World of Philosophy

Author(s): Christopher Key Chapple, Intaj Malek, Dilip Charan, Sunanda Shastri, Prashant Dave
Publisher: Shanti Prakashan

Page 681

drink and be merry" (Yävat Jivet Sukham Jivet) favoured order and peace as the essential ingredient for derriving maximun pleasure. CONTEMPORARY INDIAN THOUGHT
The glorious tradition of environment and ecological ethics based upon the Vedic, Upanishadic, Puranic and basically spiritualistic ancient Indian Philosophy is thoroughly maintained in the contemporary Indian Philosophy. The neo-vedantian thoughts of Swami Vivekanand, Aurobindo, Rabindra Nath Tagore, Radhakrishnan; the Vaishnavite Philosophy of Mahatma Gandhi and the Islamic Sufism of Iqbal give sufficient impetus to the concept of the preservation of environmental-purity and ecologicalbalance. The ardent advocate of the concept of essential unity of everything in the universe, Vivekanand regards the whole universe as a poem with rhymes and rhythmes." The Poet-Philosopher and lover of nature, Tagore advocated the concept of love for all the objects of nature and said. "Thou (Absolute) art the sky and thou art the nest as well","2 Describing the evolution of the universe Aurobindo says that He creats Himself in Himself and is Himself the play, Himself the player and Himself the playground." The true devotee of satya Truth and 'Ahimsa'(nonvoilence), Mahatma Gandhi believes in the essential unity of all the beings of the world. Hence, he advocates the concept of love and co-existence with all that lives.74 Rädhäkrishnan holds that the whole world is the affirmation of the Absolute. Hence, he advocates the concept of 'infinite in finite" and "Spiritual environment", similarly for Iqbal God is immanent in all the objects of nature.
CONCLUSION
Thus, right from the most ancient age of human history, the thoroughly spiritual and value-based Indian thought has been fully committed towards environmental-purity and ecological-balance, as a result of which no such problem ever arose on this land before the dawn of the prevailing globalised western modern civilization. It has to be admitted that in the western thoughts also the references about their knowledge of environment and eco-system are found in the writings of some of the Greek thinkers like Hippocrates, Aristotle, Theoprastus etc, but subsequent western thought could not carry on that spirit. After a long gap of centuries and after the advent of the science of Biology, the post-seventeenth century thinkers like Reaumer (1683-1757), George Buffon (1707-1788), August Grisebach (1838), K. Mobius (1877), Stephen. Forbes (1877), J. Warming (1895) and a host of contemporary thinkers have been taking great interest in this regard. These scientific studies have deeply impressed the elites but are yet to penetrate among the commonmass like India, where even the illeterate villagers regard environment
632