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India, the birthplace of Hinduism,
boasts the world’s largest environmental
movement. More than 950 nongovernmental organizations
dedicated to environmental causes can be found
in India.1
From the polluted cities to rural lands threatened
by dams or deforestation, concerned persons are
making their voices heard.
In India, the environmental
movement differs significantly from its counterparts
in North America and Europe. Ramachandra Guha,
for instance, suggests that a Western-style program
of environmental preservation will not work in
India, due to the immediate, pressing needs of
local populations.2
Madhav Gadgil and Guha suggest that a fissure
has emerged in Indian society that divides the
population into omnivores, ecosystem people, and
ecological refugees.3
The omnivores, following the development model
of the West, absorb the raw material of India
as fuel for the development of urban industrial
centers. Benefiting from government support, these
people tend to live in cities, seek advanced levels
of education, have small families, and surround
themselves with “modern amenities such as
electricity and tap water, television and agrochemicals.”4
Most of these people are upper caste and constitute
India’s much-lauded burgeoning middle class,
arguably the largest middle class in the world.
Ecosystem people, by contrast,
are rural and largely uneducated. Ecosystem people
tend to have large families because their children,
not being in school, are able to produce much-needed
income at a young age. The women of these communities
spend much of their time fetching water and fuel.
Because of their impoverishment, this population
does not participate in any significant way in
the industrial paradigm unless they become ecological
refugees. These ecological refugees flee the hardscrabble
life of the countryside and flock to the cities,
where they generally become day laborers and servants.
In most cases, this has not resulted in improved
educational opportunities for their children but
has created a seemingly permanent underclass in
the shantytowns sprinkled throughout India’s
urban areas. Though the ecosystem people and the
ecological refugees have the highest birth rates
and contribute to India’s population crunch,
they consume the least amount of resources per
capita. Because of India’s failure to create
a technological and educational infrastructure
“to support the employment of every one of
its citizens in the modern sector,”5
the population of ecosystem people and refugees
continues to increase.
The environmental movement in India
has to respond to these competing constituencies.
The urban masses want to enjoy modern material
comforts. Rural villagers want access to arable
land. Those villagers who fail to thrive in the
countryside flee to the cities where they live
often marginal lives as uneducated industrial
or service workers. Government policies have not
created a fully integrated modern society for
all segments of the population. Furthermore, in
the past the government has advocated massive
development projects, such as the damming of the
Narmada River, to support the consumerist urban
life-style. This reflected little or no regard
for the life-paths of traditional peoples whose
existence within the ecosystem does not demand
the excessive consumption of natural resources
found in the cities. In many regards, the environmental
movement in India pits the living past against
the modernized present, with many traditional
peoples asserting that “they will not tolerate
the continued degradation of the environment that
has resulted from India’s forced march toward
industrialization.”6
According to Patrick Peritore,
a political scientist who has typologized environmental
activists worldwide, Indian ecological advocates
fall into three typologies: “Greens,”
who emphasize bioregionalism and respect for traditional
ways of knowing; “Ecodevelopers,” who
advocate responsible programs for economic growth;
and “Managers,” who “give priority
to human needs and rational management of environmental
processes.”7
All three see a need to develop a “Dharmic
administrative model” that integrates traditional
values with secularism and attempts to create
a modern, ecologically responsible world. Peritore
notes that “the Gandhian ethos provides the
environmental movement with a coherent ethic,
metaphysic, and method of struggle as well as
strong legitimation on the national political
scene.”8
However, he goes on to conclude:
India’s environmental
movement has the advantages of Gandhian religion,
strong links to native cultural ecomanagement
practices, an excellent intellectual and political
infrastructure, and multiple points of access
to national and local government. But its sophistication
and strength is dissipated by a corrupt and bureaucratically
tangled government, by a declining economy, and
by an ecological and population crisis that surpasses
known techniques of environmental repair and management.
The movement, far from being a vanguard, is fighting
a rearguard action for cultural and ecological
survival.9
While acknowledging the vibrancy
of environmentalism in India, Peritore provides
a grim assessment of the future prospects for
environmentalism in India.
