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Environment and Development Law and Policy
Previous Year Question Paper with Solution
LLM · Group 6 Environment and Legal Order
2016 Examination
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LLM Group 6 Environment and Legal Order Environment and Development Law and Policy 2016 Question Paper with Solutions
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First published on munotes.in on 14 September 2026.
Published by munotes.in, Mumbai.
Model answers written and edited by the munotes.in editorial desk.
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The University does not publish an official answer key for this paper. The answers in this volume are model answers, written to show how a full-mark answer is built. They are a study aid, not an authority on what an examiner marked.
The question paper reproduced here is the paper as set by the University of Mumbai at the 2016 examination.
The law and policy in these answers are stated as at September 2026, and five points date most textbooks on this subject. The National Forest Policy, 1988 is still in force, the Draft National Forest Policy of 2018 never having been adopted, and the National Water Policy, 2012 remains the water policy. The Forest (Conservation) Act, 1980, renamed the Van (Sanrakshan Evam Samvardhan) Adhiniyam in 2023, now reaches only notified and recorded forests, and the Supreme Court has ordered the Godavarman principles observed until forests are identified. The Planning Commission gave way to NITI Aayog on 1 January 2015, so the Twelfth Plan was the last. The Code of Criminal Procedure was replaced on 1 July 2024, so the nuisance power used in Ratlam is now section 152 of the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita. And Vanashakti v. Union of India, 29 July 2026, holds prior environmental clearance mandatory.
Contents
The questions below are the paper as the University of Mumbai set it at the 2016 examination, in the order it was set.
MarksPage
MarksPage
The Paper as Set
The questions in this volume are the questions asked at the 2016 examination, reproduced as the University of Mumbai set them, in the order it set them. Nothing has been reworded, added or left out. Only the answers are ours. See the original question paper.
Duration 3 hours · Total marks 100 · 14 questions answered
How to use this volume
Solve the paper first, under exam conditions and against the clock. Then read the answers here and mark your own. Reading a solution before attempting the question feels productive and teaches very little, because recognising an answer is not the same as being able to write one.
SECTION I
QP Code 11772, printer's form BB-Con. 3005-16, FY LLM SEM I First Half 2016, the first paper on the scan
attempt any four of seven, all carry equal marks · 100 Marks
1.Give a brief account of ancient and medieval writings on environment protection.[25]
Answer
For full marks, cover: an ACCOUNT is a narrative, and the natural narrative here is chronological: from the Vedic hymns, through the Upanishads, the Buddhist and Jain traditions, the Maurya statecraft of the Arthashastra and Ashoka's edicts, and the Dharmashastra law books, to the Sultanate and Mughal courts and the religious movements of the fifteenth century and after. For each period give the writings and what they said about protecting nature, accurately referenced. A timeline table, a short account of how modern courts have used these writings, and an honest note on their limits complete the answer. "Brief" means economy in each period, not a thin answer.
Why a chronological account
The writings on environment protection accumulated over more than two thousand years, and each period added something the earlier ones lacked: reverence first, then philosophy, then ethics of non-injury, then State regulation, then legal penalties, and finally devotional codes and practical works. Following them in order shows how the idea of protecting nature grew from worship into administration and back into community practice.
The Vedic period: reverence and restraint
The earliest writings are hymns addressed to natural powers. The hymn to the earth in the Atharva Veda (Book XII, Hymn 1), sixty-three verses long in Whitney's translation, is the fullest. It calls the earth mother, "I am earth's son" (verse 12), prays that her "hills [and] snowy mountains" and "forest-land" be pleasant (verse 11), and asks that what is dug from her "quickly grow over" (verse 35). Protection in this period is a matter of reverence and of taking with restraint, and of letting the earth recover what has been taken.
The Upanishadic period: unity and limited wants
The Upanishads turned reverence into philosophy. The Isha Upanishad opens, in Max Muller's translation, with the teaching that "All this, whatsoever moves on earth, is to be hidden in the Lord", and that enjoyment must come through renunciation: "Do not covet the wealth of any man!" The protective idea of this period is that everything shares one reality and that wants must be limited.
