Indian Tradition and Nature

The following is an article by Mitchell Danino, a French journalist who has a deep knowledge about Indian culture and its history. In this, he has highlighted the starking contrast between how nature is viewed by the West and how Bharat has seen it. Now you see it for yourself

The West have no doubt done a remarkable and often courageous work in the last few decades, but they do not have the monopoly of an understanding of Nature. They forget that science is not necessarily the best tool to understand Nature—if it were, why should it have caused so much destruction to this earth, that too in the span of two centuries, a mere flash in the planet’s life ?

In fact, since the start of the Judeo-Christian tradition, the West broke away from Nature and began regarding her as so much inanimate matter to be exploited (a polite word for plunder). That unfortunate attitude, which has resulted in the ruthless abuse we see all over the world, can be traced all the way to the Old Testament and to the Genesis. On that fateful sixth day, Jehovah proclaims, “Let us make man in our image, in our likeness, and let him rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air, over the livestock, over all the earth, and over all the creatures that move along the ground....” And he said to newborn man, “Fill the earth and subdue it” (1:26 & 1:28). Jehovah does not stop there ; for some mysterious reason, he seems to hold the earth responsible for man’s sins. After generously cursing various nations through a succession of fire-spewing prophets, he turns his wrath to our poor planet : “Say to the southern forest : ‘This is what the Sovereign Lord says : I am about to set fire to you, and it will consume all your trees, both green and dry. The blazing flame will not be quenched’ ” (Ezekiel, 20:47). “I will make the land of Egypt a ruin and a desolate waste among devastated lands” (ibid., 29:10, 12). “See, the Lord is going to lay waste the earth and devastate it ; he will ruin its face and scatter its inhabitants.... The earth will be completely laid waste and totally plundered” (Isaiah 24:1, 3). “Cursed is the ground because of you” (Genesis 3:17). And so on, Book after ranting Book.

The contrast with the ancient Indian attitude is as stark as could be. Indian tradition regards the earth as a goddess, Bhudevi ; her consort, Vishnu, the supreme divinity, incarnates from age to age to relieve her of the burden of demonic forces—sometimes of humanity itself. This he does out of love for the earth, his companion. Sita means “furrow,” and she returned to the earth whence she came. Shiva too is bound to the earth through Parvati, daughter of Himavat, i.e. the Himalayas. Earth and Heaven are therefore inseparable : “Heaven is my father ; my mother is this vast earth, my close kin,” says the Rig-Veda (I.164.33). Earth is as sacred as Heaven, since she is our mother, not a dead heap of “natural resources.” Nature, rather than an adversary to be conquered and despoiled, is our best defence : “Blue water, open space, hills and thick forests constitute a fortress,” says the Kural (742). Rivers from Ganga to Sarasvati and Cauvery are goddesses, mountains from the Himalayas to the Vindhyas are gods ; many trees are regarded as sacred (the pipal has been so since the Indus Valley civilization at least) ; so are many smaller plants and flowers too, such as those still used in rituals, and a number of animals, from the cow to the peacock. The whole of Nature is seen as pervaded with the divine Spirit. This was of course the view of most of the ancient world, from the Greeks (for whom the earth was Gaia and Demeter) to the Norsemen, the Mayas and Aztecs, and the Red Indians. But all those cultures were wiped out by the steamroller of the Judeo-Christian advance, to which any worship of Nature was “idolatry” (that is also the attitude of Islam).

Strangely, even in India the sages of old had foreseen a waning of this communion with Nature. During the Kali Yuga, says the Shiva Purana (II.1.23), one of the many signs of growing chaos is that the merchant class “have abandoned holy rites such as digging wells and tanks, and planting trees and parks.” Note that planting trees was then a “holy rite.” Today’s relentless wave of utilitarianism is the cause of this steep decline, yet we can see something of that deep reverence subsist in many aspects of Indian life, from the “sacred groves” still found in some villages to the “bhumi puja” at the start of any construction. Even some borewell contractors will perform a small puja before drilling the earth.

So if to Westerners Nature is a “discovery,” and often a shallow one, we Indians have nothing to discover there : we only need to revive the old spirit and infuse it into modern methods, including scientific ones. In doing so we must remember that science is no more than a tool, and a dangerous one as we now know. We will be able to use it rightly only if we keep alive in our hearts our deeper relationship with our material mother. And if we should certainly take a leaf out of Western ecologists’ book as regards their sense of commitment and organization, on the other hand they could also imbibe with great benefit something of the ancient Indian approach. The two together could work wonders.

Source: http://micheldanino.voiceofdharma.com/articles_english.html