Although Mahatma Gandhi’s
campaign at achieving self-rule (sva-raj)
drew deeply from the well of religious inspiration,
Jawaharlal Nehru, who served as prime minister
of India from 1947 to 1964, mounted a program
of industrial development rooted in secularity.10
He urged the newly freed Indians to pursue science
and technology as the key to the modernization
of India. Gerald Larson has commented that
Just as Gandhi had successfully
created a mass political movement based on a Neo-Hindu
vision of universalism, firmness in the truth
(satyagraha) and nonviolence (ahimsa)
in pre-partition India, so Nehru successfully
created a comparable mass political movement based
on a translation, or perhaps better, a kind of
“demythologization,” of that same Neo-Hindu
vision in terms of “secularism,” “socialism,”
“a mixed economy,” “democracy,”
and “non-alignment” in post-partition
India.11
In the building of India after
independence, the resources of the state were
devoted to supporting mass secular education (some
minority communities also receive support for
religious education) and increasing India’s
industrial base.
Nehru’s drive for modernization,
which received a boost from the liberalization
of economic policies in the 1980s, has been accompanied
by a large population increase. In 1951, India’s
population was 361 million. Today, it is approximately
one billion. Consequently, several environmental
problems have emerged. O. P. Dwivedi has identified
seven major “side effects” of industrial
development:
- a brutal assault on the nation’s
limited common land
- loss of forest cover due to shortage
of firewood and fodder, harvesting of trees
for commercial purposes, and illegal encroachment
- minimal or no pollution abatement
for heavy industries
- industrial areas located too
close to residential areas, as seen in the Bhopal
Union Carbide Plant disaster
- unplanned urbanization: in 1951
62 million Indians lived in cities; the number
has increased to 217 million, over 30 per cent
in slums
- large scale projects such as
dams and mines that have displaced over 14 million
people; only 3.9 million have been adequately
relocated
- severe pesticide pollution, causing
several hundred deaths each year.12
Additionally, according to the
World Bank, more than forty thousand people die
prematurely every year in India because of air
pollution.13
New Delhi’s air is rated among the most polluted
in the world. Yet Anil Agarwal comments that “the
Air Pollution Act does not provide for any government
action to control it.”14
Water pollution continues to be
a huge problem as well, as noted in India Today:
Each of India’s 13
major river basins—making up 80 percent of
the total surface area and home to nearly 85 percent
of the population—is so polluted . . . that
bacteria feeding on the water are the only things
that have proliferated . . . river water laced
with industrial toxins is irrigating farmland
. . . and urban aquifers . . . are now filling
with sewage.15
Dwivedi notes that only 27 percent
of the urban population of India has even limited
sewerage facilities and that “out of a total
population of 846 million in 1991, only about
14 percent enjoyed adequate sanitation.”16
One of the difficulties encountered
by environmental activists stems from a lack of
awareness on the part of the general population
as well as the government regarding the severity
of the ecological ravage being felt throughout
India. Part of this is due to the rapid rate of
growth. Anil Agarwal notes:
In the period 1975–1995,
during which the gross domestic product increased
2.5 times, the industrial pollution load increased
four times and the vehicular pollution load increased
by eight times. . . . In 1986, when the then Prime
Minister Rajiv Gandhi had asked me to address
his council of ministers on the environmental
challenges facing the country, I had told this
powerful group that rural environmental problems
are more important than urban environmental problems.
I had said this because the land and forest degradation
affects the lives of hundreds of millions of poor
people, especially poor rural women, extremely
adversely. Delhi was still quite clean. I had
no idea about the speed with which this capital
city will turn into a hell-hole in less than ten
years. And today every metro and small town is
rapidly following suit. I now realize how stupid
I was and what poor environmental leadership I
had provided to the country’s political leaders.
I should have emphasized the importance of preventing
the pollution disaster that was soon going to
hit us. But I had no idea of the speed with which
it would hit us.17
India today faces a level of pollution
that once raged throughout North America but that
has now been largely corrected through effective
legislation and the compliance of government and
industry. The level of air pollution in India
resembles that of industrial steel towns, such
as Pittsburgh, in the 1940s. The degradation of
some rivers in India evokes memories of Ohio’s
Cuyahoga River, which burned in the 1960s.
