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Feature 12 to
‘The War Cry’, March 1910
each school was encouraged to appoint a jemadar (junior official) or Arbour Day corporal to be responsible for ensuring the care of the young plants. In 1913 the date selected for Arbour Day was 20 June, the birthday of Viceroy Hardinge, which had been designated a national Children’s Day to celebrate his and Lady Hardinge’s recovery from the assassination attempt made on them the previous year.
The breakdown of the 1911 Arbour Day results shows that more than 60 per cent of the total were planted by two Army ‘settlements’: Kot Mokhal, which planted a staggering 102,584 trees and shrubs, and Moradabad, which planted 20,163. The Salvation Army received government subsidies to run these settlements under the (now controversial) Criminal Tribes Act, which designated certain Adivasi, or indigenous ethnic groups as ‘habitually criminal’.
Recent scholarship has shown that colonial land management policy in India was closely linked to policies that sought to impose sedentary settlement on itinerant groups. The criminalisation of nomadic people who traditionally lived in forested areas made way for both the commercialisation of forests and the incorporation of these people into the systems of agricultural and industrial production. It is noteworthy and little known that for a decade the tree-planting initiative was a significant feature of The Salvation Army’s sedentary settlement work.
As the years passed, the advice published in The War Cry built on the experience of previous years, although difficulties relating to rain and droughts were repeatedly reported. After 1913, Arbour Day attracted less and less coverage in the paper. The last mention of it that I have managed to trace was in May 1918.
Most of the promotion of Arbour Day was penned by Frederick Booth-Tucker himself, and he even created an ‘Arbour Day Catechism’ to guide the celebration of the event. In 1919, though, Frederick Booth-Tucker received a new appointment as travelling commissioner, which saw him leave India and seems to have spelt the end of The Salvation Army’s Arbour Days. However, in July 1947, civil servant and botanist MS Randhawa organised a week-long national tree-planting festival, which has since become an annual event called Van Mahotsav.
Keep up with the International Heritage Centre blog at salvationarmy.org.uk/international-