The Buddhist and Jain traditions: non-injury as ethics
The renunciant traditions extended moral concern to all living beings through ahimsa, non-injury. The Buddhist monastic code, the Vinaya, made the destruction of a living plant an offence for a monk, calling plants bhutagama, "the home of a being" (Pacittiya 11). The Jain tradition carried non-injury furthest, to the smallest forms of life. Protection became an ethical rule governing daily conduct.
The Maurya tradition: the State as protector
Two bodies of writing associated with the Maurya age show the State taking responsibility for nature.
Kautilya's Arthashastra. The treatise on statecraft attributed to Kautilya, in Shamasastry's translation, organises forests into forests for ascetics, the king's reserves, a game forest "open to all", forests "specially reserved" for produce and elephant forests at the frontier (Book II, Chapter 2). It punishes the molestation of animals in "forests under State-protection (abhayaranya)" (Book II, Chapter 26), fixes graded fines for injury to trees, doubled for trees that are worshipped or mark boundaries (Book III, Chapter 19), charges the Superintendent of Forest Produce to fix "adequate fines and compensations" for damage to productive forests (Book II, Chapter 17), and fines those who throw dirt in the streets or foul reservoirs (Book II, Chapter 36).
Ashoka's edicts. In the third century BCE the emperor Ashoka, converted to Buddhism, proclaimed protection in stone. Rock Edict I forbids that living beings be "slaughtered or offered in sacrifice" (Dhammika's translation). Rock Edict II records "medical treatment for humans and medical treatment for animals" and trees planted and wells dug along roads. Pillar Edict V, issued "Twenty-six years after my coronation", protects named species, animals with young and "all four-footed creatures that are neither useful nor edible", and forbids burning forests "without reason or to kill creatures". Pillar Edict VII records banyan trees planted "so that they can give shade to animals and men".
The Dharmashastra: protection as legal duty
The law books, of which the Manusmriti is the most cited, made protection a matter of legal and ritual duty. In Buhler's translation the Manusmriti forbids throwing "urine or faeces into the water" or "poisonous things" into it (IV.56), fixes fines for injuring trees "According to the usefulness of the several (kinds of) trees" (VIII.285), punishes whoever breaks the dam of a tank (IX.279) or takes away the water of an ancient tank (IX.281), and prescribes penance for cutting fruit-trees, shrubs, creepers and flowering plants (XI.143).
The Sultanate period: water works
Medieval rulers left a record of practical works as well as prohibitions. Firoz Shah Tughlaq, who ruled from 1351 to 1388, cut canals from the Yamuna and the Sutlej to supply his new city of Hisar, turning water management into State engineering.
The fifteenth century: devotional codes
Two religious movements of the fifteenth century produced some of the most explicit protective writing. Guru Jambheshwar founded the Bishnoi community at Samrathal Dhora in 1485 and gave it twenty-nine principles, among them rules against killing animals and cutting green trees. Guru Nanak's Japji Sahib ends by naming air the Guru, water the father and the great earth the mother, making the elements objects of reverence within a living scripture.
The Mughal period: policy and observation
The Mughal emperors added imperial policy and scientific curiosity. After meeting the Jain monk Hiravijaya Suri in the 1580s, Akbar issued farmans forbidding the killing of animals during Paryushan where Jains lived. Jahangir's memoir, the Tuzuk-i-Jahangiri, records close observation of birds and animals, and his painter Ustad Mansur recorded flora and fauna with precision.
After the medieval writings: a written code defended in practice
The Bishnoi code was tested in 1730 at Khejarli, where 363 Bishnois, led by Amrita Devi, were killed resisting the felling of khejri trees for the Maharaja of Jodhpur, the clearest proof that the writings of the preceding centuries had become living practice.
