V. Shruti Devi is a distinguished Advocate at the Supreme Court of India and a prominent figure in the Indian National Congress party. With a background in law and environmental studies, Shruti has contributed significantly to the fields of environmental law and policy. Her experiences as an India Visiting Environmental Law Fellow in the USA inspired her to delve into the realm of non- fiction writing, culminating in her latest book, “Spirit of The Constitution: Fashions in Law, Politics, Environment,
Winter/Spring 1998.” In addition to her legal and political endeavors, Shruti is a multifaceted writer, having explored fiction and poetry as well. She continues to engage with her audience through various media channels, sharing her insights and perspectives on contemporary issues.
The Literature Times: First of all, congratulations on your recent achievement as the book has been honoured with Sahitya Sparsh Awards 2023. What are your thoughts and reactions about it?
V. Shruti Devi: Thankyou so much! It is, indeed, a great honour to have been awarded the Sahitya Sparsh Award in the non-fiction category for my book written and published in 2023.
My instincts tell me that the Sahitya Sparsh Awards which have been gaining attention and weight since their inception, will gain accelerated recognition as hallmarks of excellence in the days to come.
I say this, not in a self-congratulatory manner, but because one recognizes the global relevance of an Indian concern being the fountainhead to conduct an all-Asia awards process.
I see my country as being uniquely positioned to leverage its own diversity to enhance the evolution of the English language, as well as thought processes that originate across Asia and the world.
The Literature Times: What inspired you to write “Spirit of The Constitution: Fashions in Law, Politics, Environment, Winter/Spring 1998,” and what motivated you to share your experiences as an India Visiting Environmental Law Fellow in the USA?
V. Shruti Devi: It’s interesting that your question makes a distinction between Being Inspired and Being Motivated, as well as between what might be critiqued as the grand, arguably predatory nature of the title of the book, versus someone’s perception of it being an individual sharing their little clutch of experiences. These distinctions somehow call to mind the key ideological divergences in cold war mind-sets.
At a mundane level, I wanted to formally mark the silver jubilee of the events I write about in this book. I was thus motivated by a race against time to complete the book in the year 2023 itself, which I managed to do!
As far as the question of Inspiration is concerned, I believe that much of my writing (fiction; non- fiction; poetry), harks back to an individual’s life-narrative: one’s existential quests and attempts at conquest (of ideas).
Life, poetry, politics, are all dynamic, and from the hand of cards that you hold as a writer, you glean permutations and combinations with which to combine your intuition to play the best and most effective card (or written work) at a given point of time to take your World Game forward.
The Literature Times: Can you describe the process of compiling your travelogue and weaving together elements of recorded history, caselaw, governmental statistics, and personal experiences into a cohesive narrative?
V. Shruti Devi: This book is not a compilation in the technical sense of the term ‘compilation’. In the current context of imparting information that pertains to my book, it is important to me, to make this distinction.
I wrote the book (a cohesive narrative in itself) from October to December, 2023. It was a full-time exercise which I conducted alone at my family’s ancestral home in Andhra Pradesh, on a laptop. I saved my writing on flash drives, and believe I managed to keep the writing offline until I had to eventually log in to the self-publishing website to upload the book.
The almost fifty-thousand work attempts to broadly follow the Chicago style of citation that’s employed by historians.
I’ve referenced documents from recorded history to illustrate or support my descriptions. These undoubtedly reliable but nevertheless secondary forms of evidence, as far as historians go, have primarily been sourced from official websites of various governmental departments, and include, but are not restricted to caselaw. This was present-day research that I conducted personally online as a part of the book-writing process.
The reader is treated to insights from first-hand documentation via references to notes in my own appointments diary and (law) chamber diary, and a host of other memorabilia that sport printed matter, and were a part of my lived experience, ranging from menu cards, to maps of hiking trails, to conference papers and more.
This tangible treasure-trove of memories forms a part of my personal library, and I thought that future generations of humans (and some version of AI) might also find the contextualization of the heap of papers interesting!
