Religion meets nature

CHENNAI: In the book, Hinduism and Nature, historian and environmentalist, Nanditha Krishna delves into India’s rich natural landscape, narrates stories with religious significance and provides deep insight into what the religion offers to protect nature.

“I have been taking nature and environmental education classes for the past 37 years. What started as a bird-watching activity inside the campus, paved its way for building a wonderful relationship with nature.

That was the point when I realised the ideology of giving back to Mother Nature,” says Nanditha Krishna, the director of CP Ramaswami Aiyar Foundation. A historian, environmentalist and writer based in Chennai, Nanditha Krishna has a PhD in ‘Ancient Indian Culture’ from the University of Mumbai, where she was also a Heras scholar. Currently, she is a professor and a research guide for the PhD programme at University of Madras.  

From 1990, Nanditha has been involved in the process of restoring sacred groves (forest fragments of varying sizes, which are communally protected and have a significant religious connotation for the protecting community). She has restored around 53 sacred groves across Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka. A few of her popular books from the series — Sacred Animals of India and Sacred Plants of India. Hinduism and Nature is the latest addition to this series.

“My works have been translated into Hindi and Marathi. This shows that these books do have a good customer base. However, none of my books have been translated into any of the south Indian languages. So, it’s a fallacy to think that religious books are only for middle-aged readers and not kids. The current generation is more aware than the kids of our times. They live in a troubled world, where everything including the environment is slowly collapsing,” says Nanditha.

The author believes that people these days tend to look at the commercial value of resources than the religious. Through her book, she conveys the significance of nature in Hinduism, the religion. Every ritual begins and ends with peace or shanthi mantra and so does her book.

Her stories revolve around how sacred groves from Kashmir to Kanyakumari were used as a place to pen down the Vedas during ancient period. Eventually, it moved to water bodies like rivers, lakes and temple tanks that were used to conserve ground water during summer. “These places were rich reservoirs for biodiversity. Did you know that there were famines in India because the British rule took away all our water bodies. We shouldn’t misuse our natural resources and we need to own up to the responsibility,” she says.

“The religion highly worships the value of righteousness, Sanatana. The result of our action reflects in our karma. And, karma plays a big role in birth, death, and re-birth. It’s a vicious circle,” she explains. She has taken references from the Vedas, the Bhagavad Gita, and mythological stories to bring out the relevance to the readers.

According to the author, environmental consciousness lost its appeal in the craze of development. She says, “Is development even necessary? These are value judgements we need to take. We’ve to say enough at some point. We cannot let waste effluents from industries dirty the groundwater. Plastics are clogging the sea, migration from rural areas and encroachment of building have also been few of the alarming issues. At this rate, we will soon head towards an environmental disaster.” Further adding that desilting of lakes is an effective measure to control water crises. Her next book focuses on the life lessons from Adi Shankaracharya.