In the United States and in Western
Europe, public sentiment and concern for public
health spawned a climate of environmental awareness
that resulted in dramatic improvements in air
and water quality. Lynn White, Jr., in a now-famous
article, suggested that biblical attitudes toward
the earth had encouraged overconsumption of natural
resources and a callous attitude toward the realm
of the nonhuman.18
Institutionalized religion was seen as an impediment
to the development of ecological awareness. Lance
Nelson and others have argued that aspects of
Hindu tradition similarly downgrade the material
world and can foster indifference toward the environment.19
Anil Agarwal suggests, in this volume, that the
insularity of the Hindu family works counter to
the development of a healthy, community-minded
ethic. This approach resembles the finger-pointing
in the Judeo-Christian traditions, where blame
has been placed on dominion theology, the notion
that God created the world for human use and pleasure.
According to White’s analysis, this predisposed
Jews and Christians to regard the environment
in terms of its usefulness for human endeavor.
This attitude might also be characterized as anthropocentrism,
or putting the human person at the center of the
cosmos. The Hindu tradition, with its emphasis
on personal salvation (moksa) certainly
is not exempt from this critique, though several
authors in this volume seek to put forward an
alternative, more ecofriendly view of Hinduism.
Although cultural values certainly
help shape the worldview of a society, pollution
is not necessarily a result of religious dogmas
but an unfortunate, and probably unintentional,
by-product of the rise of technology, increased
population, and the advent of manipulative consumerism
in the modern era. Thomas Berry has argued that
the technological trance, supported by advertising,
has taken on mythic proportions and that it will
take a new myth to undo the harm done to the planet
by industrial pollution, habitat decimation, and
a weakened sense of our place in nature.20
The task of the series of conferences held at
Harvard University’s Center for the Study
of World Religions has been to reconsider the
world’s religious traditions in light of
this concern.
In this volume, we will investigate
the role of the Hindu religion in the development
of ecological awareness in India. The word Hinduism
carries many layers of meaning. In its original
sense, as coined by the Persians a thousand years
ago, it refers to the collective beliefs and practices
of those people who live on the other side of
the Indus River. This term was taken up by the
British during the colonial era (1650 to 1947)
and continues to remain in use during postcolonial
times to refer to the religious practices of non-Muslim,
non-Christian persons of Indian descent. Within
Hinduism can be found many gods and goddesses;
many competing belief systems, from atheistic
materialism to profoundly emotional deistic devotion;
various systems of prayer and meditation; and
countless groupings and subgroupings of deities
and of people.
The word ecology literally denotes
a vast range of study, from the living habits
of individual species to an overarching concern
for the entire planetary system. Ecology, when
interpreted in the Hindu context, cannot be separated
from its place of origin, the Indian subcontinent,
which is home to most of the world’s Hindus.
However, because of the diaspora of the Hindu
community during both the British colonial period
and in more recent times, Hindu views on ecological
issues can be influential in such far-flung places
as Guyana, Trinidad, Britain, the United States,
eastern Africa, the Middle East, and Canada.
The various teachings of Hinduism
have been learned and discussed by the Greeks,
the Chinese, the Persians, the Arabs, the Europeans,
and Americans over the course of twenty-three
hundred years. Within India, there is no common
agreement about what constitutes “Hinduism.”
Similarly, there can be no one definition applied
by a non-Indian that can capture the essence of
this dynamic, multifaceted tradition. On one extreme,
through the prism of non-Indian, primarily missionary
cultures, Hinduism has been stereotyped by Orientalists
as caste-bound, retrogressive, and lethargic.
On the other extreme, from the perspective of
Theosophy and the sympathetic interpretations
of Christopher Isherwood and others, Hinduism,
particularly in its Vedantic form, is seen as
a sublime unifying truth.
