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Environment and Development Law and Policy
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LLM · Group 6 Environment and Legal Order
2024 Examination
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LLM Group 6 Environment and Legal Order Environment and Development Law and Policy 2024 Question Paper with Solutions
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First published on munotes.in on 14 September 2026.
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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 2024 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 2024 examination, in the order it was set.
MarksPage
The Paper as Set
The questions in this volume are the questions asked at the 2024 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 · 7 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.
1.Discuss the idea of environment in an ancient and medieval writings of Indian traditions.[25]
Answer
For full marks, cover: the key word is TRADITIONS, in the plural. India did not have one idea of the environment but several, and the strongest answer takes them one at a time: the Vedic, the Upanishadic, the Buddhist, the Jain, the statecraft and law-book tradition, and the medieval devotional and courtly traditions. For each, say what nature was taken to BE, quote the writing, and show how the idea shaped conduct. Then compare them in a table, show how modern courts have read them, and assess critically, because the traditions disagree with each other and none of them produced a right that a person could enforce.
Why the traditions must be taken one at a time
"Indian tradition" is often written about as though it held a single reverent view of nature. The writings do not bear that out. The Vedic hymns, the philosophical Upanishads, the renunciant traditions of the Buddha and the Jains, the treatise on statecraft, the Dharmashastra law books, the Bishnoi and Sikh movements of the fifteenth century and the courtly culture of the Mughals each held a distinct idea of what the natural world is and what human beings owe it. Some ideas were devotional, some ethical, some administrative. Treating them separately is the only way to discuss the "idea of environment" rather than to repeat a slogan.
The Vedic tradition: the earth as a mother and nature as divine power
In the Vedic tradition the natural world is alive with divine powers: fire, wind, water, sun and earth are addressed as deities. The fullest statement is the hymn to the earth, Book XII, Hymn 1 of the Atharva Veda, sixty-three verses long. Verse 12 declares "earth is mother, I am earth's son", and names Parjanya, the rain, as father. Verse 11 prays that the earth's "hills [and] snowy mountains" and "forest-land" be pleasant. Verse 35 asks forgiveness for what cultivation takes: "What of thee, O earth, I dig out, let that quickly grow over; let me not hit thy vitals nor thy heart" (Whitney's translation).
Verse 45 carries an idea that is often missed: the earth bears "people of different speech, of diverse customs, according to their homes". The idea of environment here includes human diversity sustained by a single earth. The relationship is filial. A child does not own its mother, and takes from her with restraint and gratitude.
The Upanishadic tradition: one reality in all things, and enjoyment through renunciation
The Upanishads move from hymn to philosophy. The environment is not a collection of separate powers but the expression of a single underlying reality. The first verse of the Isha Upanishad, in Max Muller's translation, reads: "All this, whatsoever moves on earth, is to be hidden in the Lord (the Self). When thou hast surrendered all this, then thou mayest enjoy. Do not covet the wealth of any man!"
Two ideas follow. If the same reality pervades all beings, the difference between the human and the non-human is not a difference of kind. And the proper use of the world is enjoyment through renunciation, "Do not covet", which is an ethic of restrained consumption. The Supreme Court has drawn on this tradition. In two judgments of 13 February 2012 in the forest litigation it first held, in the wild buffalo case, T.N. Godavarman Thirumulpad v. Union of India, (2012) 3 SCC 277, that "Environmental justice could be achieved only if we drift away from the principle of anthropocentric to ecocentric", and then said, in the sandalwood case, T.N. Godavarman Thirumulpad v. Union of India, (2012) 4 SCC 362, that the ecocentric principle "had its roots in India, much before it was thought of in the Western world", attributing to the Isha Upanishad the teaching that no creature is superior to any other. The words the Court placed in quotation marks are its own rendering of that teaching rather than a translation of a verse, and a careful answer says so.
