Nature is divine, not a portfolio of resources

By Namita Devidayal

The climate crisis across the world is whispering – (actually, yelling) – that our engagement with nature is now irrevocably disastrous. Closer to home, we are trampling on the most beautiful idea that pervades Hindu philosophy: that we are all part of one interconnected universe, which includes all creatures, great and small, sentient and insentient. Nature is not a portfolio of resources available to satisfy human greed. Nature is divine.

In countries such as New Zealand and Ecuador, nature is recognised as having the right to exist, flourish, and regenerate. Citizens can sue on behalf of forests or rivers even when no human property has been damaged. This respectful worldview has long been a part of India’s sacred literature.

Using gorgeous imagery, Upanishads say that everything, whether man, squirrel, plant or pebble, is composed of the five elements – earth, fire, water, air, and space. Human beings are, quite literally, made from the same five elements as amountain, river, tree and bee, but in different proportions – so, while man is more water, a mountain is more earth (a cockroach more fire, currently). When we die, we join many dead leaves to become the mulch that nourishes the earth, that in turn feeds new life…the circularity of the universe carries on, like a giant cosmic inhale and exhale.

Luminous poet Kabir sang about this using earthy images from daily life: The mud reminds the potter that while you knead and manipulate me, don’t forget that you will eventually resolve into me. Every Hindu Vedic text invokes the same idea, gently nudging us to retreat from the anthropomorphic worldview that places man at the centre of the universe rather than as a part of it.

For example, the Isha Upanishad opens with a remarkable ecological insight: “All this – whatever moves in the universe – is pervaded by the Divine”. The Atharva Ved begins with the Bhumi Sukt, a hymn to the earth, praising its forests, mountains, rivers, medicinal plants, animals, and soils, and repeatedly asks that humans tread gently upon her. Numerous hymns in the Rig Ved are dedicated to natural elements. In Gita, Krishn repeatedly identifies himself with natural phenomenon – “I am the light in the sun and the moon”. Even in the Ramayan , the forest becomes a spiritual landscape, a place of discovering truth.

These texts are not arguing for environmental conservation in the modern sense, but lean into a far more radical idea: How can you exploit or destroy that which is not separate from yourself?
Our public expression of Hinduism has become increasingly performative: We worship trees and endlessly tie red threads around their trunks, but then we chop them down to make way for highways or choke their roots with concrete until they die and fall, sometimes killing a child returning home on a school bus. We worship water, but we have turned it into a commodity, offering it to data centres that are being thrown out of their own countries. Every time the alarm rings, we press the snooze button. What’s next?

END OF ARTICLE