The anthropologist Agehananda Bharati
postulated a threefold interpretation of Hinduism:
- “Village Hinduism”
made up of grassroots, “little tradition”
Hindu spirituality including shamanistic traditions
of ecstatic experience but with some observance
of all-India mainline Hindu practices
- Literate or scripture-based
“Sanskrit, Vedic Hinduism” of a “great
tradition” variety, represented by Brahmin
priests, pandits, itinerant ascetics or monastic
practitioners and
- “Renaissance Hinduism”
or Neo-Hinduism of what Bharati calls the urban
alienate, a portion of the new urban middle
class, [often followers] of Ramakrishna,
Vivekananda, Satya Sai Baba and many others.21
Each of these perspectives will
in some way be represented in this volume. Some
chapters will investigate rituals associated with
village life. Others will deal with the “great
tradition” approach, which emphasizes text-based
reflection. All the papers in some way seek to
reexamine the Hindu tradition in light of the
current ecological crisis that has thrust vast
areas of India out of balance.
In earlier writings, I have
noted that environmentalism in India has taken
many forms: general information conveyed through
the news media, direct action, as found in the
Chipko and Narmada movements, and an emphasis
on personal decision-making inspired by religious
precepts.22
Three primary varieties of religious expression
influence this last component. These include tribal
insights into ecosystems, Brahminical models that
emphasize an intimacy between the human and the
cosmos, and the renouncer orthopraxy of the Buddhists,
Jainas, and Yogis that advocates nonviolence and
minimization of possessions.23
This collection of essays also examines these
three approaches through an exploration of religious
texts, folk metaphors and rituals, and Gandhian-inspired
asceticism. Each of these avenues within the broad
spectrum of Hindu faith can help contribute to
and define the Hindu approach to environmentalism.
In developing this volume,
we attempted to incorporate as many voices as
possible from the field of Hindu studies. This
book includes essays by practicing Hindus. Some
are of Indian descent living in India. Some are
of Indian descent living overseas. Some are of
non-Indian descent who have spent considerable
time on the Indian subcontinent.
For the most part, the several
essays by nonresident Indians reflect the perspectives
of individuals who maintain close ties with the
difficulties confronting contemporary India. Essays
by scholars and environmental activists not of
Indian descent who have studied and immersed themselves
in various aspects of Hindu life and culture are
included; in some aspects, they might be referred
to as non-ethnic Hindus. And this volume also
contains the voices of American academics who
are experts in the field of Hindu studies but
who retain their own Western-based culture as
a primary orientation.
Using methods similar to that of
constructive theology, which seeks to apply religious
truths in contemporary contexts, various scholars
examine nature themes from the Vedic and Upanisadic
traditions, law Books that recommend nature protection,
and philosophical texts that advocate nonviolence.
Using a more anthropological approach, other scholars
in this volume examine the social realities of
the environment in India today and in earlier
periods in Indian history.
This book is divided into five
sections. The first section examines how traditional
concepts of nature from the Hindu tradition might
inspire an ecofriendly attitude among modern Hindus.
This section also takes a hard look at how traditional
Hindu values might impede an environmentalist
perspective. The first two essays, by O. P. Dwivedi
and K. L. Seshagiri Rao, examine the Hindu notion
of dharma, or cultural responsibility,
in an ecological context and also discuss the
concept of the five elements (mahabhuta),
the building blocks of reality cited in Samkhya
philosophy that pervade Hindu discourse about
the natural world. Laurie Patton discusses Vedic
texts and warns against romanticizing the Vedic
sacrificial tradition, which, in many ways, stands
as the antithesis of some environmentalist values
due to its ritual use of animals. Mary McGee studies
the dharmasastra and arthasatra
literature in light of nature protection, noting
that forests, rivers, and other natural resources
were to be protected by the king. T. S. Rukmani,
in the fifth essay, discusses the role of nature
in the Sanskrit literary tradition, with special
reference to the story of Sakuntala. Lance Nelson
looks at the Bhagavadgita through two prisms,
noting that, on the one hand, ecological values
can be developed from reading selected portions
of the text, while from another perspective, the
assertion that materiality is devalued seems to
work counter to the idea of ascribing value to
nature. Anil Agarwal, in the closing essay of
this section, offers a self-criticism, questioning
if the emphasis on self and family weakens Hinduism’s
capacity for responding to such a staggering social
and ecological crisis.
