“The west seems to take a pride in thinking that it is subduing nature; as if we are living in a hostile world where we have to wrest everything we want from an unwilling and alien arrangement of things.….But in India the point of view was different; it included the world with the man as one great truth. India put all her emphasis on the harmony that exists between the individual and the universal.”
—Rabindranath Thakur in THE RELATION OF THE INDIVIDUAL TO THE UNIVERSE
Since 1974, we have been celebrating the World Environment Day with fanfare. This year also we will be doing so with the theme of the year ‘Connecting People to nature – in the city and on the land, from the poles to the equator’. All this will happen amidst the looming US withdrawal from the Paris Climate Change Agreement, the reports of 27 percent rise in the seawater temperature in last 30 years and increasing threat of rising water level and constantly ascending pollution in urban spaces creating health hazards for many.
Though the participating nations agreed in Paris in 2015 to limit average warming to two degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) over pre-industrial levels, by curbing fossil fuel burning, many people are not convinced due to the unresolved issues between the developed and the developing countries. Despite rounds of negotiations at the political and diplomatic level, many international organisations–government and non-government–working in the field and all efforts being made to spread awareness about environmental conservation, why we are not able to substantially manage the ecology is still the question haunting us.
The primary reason for this failure lies in the limited focus of the environmental discourse on science or economics, without considering the philosophical aspects of it.
The group searching the solutions in the field of science believes that restoration of the balance in atmospheric gases is possible. Human beings are modifying this atmospheric balance by burning fossil fuels, coal, oil and natural gas, and deforestation for development. It is their conviction that this imbalance can be dealt with through scientific innnovations. They also question the reports of Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change with the allegations of politicisation, which is true to some extent. Still, the fact that climate change is a reality and experiences all over the world are gloomy, cannot be denied.
Those, who address this issue from economic point of view question the global capitalism and GDP oriented growth but are not in the position to provide any alternative. At the most, they would give some Marxist alternative, which is another form of imposed globalisation. Most of the economic theories that drive our understanding of development are rooted in the Western thinking of subduing the nature. This essential duality of human life from nature is at the root of this crisis.
Bharat provides an alternative to address issues pertaining to ecology through the integral philosophy of life, which sees human life in harmony with nature. As PM Modi at the United Nations Sustainable Development Summit articulated, “We represent a culture that calls our planet Mother Earth.” The Bharatiya perspective awakes the human being and makes him realise that human life is not just about the material possessions but has strong spiritual bearings that enable us to search divinity in nature and worship nature.
If we really want to realise the motto of ‘connecting people with nature’ then there is a need to provide practical dimensions to this civilisational wisdom by allowing each society to develop as per own available resources and culture, instead of universalising one. As Dr Arnold Toynbee, British Historian, famously said “At this supremely dangerous moment in history, the only way of salvation for mankind is the Indian way.” If that way is to be Bharatiya, then we as a nation have to lead by example, instead of blindly imitating the Western models of growth. The future of mankind and this Mother Earth, at large, depends on whether we are ready to take this responsibility or not.
@PrafullaKetkar
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