The Buddhist tradition: plants as the homes of beings
The Buddhist tradition extends moral concern to all sentient life. Its monastic code turns that concern into a rule of conduct: Pacittiya 11 of the Vinaya makes it an offence for a monk to destroy living plants, which it calls bhutagama, "the home of a being". The idea of environment is ethical: vegetation is protected because harm to living things is wrong.
The tradition acquired political form under the emperor Ashoka, whose edicts, in Dhammika's translation, carry the Buddhist ethic into public law. Rock Edict I forbids the slaughter or sacrifice of living beings. Pillar Edict V declares named species protected, including "all four-footed creatures that are neither useful nor edible", and orders that "forests are not to be burnt either without reason or to kill creatures". Pillar Edict VII records banyan trees planted along roads "so that they can give shade to animals and men". The inclusion of animals of no use to anyone is the clearest sign that the idea was non-instrumental.
The Jain tradition: non-injury to the smallest life
The Jain tradition carries ahimsa, non-injury, further than any other: the duty not to harm extends to the smallest organisms and governs diet, occupation and daily movement. Its idea of environment is a world densely populated with life, every part of which is owed care. The tradition's influence reached the Mughal court: after his discussions with the Jain monk Hiravijaya Suri in the 1580s, the emperor Akbar issued farmans prohibiting the killing of animals during the festival of Paryushan in areas where Jains lived. A renunciant ethic became imperial regulation.
The statecraft and law-book tradition: nature as a State asset and a subject of duty
A very different idea appears in the Arthashastra attributed to Kautilya and in the Dharmashastra. Here the environment is a set of resources the State manages, and the relationship is administrative.
The Arthashastra, in Shamasastry's translation, classifies forests by use in Book II, Chapter 2, providing forests reserved for produce, a game forest "open to all" and elephant forests at the frontier, and it declares that "Whoever kills an elephant shall be put to death". Book II, Chapter 26 protects animals in "forests under State-protection (abhayaranya)". Book III, Chapter 19 grades fines for injury to trees, from six panas for cutting tender sprouts to the middle amercement for felling, and doubles them for trees that are worshipped or that mark boundaries.
The Manusmriti, in Buhler's translation, adds personal and royal duty. Book IV verse 56 forbids throwing "urine or faeces into the water... nor blood, nor poisonous things". Book VIII verse 285 directs that "According to the usefulness of the several (kinds of) trees a fine must be inflicted for injuring them", and Book IX verse 279 punishes whoever breaks the dam of a tank. Nature here is owed protection because it is useful and shared.
The medieval devotional traditions: the Bishnoi and the Sikh
Two fifteenth-century movements produced some of the most explicit environmental ideas in Indian writing. Guru Jambheshwar founded the Bishnoi community at Samrathal Dhora in Rajasthan in 1485 and laid down twenty-nine principles, among which are the prohibition of killing animals and of cutting green trees. The idea became practice: in 1730 at Khejarli, 363 Bishnois led by Amrita Devi were killed resisting the felling of khejri trees ordered for the Maharaja of Jodhpur's construction.
Guru Nanak, in the closing verse of the Japji Sahib, calls air the Guru, water the father and the great earth the mother ("Pavan guru, pani pita, mata dharat mahat"). The idea is at once devotional and ecological: the elements are the teachers and parents of all life.
The medieval courtly tradition: nature as something to channel, order and study
The Sultanate and Mughal courts treated nature as something to be improved and understood. Firoz Shah Tughlaq cut canals from the Yamuna and the Sutlej to supply his new city of Hisar. The formal garden embodied nature ordered by design. And the emperor Jahangir's memoir, the Tuzuk-i-Jahangiri, records close observation of birds and animals, the sarus crane among them, while his court painter Ustad Mansur recorded flora and fauna with scientific precision. This is the beginning of an observational, naturalist idea of the environment.