The Literature Times: In your book, you take readers on a journey through various academic and legal events, as well as cultural activities across several states of the USA. What were some of the most memorable moments from your travels, and how did they influence your perspective on environmental law and politics?
V. Shruti Devi: I’d like to keep the mystery alive for the vast majority who have not yet read the book, as far as specific events and defining moments go.
However, when one looks back into a quarter of a century, the overarching take-away with reference to environmental law and politics is that the India Visiting Environmental Law Fellow Program (IVEFP) enhanced one’s responses and views pertaining to the path of the global energy debate, and the international trajectory of the governance of natural resources while prioritizing human rights and democracy.
I think the program, under the guidance of Dr. Armin Rosencranz, equipped me with an international perspective on these issues, on India’s role, and indeed, on my personal cultural identity in a post- colonial world, and in a democracy, and was an apt precursor to a three-year United Nations project on Biodiversity that I went on to participate in as an independent legal consultant in India two years later.
The Literature Times: How do you balance the serious information and scholarly style of your book with the informal commentaries on social events and meetings, as well as your own analytical views and opinions?
V. Shruti Devi: I don’t think I’ve made a conscious attempt to ensure a mathematical balance of style, information and analysis.
In fact, since the book is intended to be a History Book as much as it is a travelogue, I have sometimes refrained from analyses that would amount to being a focused juxtaposition of 1998 with 2023, keeping in mind that that would overly restrict commentaries and comparative thoughts of 1998 to a lens of 2023.
In the worlds of law and politics, and with my interest in theatre, and the fact that one speaks at least four languages, a flexibility of communication probably wends its way into one’s writings.
The Literature Times: As an Advocate at the Supreme Court of India and a senior politician of the Indian National Congress party, how do your professional experiences inform your writing, particularly in the realm of environmental law and policy?
V. Shruti Devi: In the roles that you’ve mentioned, clubbed with the fact that one is active on social media, one constantly seeks to hone one’s ability to say what one needs to, and move ahead with one’s main agendas without engaging in, or being egged on into unplanned word-battles and duels.
I think my own cultural background and work in the realms of law and policy have impacted and defined my work as an advocate and a politician.
The Literature Times: Your previous book, “EARTH REPUBLIC: Chatter from the Capital’s Cauldron (and Beyond),” employed a more simplified style of writing compared to “Spirit of The Constitution.” What prompted this shift in writing style, and what challenges did you encounter in adopting a more scholarly approach?
V. Shruti Devi: I think there has always been a consistency in the core voice of the author in all my writings, as well as of themes, as far as the major works go. However, I do alter the tone and make an effort to be accessible to my imagined target audiences of each piece, which could sometimes mean simplifying the language, though the converse also holds good in many instances.
It is also possible to write in a layered fashion, where a seemingly simplistic book might spur complex thoughts, or goad the reader to think far beyond the book.
The Literature Times: You have also ventured into fiction writing, with works such as “Creatures of the Current” and “Deep Wood Trance.” How does your experience as a fiction writer influence your approach to non-fiction writing, and vice versa?
V. Shruti Devi: My leisure writing as a child began at age five in the late 1970s with short stories, and later, poetry.
Creatures of the Current, written in 1999 is presently in its twenty-fifth year, and is also a story-within- a-story of my work of literary fiction, Deep Wood Trance. The kind of freedom that one experiences while writing poetry and fiction is precious. One can write non-fiction nonchalantly, like I’ve done with Earth Republic: Chatter from the Capital’s
Cauldron (and Beyond), without references, and verging on being irreverent towards the reader.
For the present non-fiction book, I was particular about the quality of time and space that I ensconced myself in to write the book. Silence, stillness, equanimity and solitude in pristine surroundings, soaking in sun and leading a slow life infused the writing as compared to the instinctive chatter of the previous non-fiction book which was written in three places, including in the lap of nature where the present book was penned.
My non-fiction writing makes strides into my book of poetry with narrative-setting end-notes, a sort of fine print that I incorporated into the work to throw light on some decidedly non-fiction politico- legal themed poetry.
The Literature Times: Can you share any insights or lessons learned from your work on policy documents related to economics and the environment, as well as your involvement in the NBSAP NEWS project?