The second section of the book
looks to one of the founding fathers of modern
India. Mahatma Gandhi mobilized India with his
twin projects of nonviolence (ahimsa) and
holding to truth (satyagraha). Various
sections of his voluminous memoirs advocate minimal
consumption, self-reliance, simplicity, and sustainability—all
clearly in accord with “green” values.
Vinay Lal and Larry Shinn explore the viability
of Gandhi’s ethic in light of the contemporary
problem of ecological destruction and suggest
that his thinking might be readily adapted and
embraced for this purpose.
Discussions of forests and groves
comprise the third section of the book, beginning
with David Lee’s description of the forest
biology contained in the Ramayana, an epic
text renowned for its sophisticated botanical
details. The tension between the dark unknown
forest and the safety of the city in the epic
texts is explored in Philip Lutgendorf’s
essay. Moving more into the “little tradition”
aspect of Hinduism, Frédérique Apffel-Marglin
and Pramod Parajuli discuss the sacred grove tradition
of Orissa. In the final chapter of this section,
Ann Grodzins Gold provides a historical discussion
of a Rajasthani king who made forest preservation
a top priority of his rule.
The fourth section of the book
examines three river systems of India: the Yamuna,
the Ganga, and the Narmada. The first two essays
lament the degradation of the two major rivers
of Uttar Pradesh, which have been fouled by industrial
pollutants and human waste. David Haberman examines
classical literary sources that underscore the
sacrality of the Yamuna, and Kelly Alley discusses
the reluctance of some Hindu religious leaders
to provide leadership for the cleanup of the Ganga.
The last three essays in this section deal with
a very different river system in western India.
The Narmada River valley, in Maharashtra and Gujarat,
remains largely undeveloped. The valley serves
as the home of hundreds of thousands of tribal
people. No major cities can be found along its
course of more than four hundred miles. During
the Nehru period, this river was slated for extensive
damming to provide hydroelectric power and water
for irrigation. In the process, at least one hundred
thousand tribal people would have been displaced.
Several villages have already been submerged as
part of the preliminary phases of the project,
thus ejecting thousands from their homes. Because
of an extensive resistance campaign, the World
Bank has withdrawn funding for the project. Chris
Deegan explores the religious significance of
the river; William Fisher discusses the political
controversies; and Pratyusha Basu and Jael Silliman
examine the role of women in the campaign for
protection of the Narmada.
The final section of the book continues
an exploration of the “little tradition”
grassroots approaches to environmental protection.
The first two essays, by Vijaya Nagarajan and
Madhu Khanna, describe home-based rituals and
“embedded ecology,” a sensibility that
arises from living within a particular landscape
and biosystem, currently threatened by the spread
of mass consumer, television culture. The book
concludes with George James’s essay on the
Chipko movement and the environmentalism practiced
by Sunderlal Bahuguna. James challenges the notion
that the core theology of Hinduism allows for
the degradation of the natural world.
Throughout this volume, a tension
can be detected, not unlike that generated by
Lynn White, Jr., who laid blame for the West’s
environmental problems on the fundamental paradigm
of exploitation espoused in the Bible. Like White,
some of our authors, most notably Lance Nelson,
Philip Lutgendorf, Laurie Patton, Kelly Alley,
and Anil Agarwal, assert that Hindu philosophy,
particularly as found in Vedanta and in select
passages from the Mahabharata, dismisses
and perhaps denigrates the ontological status
of the physical world. Simultaneously, renouncer
tendencies place highest religious value on leaving
behind the things of the world, again relegating
the earth to a secondary status. Personal salvation,
or moksa, as the primary religious value
leaves little or no room for such worldly concerns
as air quality or water quality. However, many
other authors argue that “worldly” refers
not to the five great elements (mahabharata)
but to karmic, ego-based concerns. Through
ritual, meditation, and practices of yoga, one
can leave behind the realm of pollution and embrace
the purity of one’s authentic being in a
way quite harmonious with religious values. K.
