Makaranda Madhukar Anand Mahendale Festshrift

Author(s): M A Dhaky, Jitendra B Shah
Publisher: Shardaben Chimanbhai Educational Research Centre

Page 186

Ecological Awareness in Indian Tradition
175
studies, known as “literary ecology' has come into being. Though pastorals had been in vogue since Greek times, tragedy had always held the place of honour. In his constant battle against nature, his confirmed adversary whom man has always wanted to conquer and subjugate, the only saving grace for man in his moral height. This is the great quality of a tragic hero. To a Westerner, man is most blatantly the measure of all things and nature exists only for him.
In Indian thought, on the other hand, this is not entirely and blatantly so. Since Vedic times, it has been believed that the world is a cosmos, and an ordered whole, governed by the principle of Rta. Then the metaphysical concept of Brahman linked up all things in this world as products of one and the same principle. Again the principles of rebirth and retribution (Karmavipāka) have resulted in the innate belief in the continuum of existence and linkage in all species, whether birds or animals or reptiles or insects or human beings or also gods. And so, by definition as well as in belief, Indian mind has not been totally anthropocentric. This awareness for existence may not have been cultivated on a conscious plane, but it has percolated down the centuries in the Indian mind as a vague nimbus of collective conscience. It got expressed through religious terms, through the concepts of Dharma and A-dharma, through the terms of merit and sin. Fear and attraction and awe for nature also must have got intermixed. Today in the twentieth century these beliefs seem to be tenuous and have mostly taken the form of dead tradition.
Ancient Indian tradition has always cherished, respected and adored nature. Perhaps this is the characteristic of several ancient peoples like the Chinese, Japanese, the Red Indians, Eskimos. I remember to have read the letter written around 1880 by a Red Indian chieftain to the President of the United States regarding how the white man is recklessly plundering nature, denuding forests and killing wildlife just for the sake of his own pleasure and luxury, which is seriously and adversely affecting their own right to live. They themselves had been using nature-resources, no doubt, but very frugally and without in any way disturbing its cycle. That is the best way to love and respect Nature and live in harmony with it.