| Tradition | What the environment is | Basis of care | Characteristic writing |
|---|---|---|---|
| Vedic | A living earth-mother, divine powers | Kinship and gratitude | Atharva Veda XII.1 |
| Upanishadic | One reality in all beings | Unity; enjoy by renunciation | Isha Upanishad 1 |
| Buddhist and Ashokan | A community of sentient beings | Compassion; non-harm | Vinaya Pacittiya 11; Pillar Edict V |
| Jain | Life present everywhere, to the smallest | Absolute non-injury | Ahimsa doctrine; Akbar's farmans |
| Tradition | What the environment is | Basis of care | Characteristic writing |
|---|---|---|---|
| Statecraft and law books | A managed resource | Usefulness, order, royal duty | Arthashastra II.2, II.26, III.19; Manu IV.56, VIII.285 |
| Bishnoi and Sikh | Elements as parents and teachers | Religious rule; devotion | Twenty-nine principles; Japji Sahib |
| Sultanate and Mughal courts | Nature to channel, order and study | Improvement and curiosity | Canals of Firoz Shah; Tuzuk-i-Jahangiri |
How modern courts read the traditions, and where they draw the line
In Rural Litigation and Entitlement Kendra v. State of U.P., AIR 1988 SC 2187, where limestone quarrying was devastating the Doon valley, Ranganath Misra J wrote that "Our ancestors knew that trees were friends of mankind and forests were necessary for human existence", that "there is copious reference to forests in the Vedas", and quoted what the Court described as the Atharva Veda: "Man's paradise is on earth; This living world is the beloved place of all". The Vedic idea was used to explain why forest loss is a wrong to the community, and mining in the valley was ordered to stop once existing leases ran out.
In In Re: Noise Pollution, (2005) 5 SCC 733, the Court dealt with loudspeakers, drums and firecrackers used during religious and social occasions. Adopting its earlier decision, it held that "no religion prescribes that prayers should be performed by disturbing the peace of others nor does it preach that they should be through voice amplifiers or beating of drums", and upheld restrictions under Article 21. A religious practice received no protection when it polluted the environment of others.
In Animal Welfare Board of India v. Union of India, decided by a Constitution Bench on 18 May 2023, the Court upheld the State amendments regulating jallikattu, bullock-cart races and kambala, declining to hold against the legislature's view that jallikattu is part of Tamil Nadu's cultural heritage, but stated that "if such cultural event or tradition offends the law, the penal consequence would follow". And in Orissa Mining Corporation Ltd v. Ministry of Environment and Forest, decided on 18 April 2013, a tribal tradition treating the Niyamgiri hills as the abode of the deity Niyam Raja was given legal weight: whether bauxite mining would affect the community's right to worship had to be decided by its Gram Sabha.
A critical assessment
The traditions deserve respect, not romanticisation, and four criticisms must be made. They conflict: Vedic ritual required animal sacrifice that Ashoka's first edict forbade, and the administrative tradition exploited forests that the renunciant traditions held sacred. Their motives were mixed: elephants were protected in the Arthashastra because they were weapons of war, and royal reserves protected game for the king. They were hierarchical: the Dharmashastra graded penalties by the status of the offender. And none created a right: the earth-mother of the Atharva Veda and the protected species of Pillar Edict V gave no subject a remedy against a ruler who destroyed them. Reverence for rivers has not kept India's sacred rivers clean.
Conclusion. Ancient and medieval India held not one idea of environment but several: the Vedic earth-mother, the Upanishadic unity of all life lived by renunciation, the Buddhist and Jain community of sentient beings owed non-injury, the statecraft and law-book view of nature as a managed and useful trust, the Bishnoi and Sikh vision of the elements as parents and teachers, and the Mughal court's nature to be channelled, ordered and studied. Their shared contribution is an ethic of restraint that modern law has drawn on in Rural Litigation and the wild buffalo case, and their shared limitation is that they created duties without rights. The courts now treat these traditions as sources of values within the Constitution, honouring them at Niyamgiri but refusing to let religious or cultural practice override environmental law, as In Re: Noise Pollution and the 2023 jallikattu judgment make clear.
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