L. Seshagiri Rao and O. P. Dwivedi champion Hindu
values as inseparable from environmental values;
T. S. Rukmani and Mary McGee see explicitly ecofriendly
values in traditional texts; David Lee, Ann Grodzins
Gold, Frédérique Apffel-Marglin, and Pramod Parajuli,
Vijaya Nagarajan, Madhu Khanna, and George James
see concrete evidence of a heightened consciousness
of the earth in the day-to-day life of specific
Hindus, both village and urban.
Toward the conclusion of the conference
at Harvard University, Harry Blair of Bucknell
University developed a useful scheme for organizing
and defining Hindu approaches to ecology (see
appendix 1). He outlined progressive stages, or
categories, that indicate increasingly radical
commitments to ecological harmony. The first category
emphasizes use of natural resources. It promotes
development and conquest of the natural order.
The second category advocates utility, seeing
nature to be in a reciprocal relationship with
the human order. This approach emphasizes sustainability
and social ecology. It clearly would give voice
to persons seeking to support themselves in a
simple manner, but it also would allow for some
harvesting of natural resources. The third category,
romance, sees ultimate reality manifesting itself
in the natural world. It respects the divinity
of nature and urges its adherents to practice
deep ecology. The fourth category, according to
Blair, emphasizes asceticism; I would suggest
that it also emphasizes transcendentalism. This
entails separation from nature through abstinence
of various sorts. Following the tradition of the
renunciant, or sadhu, this approach advocates
withdrawing from the world. Though not practical
for all persons and not at all supportive of “omnivore”
culture, it nonetheless demonstrates an ecofriendly
ethic.
In light of Gadgil and Guha’s
characterization mentioned earlier, the omnivores
would fall into the use and utility groups. The
ecosystem people would fall into the category
of romance, while all committed environmentalists
could be seen as practicing a form of asceticism.
In Patrick Peritore’s system, the greens
would represent the phase of romance and asceticism,
the ecodevelopers would fall into the category
of utility, while the managers could be seen in
terms of emphasizing use.
Various authors in this volume
criticize the notion of use. Philip Lutgendorf
notes that in much of the epic literature, the
forest represents raw material to be exploited
or destroyed. Laurie Patton reminds the reader
that the early Vedic literary and ritual traditions
conducted bloody sacrifices, using animals. Kelly
Alley and David Haberman decry industrial pollution
of India’s rivers as an example of the philosophy
of utility. Anil Agarwal suggests that the Hindu
emphasis on the self and family allows for the
use of people and objects outside one’s own
compound.
Frédérique Apffel-Marglin
and Pramod Parajuli see practical utility in India’s
tradition of maintaining sacred groves. By allowing
fields to stay fallow for a period of time and
then bringing them back into cultivation, the
landscape provides a utility without being subjected
to undue harm. Ann Gold discusses the role of
a twentieth-century raja in Rajasthan in
assuring the balance of nature through strict
land-use and tree preservaton policies. The dharmasastra
and arthasastra injunctions explained by
Mary McGee similarly reflect a utility approach
to the use of natural resources.
In contrast, T. S. Rukmani’s
chapter on the portrayal of nature in traditional
Sanskrit literature may be seen in terms of Blair’s
category of romance. In a somewhat similar romantic
vein, David Lee extols the medicinal value of
plants and the powerful beauty of the forest as
portrayed in the Ramayana. David Haberman
lauds the once-pristine beauty of the Yamuna River.
Vinay Lal and Larry Shinn write
about Mahatma Gandhi’s commitment to nonviolence
and abstemiousness. Gandhi may be seen as a prime
example of Blair’s description of asceticism.
Lance Nelson similarly reads the Bhagavadgita
in terms of its emphasis on worldly transcendence
through asceticism. O. P. Dwivedi and Seshagiri
Rao, while presenting a romanticized view of the
elements and love for nature, also emphasize an
ascetic need for reducing consumption.
