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INDIGENOUS VISION - PEOPLES OF INDIA ATTITUDES TO THE ENVIRONMENT - EDITORIAL - Homage To Earth (B. K. ROY BURMAN) (1992)
INDIGENOUS VISION - PEOPLES OF INDIA ATTITUDES TO THE ENVIRONMENT - EDITORIAL - Homage To Earth (B. K. ROY BURMAN) (1992)
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B. K. ROY BURMAN
Homage to Earth
away his time in the pursuit of pleasures. The world was full of woes
and a noble agony dawned on the soul of the son of the human
mother. He searched and searched to find out who was responsible
for all the travails of the world. At last with the blessings of his
mother, he acquired the vision to recognise the source of all trouble.
It was his father, the master of the world, who, unableto cope with
the awakening which came to him as a sequel to his communion with
the daughter of man, who was trying to avoid his responsibility
towards creation.
The son of the human mother challenged the master of the
world to live up to his responsibility. But the master of the world, in
his arrogance of power, cursed the son. "You, who speak in the name
of humanity will be put to death by men, who are my minions." After
uttering this curse, compassion came forth from the father. He told
his son:
The hard rocks, the towering trees, the chirping birds, the roaring
tigers, the meandering streams are also my children. They are your
brothers and sisters. I cannot hold back what I have unleashed. But
when my minions in human form come to strike you, all these brothers
and sisters of yours will tell you how to *ake care of yourself. You may
beat death with your wisdom.
guitar he went from hill to hill, valley to valley, village to village, and
sang his song of sonorous thunder "You are master of yourself. Do
not invoke any master outside you for help. Know your brothers and
sisters around you in all their forms. The secret of your good life is to
live in harmony with them. "This was too much for the minions of the
master of the world, who himself was in remorseful coma. They
brought out his guitar and sang a song of the deathless cosmos. The
minions of the master came and severed his head with their hatchets;
but the song turned into a soundless muse of the cosmos. Gairemnong
had given a deathblow to death.
Even today, the people stand before the Gairemnong hill, even
now the sun conveys its homage to its peak; men and women weave
new stories around the core of the old myth in their quest for meeting
new challenges.
This archetypical myth is not bound by time and space, race and
culture. There are moments in the lives of all men and women,
alienated from the protective whisper of mother earth, when they are
akin to Gairemnong, a retriever of cosmic harmony through fearless
confrontation with the arrogance of power.
Marta Vannucci writes of man's partnership with nature, of
man's with the mysteries of life—an expression
fascination of man's
you are seated, because the earth belongs to me.' The Buddha
touched the earth with his fingertips and called upon it to bear
witness that it did not belong to Mara, because he had just attained
his enlightenment on it; whereupon the earth responded, thundering,
'I bear you witness' with a hundred, a thousand, a hundred thousand
affirmations."
The legend of Bhusparsa affirms, symbolically, the rights of the
indigenous peoples.
The indigenous are those whose livelihood and lifestyle are tied
away the rights of the indigenous, but in the modern world Mara
seems to have fared better. Pereira relates this in context of his
discussion on the sustainable lifestyle of the Warlis, a tribal
groves are among the few remaining areas in India where respect for
all life reaches down to all animate creatures and plants. But these are
The forest and other harmful laws enacted by the British are still in
force, with the Government claiming the jungles as its property, to be
exploited even at the cost of extensive marginalisation of the Adivasis.
Adivasis are being displaced by dams, power stations and other mega
projects as well as from wild life sanctuaries and biological parks.
Adivasis have ancient occupational rights which cannot be abrogated
by any laws that invaders make, even if they claim that they are in the
national interest.
understanding".
Though not necessarily in this case, there is a danger, that the
role of rituals as an authentic expression of the concern for
environment may be over-rated. Krishna Chaitanya strikes a note of
caution in this regard. In his words,
We are to focus on the mindset. The greater possibility is that the mind
of the archaic man has been conditioned by inherited myth without
luminous remembrance of import. If we are willing to cling onto this
sort of conditioning, we might as well accept the Skinnerian behaviour
• Suresh
Singh has focused on such a myth which possesses both
suggests
this account is unique in that it refers probably for the first time and in
such a vivid way to environmental pollution. The Asurs degraded the
environment. Their furnaces belched smoke that endangered all life
and life support systems. It was a primitive man's perception of
environmental pollution, a pre-modern and a pre-industrial concept
and yet it is so modern.
by travellers and fellow scholars for almost two centuries, but was
used by colonial rulers to take over their land under the pretext of
humanism. It is no wonder that Sarabu, the hero of Amrutar Santan,
played out on his flute the blood of his soul on a honey coloured
afternoon, invoking Dharmu, the God of Justice and Dhartari, the
ancient Mother Goddess.
But it is not always that the children of nectar—the Kondh, the
Saora, the Gond, the Santal, the Oraon and the Munda, invoke the
gods above. It is not unoften that they ask for justice and survival, and
that their action manifests a different approach. Dunu Roy gives
examples of the same in respect of the Gonds, the Kol, and the
Bhumias of Shahdol. While protests and sometimes insurgency form
part of their survival strategy, not least important is their strategy for
a compatible environment. Ramakrishnan, through his persistent
publications for over two decades has demolished much of "scientific
indigenous people, hold the key to the survival of life on the planet.
These are the most important repositories of biodiversity in the
peoples all over the world, to establish their ecological rights, human
rights and rights of dignified living. Medha Patkar articulates in her
activism the spirit of this struggle.
If the flag of the new era is hoisted in the South, there are many
in the North who have the vision to see it and adopt it as their own.
There is no permanent dichotomy; there are only strategic vantage
points.
Maurice Strong's recommendations of the Brundland
Commission for integration of the environment
and the economy has
every reason to hope that the issue will not be seen primarily in
economic terms while projecting a broad humanist
platform.
Environmental concern must capture the cosmic rhythm, as
About eight years ago I was flying from Leh to Chandigarh. The
helicopter was making its way through massive bare rocks, whose
tops seemed to end nowhere in the sky. There was not a single patch
of green. There were only stony seams of various hues running miles
our own selves. We could hear the muse of our souls, and we started
acquired skill and wisdom; with muse in the soul and thunder in
harmony.
Kapila Vatsyayan has conveyed the spirit of this pilgrimage in
the invocation:
Geeti
credit:
Photo
^ >£rte#r fer i
^ ^ ^ fiyqR tttff 11
Let What I dig from thee, O Earth, rapidly spring and grow again.
O Purifier, let me not pierce through thyvitals or thy heart.