout trunk with a rich upper cover; a tall and slender one with a thinner crown; and old and wizened neighbours with root branches disappearing into the earth. With nearly 600 plant species, this anthropomorphic view of the trees is not an oddity to the many students and alumni of the 175-year-old college. “We were all tree-huggers without ever having an agenda to be one,” says Vishnupriya Bhandaram, who graduated in 2010.

One wouldn’t expect allegations of forest thinning against a college that boasts an umbilical connection with its trees. But that’s exactly what Poovulagin Nanbargal (Friends of the Earth) is saying about MCC. RR Srinivasan from the NGO focused on environmental issues says the administration is indifferent to the college’s image of being a role model for forest preservation. The NGO’s social media and SMS campaigns have caught the attention of the city’s residents, and alumni members have voiced concerns over their alma mater losing an intrinsic part of its identity.

“Woods are a signature in campuses like MCC and IIT. What is Deep Woods (MCC’s cultural fest) without the woods,” asks Nityanand Jayaram, an environmental activist. He claims that students send him pictures of the felling activities covertly. Students are afraid to go on record, which, in his words, is as worrying as the “loss of biodiversity”. The dissent, according to one student, has not assumed an active political form yet. Another admitted that the ‘clearance’ is disturbingly frequent.

MCC’s official statement points out that the negative impact of developmental activities (hostel buildings, bank, solar panel and other facilities) have been neutralised by measures such as planting of trees and saplings. It attributes the activity to the dramatic increase in the number of enrolments. The statement adds that the college takes pride in the variety of life forms on its grounds.

The 365-acre tropical dry evergreen forest on which MCC stands used to be an abandoned scrub of the Selaiyur Reserve Forest close to a century ago. Edward and Alice Barnes, the first couple to make the campus their home, were its green architects. They brought saplings from places they travelled to. This legacy was nurtured by generations of botany professors and curators. Several trees on the campus today — Rosy Trumpet tree, Redsanders and Talipot palm — are reminders of those that planted them.

Some of the plant species at MCC find mention in Tamil literature from the Sangam period. “A special resident is aathondai ( thondai, Cappariszeylanica ), named after the region for which it was the state flower. It adorned the insignia of the Pallava kings,” informs Nirmal Selvamony, alumnus and retired professor of the college. Fortunately, thondai and several other plants survived the developmental efforts of Karikaalan, a Chola king who ruled this region much before the Pallavas. Karikaalan was also known for his policies of extensive deforestation to make way for development, earning the name of kaaduvetti (clearer of forest).

Aware of the subterranean changes at the college, Selvamony presents a much-needed understanding of conservation. “Conservation is not just prioritising the protection of endangered species, but standing up for ecological rather than human rights,” he says.

The shrub jungle MCC is ensconced in, which originally extended from South Orissa to Kanyakumari, has been sullied by high population density and economic growth in coastal areas. Chennai’s Guindy National Park and IIT are the only other reserves for this variety of tropical forest. This knowledge is all the more disturbing in the light of a recent report stating that Chennai has the lowest forest cover among the metros. Shreya Yadav, a researcher with Mysore-based Nature Conservation Foundation, says, “The loss of biodiversity, irrespective of scale, is cause for concern in a world that is already changing rapidly. The loss of an endemic species can have consequences for the entire ecosystem — from soil health to the richness and composition of dependent species.”

MCC has long been an example of how simple measures can restore vegetation to original composition. “Walking to German classes through the forest; to sit at the Botany tank and catch a glimpse of a deer while enjoying the rain… most of our learning came from the surrounding itself,” an alumnus reminisced. The loss, clearly, is not just physical.