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GREEN TALK

COLONIALISM OF ANOTHER KIND

If Gandhiji were alive today...

By Bittu Sehgal

Each one of us has to make different decisions in our life, based on circumstances that challenge our values and purpose in life.

I looked towards Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi’s life and its lessons to find direction in my life. I have been working to protect India’s natural heritage for over three decades now and while I cannot hope to reach Gandhiji’s standards, whenever there is a fork in my life, self-doubts arise and cynicism tries to deprive my life of meaning, I turn to Gandhiji and somehow the answers emerge, the light shines.

Not so long ago, sparkling rivers, productive forests, rich soils and fish-rich coastlines were common in India. As recently as the turn of the last century, primary forests clothed perhaps half the subcontinent. If, at that time, you cast a hundred seeds about indiscriminately, half of them were likely to take root because our soils were fertile, our climate moderate and our water sources abundant. Creatures such as bats, elephants and birds were widespread. They transported seeds, maintained nature’s balance and, over millions of years, crafted the paradise that is now in our hands.

Gandhi’s efforts...

This was the land that Gandhiji freed from the clutches of colonial rule, the land that attracted conquerors from afar. The East India Company had designs on this bounty. It wanted timber for British shipbuilding activities and spices, textiles and dyes to trade across the world. That was why they colonised India. In the process of meeting such narrow objectives they brutalised the country.

That was why we had to fight for independence and the likes of Mahatma Gandhi sacrificed their lives. I cannot help but feel that, were he alive today, Gandhiji would have been forced by inner compulsion to launch yet another satyagrah. This time against us, the ‘haves’ who learned the art of colonialism from the British. He would have forced us to acknowledge that our lifestyles had turned us into the very colonisers we once fought.

How different India would have been had Gandhiji been alive today. If we had him at the forefront of the human rights and environmental movement, he would have travelled from village to village to consult with people. Instead of dispensing knowledge to them, he would have learned from them their techniques of survival and sustainable development. He would then have prevailed upon the rest of us in urban India to set an example of simple, ecologically sound living for the benefit of all citizens of the world.

Gandhiji had provided solutions to our environmental problems much before such problems manifested themselves. He was an environmental prophet whose precious life was probably squandered on a generation which, even decades after his death, has failed to recognise his true worth and that of the nation he left in our charge.

...have gone down the drain...

Nothing symbolises our lack of appreciation of the gifts of nature more than the fact that more forests are being cut on the Indian subcontinent today than ever before. Not surprisingly, galloping soil sterility has overtaken millions of hectares of once-fertile farmland. And there is not one river in India whose water we can safely drink. Landslides and floods are the order of the day and crippling droughts make a mockery of the projections of economists. Our Gross National Product (GNP) and per capita income have gone up, but our ‘Gross Nature Product’ has gone down.

To top it all, the fish catch in our oceans and our inland waterways is declining. Millions of once-self-sufficient fisherfolk and farmers, therefore, stream into urban centres in search of livelihood. There they are forced to live in urban slums.

So? Who are the dreamers? Those who seek ways to live without ravaging the Earth’s natural assets, or the ‘achievers’, who believe humanity can survive regardless of the damaged state of our forests, rivers and air?

For three decades Sanctuary, the magazine I edit, has been documenting and leading what we believe is India’s second freedom movement – the one that seeks to protect our children from— inter-generational colonisation.

...but it isn’t too late.

But our environmental canvas is not without its pinpoints of light. Young persons are more assertive than they used to be. One million Kids for Tigers ask for their national animal to be saved. They are also running campaigns to recycle waste in schools, prevent water pollution and reduce energy consumption. What is more, every political party has responded to public opinion by fashioning manifestos that promise to protect the environment. Were Gandhiji with us today, he might have shown us how to force them to fulfill such promises.

The level of environmental awareness has reached dizzy heights in India today. Paradoxically, however, the degradation of our surroundings has plummeted to unfathomed depths because people, fixed in their ways, refuse to listen to the voice of the young! Nevertheless, young businessmen, doctors, tour operators, traders, even some politicians, have started to join forces in the belief that the true development will only be achieved when the air we breathe, the water we drink and the food we eat is pure.

It should be the purpose of all development in India to restore health to our ravaged land, to restore quality to the water we drink and productivity to our soils. But only the very naïve would believe that this miracle will unfold without a fight. And this battle, like Gandhiji’s will need to be fought peacefully and strategically. With our water and food security on the verge of collapse, we must search for ways to defang the ill-effects of industrial development— pollution and resource impoverishment. These options make economic and ecological sense. And, as Gandhiji would surely have forcefully pointed out en route to the long climb back to environmental sanity, they are also the shortest line to delivering health, happiness and social justice to all.