This study explores the social life of forest fire legislation in the Uttarakhand Himalaya through the lens of Lefebvre’s spatial triad of conceived, perceived, and lived spaces. Colonial-era forest fire legislation in India is maintained to impose a specific ecological and territorial order in political forests. However, the laws in criminalising fire use frequently conflict with the lived experiences of indigenous communities, which employ fire in controlled and nuanced ways as part of their traditional land management practices. To these communities, the legislation often seems disconnected from their socio-cultural and ecological needs. At the local level, the implementation of these laws is further complicated by state agencies navigating rural democratic politics, where enforcement is often undermined by local political actors seeking to protect their constituencies from the legal consequences. This creates a complex landscape in which the conceived space of legislation diverges sharply from both the lived space of indigenous practices and the perceived space of local governance.
This study also investigates how disaster events, such as large-scale uncontrolled forest fires, disrupt these spatial dynamics, temporarily reinforcing the power and presence of legal norms. The state’s regulatory framework may prevail during such moments, but this dominance is typically short-lived, revealing the enduring disconnection between legal prescriptions and lived realities. By examining the interaction of these spaces, this study aims to provide a nuanced understanding of how forest fire legislation functions within the sociopolitical and environmental context of the Uttarakhand Himalaya, shedding light on the tensions and negotiations that shape the social reality of law in this region.