Lutgendorf’s discussion
of the forest provides an extended metaphor for
the many potential expressions of a Hindu environmental
ethic. When seen in terms of use, the forest is
an exploitable resource, providing wood for fuel
and structures, raw material for the building
of cities. The utility of forest lands can be
seen in the jangala, which exists in reciprocity
with human settlement and provides sustenance
for domesticated animals, such as cows and goats,
as well as a pastoral landscape for the unfoldment
of the human drama. The forest can also be seen
as a romantic paradise, a hiding place for lovers.
The great ashrams, or ascetic retreats,
have traditionally been located in the forests
of India. These four interpretations of the forest
illustrate various intersecting modalities of
Hindu environmentalism. For the managers and ecodevelopers,
the forest must be exploited and tapped. For the
ecosystem people, the forest provides basic sustenance.
For green activists, the forest must be protected
from clearcutting and flooding, both to ensure
its survival and for its own sake (the romantic
view). For the ascetics, the forest must be maintained
to provide a continued haven for spiritual retreats
or ashrams.
What can be expected in the
development of a Hindu-inspired environmentalism?
This collection of essays suggests that several
avenues can be pursued to lift up Hindu religious
imagery and symbolism in the name of environmental
protection. However, any visitor to India will
see that it is just as likely that the same religious
symbols might be used to promote the latest consumer
product. As Vasudha Narayanan has noted, “A
burgeoning middle class in India is now hungry
for the consumer bon-bons of comfortable and luxurious
living.”24
Nonetheless, despite the onslaught of advertising
and industrialization, ecological consciousness
is growing in India. Public urgency has caused
wide public discussion of ecological degradation.
Some visible changes have been made to improve
the state of the environment. For instance, three-wheeled
taxis have been banned from the New Delhi airports
because they create a great deal of pollution.
According to Narayanan:
With the growing awareness
of our ecological plight, Hindu communities are
pressing into us the many dharmic texts and injunctions,
using epics and Puranas as inspiration in planting
gardens, and reviving customary lore on the medicinal
importance of trees and plants. Women, through
song and dance, communicate the assaults on women
and nature.25
Narayanan describes a dance performed
by Usha Vasanthkumar and Sudha Vijayaraghavan
titled Pancha Bootangal, the Five Elements,
that dramatically enacts humanity’s greedy
attack on the elements, resulting in ecological
havoc. Swami Agnivesh of the Arya Samaj order
of monks works extensively with the poor and disenfranchised
of India, seeking economic justice, protection
of children, and universal education. Like Gandhi,
he suggests that the village model provides for
an ecologically sound lifestyle. He states that
simplicity and contentment are needed to counter
the juggernaut of industrial development and consumerism
that leads to pollution and environmental degradation.26
The swami’s comments reflect a general distrust
throughout India of modern life patterned on the
Western paradigm. The rise to power of the Bharatiya
Janata Party (BJP) during the 1990s came about
in part due to a wariness of this cultural shift
throughout India. As Thomas Blom Hansen has noted:
The entire problematic
of consumption of “Western” products—food,
styles of dress, electronics gadgets, music—is
among Hindu nationalists (and others) linked to
the contamination, exposure, and corruption of
the body . . . [A]ccess to electronic
implements, motorized transport, and excessive
watching of TV divert the attention away from
healthier and more physically demanding pursuits.27
Nonetheless, the task of stopping
or even slowing the spread of consumerism and industrialization
seems quite impossible. It seems that the Nehruvian
vision for India has prevailed and that such Gandhian
notions as nonviolence (ahimsa) and nonpossession
(aparigraha) are insufficient to bring about
the changes needed to make India more environmentally
conscious.
As Anil Agarwal has noted, this
current urban ecological crisis took India by
surprise. In his personal life, he has struggled
with environmentally induced cancer. In 1994 he
was diagnosed with lymphoma and has received extensive
treatments in the United States for his condition.
He eloquently writes:
The elite of our nation
[India] have failed to internalize the
ecological principle that every poison we put
out into our environment comes right back to us
in our air, water, and food. These poisons slowly
seep into our bodies and take years to show up
as cancer, as immune system disorders, or as hormonal
or reproductive system disorders-affecting even
the fetus . . . [T]he Indian people must
not remain ignorant and nonchalant about the acute
threats they face to their own health and to the
health of their children.28
As the general population of India
becomes more aware of the great harm and difficulty
inflicted by industrial pollution and inappropriate
use of resources, it will begin to awaken to the
need for voluntary compliance with much-needed
clean-up campaigns. Despite the good intentions
of government agencies and the passage of various
pieces of antipollution legislation, Indians have
a long history of ignoring government regulations.