| Period | Writing | What it contributed to protection |
|---|---|---|
| Vedic | Atharva Veda XII.1 | Reverence for the earth; restraint; letting what is taken regrow |
| Upanishadic | Isha Upanishad | Unity of all beings; limited wants |
| Buddhist and Jain | Vinaya Pacittiya 11; ahimsa | Non-injury to plants and animals as ethics |
| Maurya tradition: statecraft | Arthashastra II.2, II.17, II.26, II.36, III.19 | Classified forests, protected reserves, graded fines, compensation, sanitation |
| Maurya: Ashoka's edicts | Rock Edicts I, II; Pillar Edicts V, VII | Protected species, veterinary care, roadside trees and wells |
| Period | Writing | What it contributed to protection |
|---|---|---|
| Dharmashastra | Manusmriti IV.56, VIII.285, IX.279, IX.281, XI.143 | Water purity, tree fines, tank protection, penance |
| Sultanate | Canals of Firoz Shah Tughlaq (1351 to 1388) | State water engineering |
| Fifteenth century | Bishnoi principles (1485); Japji Sahib | Devotional rules and reverence for the elements |
| Mughal | Akbar's farmans (1580s); Tuzuk-i-Jahangiri | Protection by decree; observation of nature |
What changed from one period to the next
Four shifts run through the chronology, and they are what make the account more than a list.
From worship to rule. The Vedic hymns ask the earth's pardon; the Arthashastra and the Manusmriti impose fines. Protection moved from the relationship between a worshipper and a divinity to the relationship between a subject and a ruler.
From the sacred to the useful. Early writings protect nature because it is sacred or alive; the statecraft and law books protect it largely for its usefulness, as the Manusmriti's rule of fines "According to the usefulness" of trees makes explicit. Ashoka's protection of creatures "neither useful nor edible" is the striking exception.
From the ruler back to the community. Medieval devotional movements returned protection to communities: the Bishnoi code bound its followers directly, without a king's enforcement, and was defended by them at Khejarli.
From prohibition to works and study. The Sultanate and Mughal periods added positive works, such as canals, and systematic observation of nature, which begin the practical and scientific approaches of later environmental management.
The same arc reached into modern times: the Chipko movement of the 1970s, when village women in the Garhwal Himalaya, led at Reni by Gaura Devi on 26 March 1974, turned back contractors sent to fell trees, drew on the community tradition of protection that the medieval writings had recorded.
How modern courts have used the writings
The Doon valley. In Rural Litigation and Entitlement Kendra v. State of U.P., AIR 1988 SC 2187, a case about limestone mining that was destroying forests and water sources in the Doon valley, Ranganath Misra J observed that "there is copious reference to forests in the Vedas and the ancient literature of ours", and the Court used that inheritance to support ending mining in the valley as existing leases expired.
The Tehri dam. In N.D. Jayal v. Union of India, (2004) 9 SCC 362, Dharmadhikari J, in a separate opinion, recalled the Vedic motto of "sarva jan Hitay, sarva jan sukhai (benefit of all and happiness of all)" and insisted that the rehabilitation of those displaced by the dam must be completed before the reservoir was filled to capacity.
The Niyamgiri hills. In Orissa Mining Corporation Ltd v. Ministry of Environment and Forest, decided on 18 April 2013, the Court required the Gram Sabhas of the Dongria Kondh, for whom the hills are the abode of the deity Niyam Raja, to decide on their rights of worship before bauxite mining could be cleared.
The limits of the writings
The writings are uneven as a guide. They imposed duties rather than rights; they often protected nature for reasons of power, revenue or ritual, as when elephants were protected as instruments of war; the law books graded penalties by status; the traditions sometimes contradicted each other, as Vedic sacrifice and Ashokan non-injury did; and we know far more about what the texts prescribed than about how they were enforced.
Conclusion. Read in order, India's ancient and medieval writings on environment protection move from the reverence of the Vedic hymns and the unity and restraint of the Upanishads, through the non-injury of the Buddhist and Jain traditions, to the State regulation of the Arthashastra and Ashoka's edicts and the legal duties of the Manusmriti, and then to the water works of Firoz Shah Tughlaq, the devotional codes of the Bishnoi and Guru Nanak, and the decrees and observation of the Mughal court. They anticipated protected reserves, graded penalties, compensation for damage and public works for shade and water, and the Bishnoi code was defended with life at Khejarli. Modern courts have drawn on them in the Doon valley, Tehri and Niyamgiri cases, but their limits, duties without rights and rules without records of enforcement, explain why they serve today as a foundation of values rather than as law.
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