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Hindu Ecology

By Makarand R. Paranjape
A Hindu temple on the banks of the holy Bagmati River [© STL/Uniphoto Press]

Ecology, derived from the Greek oikos (house) and -logy (study), is generally understood as the study of the relations between the different forms of life that subsist in one habitat, in our case, the Earth. The word "Hindu" comes from Sindhu, the river Indus, and was the name that the Persians gave to the inhabitants of India. Today, it refers by and large to the followers of Hinduism, whose adherents number close to a billion people, distributed all over India and in dozens of countries across the world. Of course, Hinduism, as the cliché goes, is less a religion than a way of life. Hindu ecology, hence, means not just how Hindus live and relate to their environment but also what the Hindu view of such relationships might be.

From the most ancient of times, Hindus have shown immense reverence for all forms of life. Forests, for instance, were especially sacred. The most important Hindu scriptures, the Vedas, have large sections designated as the Aranyakas, or the forest books. The Upanishads, which embody the quintessence of Hindu thought and philosophy, form a part of these forest books. Here is an example of one of the celebrated declarations from one of these texts, the Bhumi Suktam, Atharva Veda:

Earth, in which the seas, the rivers and many waters lie, from which arise foods and fields of grain, abode to all that breathes and moves, may She confer on us Her finest yield.

It is generally believed that the founders of Hindu society were not kings or conquerors, but sages and mystics. These latter, known as the Rshis, generally dwelled in forests. The Rshis were able to perceive the interdependence of all inanimate and animate objects, which they called Rta, or the great cosmic order. To live in harmony with Rta was considered the greatest good and happiness, but to go against it would result in disharmony and misery.

To the hermitages of these Rshis, who were the preceptors of humankind, came emperors and their progeny, as well as commoners and peasants. Together they learned the cardinal truths of life, chiefly dharma or righteousness, which was thought to be the basis of both natural and cosmic order. What Rta was to the cosmos, dharma was to the world of human beings.

The forests in ancient times were not only a source of prosperity but also sites of penance, asceticism and spiritual contemplation. It was as if two orders or ways of life were clearly established, one leading to worldly prosperity, power and pleasure (Kama and Artha), and the other conducive to virtue, enlightenment and liberation (Dharma and Moksha). Clearly, these were not thought of as separate or necessarily antithetical, but together formed the matrix of the good life on Earth.

But the basis of both paths was a respect for and recognition of interdependence between human beings and the natural world.

This interdependence is articulated in a famous verse of the Bhagavad Gita, one of the favorite sacred texts of Hindus:

From food come forth living beings, and from rain food is produced; from sacrifice arises rain, and sacrifice is born of action.

We clearly see here a cycle of mutuality and reciprocity between action, sacrifice, rain and food; that is, between the human, the natural and the supernatural realms.

Sri Krishna's exposition to Arjuna in this verse is followed up by the injunction:

He who does not follow this ever-revolving natural cycle, who is of sinful life, rejoicing in the senses, he lives in vain, O Arjuna!

Clearly, according to the Lord, dire consequences will follow for those who break this natural cycle. We are dependent on food, food comes from rain, rain comes from the heavens, and heavens smile on us when we lead lives which are sanctified and virtuous. But if we only indulge ourselves, without any responsibility to other forms of life or the cosmic order of righteousness, we risk perishing.

This kind of "traditional" causality, though seemingly "unscientific," continues to have supporters in modern times, including Mahatma Gandhi himself. In 1932, he shocked many of his contemporaries by declaring that the devastating Bihar earthquake of the previous year could be linked to the "sin" of untouchability, which the higher castes of Bihar were practicing on their lower caste brethren. Gandhi defended his statement from charges of unscientific superstition by saying that all the laws of nature and God were not yet known to humans and that if God and his law were one, no event in the cosmos could be accidental. Moreover, he could not give up this opportunity to conscientize his fellow countrymen and urge them to reform themselves.

[© ALA/Uniphoto Press]

Several years after Gandhi's death in 1948, the people of Uttarakhand hugged trees to save them from being cut down by unscrupulous business interests. This form of nonviolent environmental activism, Chipko (hold tight), gained nationwide and international recognition. More recently, there have been other valiant efforts to save Indian rivers and wildlife, especially the tiger, now in danger of extinction.

An Open Tradition

At the Parliament of the World's Religions, Melbourne, Australia, in December 2009, a statement was issued for consideration outlining the basic premises of the Hindu view on ecology. It ends with an eloquent appeal to all humanity to effect the kind of radical shift in consciousness that is required if our planet is to be saved:

"Humanity's very survival depends upon our capacity to make a major transition of consciousness, equal in significance to earlier transitions from nomadic to agricultural, agricultural to industrial and industrial to technological. We must transit to complementarity in place of competition, convergence in place of conflict, holism in place of hedonism, optimization in place of maximization. We must, in short, move rapidly toward a global consciousness that replaces the present fractured and fragmented consciousness of the human race."

Hinduism, in other words, is a certain way of regarding the self, the society and the cosmos. It admits to no one point of origin or closure. Secondly, it is pluralistic, without being relativistic; that is, it accepts the unity of truth, but allows for a diversity of expressions and descriptions. Thirdly, it has no one central text, prophet, founder or church. It is always a field of difference and debate, though not necessarily of conflict or opposition. Fourthly, its central tendency is to sacralize the world and all the objects contained in it. To such an extent is this drive manifest that it turns even secularism into a sacred creed and sanctifies instrumental rationality, which is itself the means of desacralizing the world. It is this tendency that saves Hinduism not only from rapaciously preying on other human groups, but on nonhuman life.

Given this worldview, even modern Hindus, who are following in the footsteps of the consumer-oriented Western cultures, may be persuaded to be less negligent of their environment and more responsible to the crisis that we face. However, one reason for our halfhearted participation in environmental activism is that so many of us are incredibly poor, using most of our energies just to survive. With the gradual alleviation of large-scale and crippling poverty, the spread of education and awareness, and the improvement in standards of living and health care, it is hoped that Hindus will take a renewed interest in caring for the planet.

Makarand R. Paranjape is a professor at Jawaharlal Nehru University in the School of Language, Literature and Culture Studies. He has authored and edited over 30 books, including Science, Spirituality and the Modernisation of India and Altered Destinations: Self, Society, and Nation in India. He is also managing trustee of the Samvad India Foundation, a nonprofit that promotes intercultural dialogue.

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