Public advocacy, perhaps inspired by the memory
of cleaner times, will eventually prompt the government
and industries of India to be more attentive to
the destructive nature of its current techno-industrial
complex. The Hindu religion, with its vast storehouse
of text, ritual, and spirituality, can help contribute
both theoretical and practical responses to this
crisis.
1 N.
Patrick Peritore, “Environmental Attitudes
of Indian Elites: Challenging Western Postmodernist
Models,” Asian Survey 33 (1993): 807.
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2
Ramachandra Guha, “Radical American Environmentalism:
A Third World Critique,” in Ethical Perspectives
on Environmental Issues in India, ed. George
A. James (New Delhi: A.P.H. Publishing Corporation,
1999) 115–30. First published in Environmental
Ethics 11, no.1 (1989): 71–83.
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3
Madhav Gadgil and Ramachandra Guha, Ecology
and Equity: The Use and Abuse of Nature in Contemporary
India (New Delhi: Penguin, 1995) 3–5.
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4 Ibid.,
180.
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5 Ibid.,
182.
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6
Vikram K. Akula, “Grassroots Environmental
Resistance in India,” in Ecological Resistance
Movements: The Global Emergence of Radical and
Popular Environmentalism, ed. Bron Raymond
Taylor (Albany, N.Y.: State University of New
York Press, 1995) 127.
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7
Peritore, “Environmental Attitudes of Indian
Elites,” 804.
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8 Ibid.,
817.
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9
Ibid., 818.
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10 Payal
Sampat, “What Does India Want?” World
Watch 11, no. 4 (1998): 31.
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11Gerald
James Larson, India’s Agony over Religion
(Albany, N.Y.: State University of New York Press,
1995) 199.
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12
O. P. Dwivedi, India’s Environmental Policies,
Programmes, and Stewardship (New York: St.
Martin’s Press, 1997) 22–23.
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13 India
Today, 16 December 1996, 39.
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14 Anil
Agarwal, electronic communication from Center
for Science and Environment, 22 April 1999.
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15 India
Today, 15 January 1997, 121–23.
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16 Dwivedi,
India’s Environmental Policies, Programmes
and Stewardship, 11.
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17 Anil
Agarwal, electronic communication, 3 February
1999.
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18 Lynn
White, Jr., “The Historical Roots of Our
Ecologic Crisis,” Science 155 (1967):
1203–1207.
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19
Purifying the Earthly Body of God: Religion and
Ecology in Hindu India, ed. Lance Nelson (Albany,
N.Y.: State University of New York Press, 1998)
61–81.
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20
Thomas Berry, The Dream of the Earth (San
Francisco, Calif.: Sierra Club Books, 1988).
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21
Larson, India’s Agony over Religion,
20–21.
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22
Christopher Key Chapple, Nonviolence to Animals,
Earth, and Self in Asian Traditions (Albany,
N.Y.: State University of New York Press, 1993).
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23
Christopher Key Chapple, “Toward an Indigenous
Indian Environmentalism,” Purifying the
Earthly Body of God, ed. Nelson.
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24
Vasudha Narayanan, “‘One Tree Is Equal
to Ten Sons’: Hindu Responses to the Problems
of Ecology, Population, and Consumption,”
Journal of the American Academy of Religion
65, no. 2 (1991): 321.
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25 Ibid.,
311.
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26 Swami
Agnivesh, personal conversation, 11 January 1999.
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27 Thomas
Blom Hansen, The Saffron Wave: Democracy and
Hindu Nationalism in Modern India (Princeton,
N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1999) 233.
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28
Anil Agarwal, “My Story Today, Your Story
Tomorrow: An Environmentalist Searches for the
Genesis of His Own Cancer,” Down To Earth
5, no. 13 (30 November 1996): 30–37.
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