V. Shruti Devi: I was an independent legal consultant in the national-level Technical and Policy Core Group (TPCG) of India’s National Biodiversity Strategy and Action Plan project (NBSAP) that commenced in the year 2000.
The three-year NBSAP project was conducted under the aegis of the Government of India with seed money from the World Bank’s Global Environment Facility (GEF), and in co-ordination with the UNDP. The TPCG was chaired by Ashish Kothari of the NGO Kalpavriksh. This was a part of an international process, and was to take forward India’s commitments under the international Convention on Biological Diversity. NBSAP NEWS was a bi-monthly project newsletter that went out to approximately three thousand key participants and key participating institutions across India, and I had also volunteered to edit the newsletter under the sharp supervision of the Central Ministry of Environment and Forests.
The main publication that was generated through a process of wide-spread consultations and deliberations was a consolidated National Biodiversity Strategy and Action Plan document, Securing India’s Future. There were state-level, select sub-state level, regional, thematic, sub-thematic, and ecoregional plans that were also prepared, that were a slew of stand-alone documents. Aspects of law and policy cut across all these themes, states, regions and so on. It’s a very well-documented process which received global acclaim.
Economics and Biodiversity was one of the themes under the NBSAP project. What captured my imagination was a paper on the Economic Valuation of Biodiversity. I made sure that the arguments made out in the paper were brought to the notice of senior colleagues in the supreme court when communities in central India were sought to be displaced from their lands by the central government in 2002.
As a part of the NBSAP process, we had also looked into equity and agriculture, intellectual property rights, people’s livelihoods, access and benefit-sharing with reference to natural resources, the working of the Girijan Co-operative Corporation (GCC), to name a few.
Some of the work experience from the NBSAP informed a brief Environmental Justice (EJ) case study I conducted on law and policy pertaining to medicinal plants through a consultative process for Winrock India International (WII). The study was presented at the India Habitat Centre in New Delhi in 2004, and published as a part of a series of case studies on EJ. One of the key economic formulations of this study which probably had a snowballing effect, was that it drew attention to the question of the collective ownership of traditional knowledge pertaining to medicine, medicinal plant resources, and the co-related ideal of so-called free healthcare that ought be available universally, and beyond the barracks, so to speak.
The Literature Times: In addition to your literary pursuits, you have also been active in the print media and on social media platforms. How do you utilize these channels to engage with your audience and promote your writing?
V. Shruti Devi: While I have an active presence on many of these platforms, and even write two blogs, I have not made any concerted effort to advertise the handles and sites, or to gain followers.
However, I think there is a grapevine that follows my posts diligently, especially on my Facebook friends’ list.
My primary use of social media is to get my political messages across to the correct people at the correct time. I sometimes send links to my social media posts to individuals via WhatsApp if I want to draw their attention to a statement or video upload.
I’ve been planning to power up my website for some time, and intend to assign a team to work on this without much delay.
I occasionally post videos and updates on my books and writings on my social media handles, including on Youtube.
The Literature Times: Lastly, what advice would you offer to aspiring writers, particularly those interested in exploring themes related to law, politics, and the environment in their work?
V. Shruti Devi: I’d advise them to always go that extra mile to seek out the truth and the real story, rather than regurgitating matter from media hand-outs or pre-written histories.
I’d encourage non-lawyers to pay attention to how to understand and write about legal matters, and to articulate the need for specialized modules of training in their respective fora.
Aspiring writers also need to be savvy about emerging technologies, and to be very alert and reactive in the face of any infringements to the freedom of speech that they might come across.
Young writers have so many resources at their disposal today, I was delighted to find that there are websites that enable school-going children to easily write and publish books! They should be confident about what they write on their own, and take cognizance of the fact that true creative writing is intrinsic to the writer, and loses its originality if it’s treated as a lesson to be taught.
Young writers of non-fiction should be aware of the responsibility of bringing authentic information to the reader, and realize that while online and tele resources are useful, there is no substitute for actually getting out there, finding out for themselves, and lending their unique discoveries and perspectives to their analyses and reportage.