India: Disneyfication of Piligrimage centres in the Himalayas for commercial gain has destroyed them | Anonymous

 via: Dilip Simeon's Blog

With Joshimath sinking, the worst prophecies I have made in the past about our disastrous policies for the ‘development’ of the Himalayas are sadly coming true. Joshimath is just the beginning. While I have much to say about how as a government as well as a civil society we continue to treat the destruction of Himalayan ecology with total disregard, the case of Joshimath, Kedarnath, and Badrinath and other sacred destinations has a different dimension. 

This is related to the growth of the most vulgar form of Hindutva, devoid of any connection with those Hindu spiritual traditions which have made these locations sacred. We have little understanding now of how and why these locations, sometimes chosen with great geographical precision as to the axis they formed, were designated as ‘sacred’. What was common to all of them was their remoteness, the difficulty of access and their intimate relationship with their natural surroundings – river, rock, direction of the sun, flora and fauna.

The temples were built to highlight these relationships. Journeying to them – the Yatra , the circumambulation – had to be arduous – a kind of Tapasya and it was the Yatra itself which led to self realization not the entry into a temple. In Kedarnath for example, it is the rock face which is worshipped as the icon.

Hindutva has destroyed this sacredness. We have Disneyfied these destinations. Built hotels, shops, parking lots, houses and made it possible to reach them by Helicopter or built the most destructive four lane expressways. We have forgotten that just fifty years ago a night stay in Kedarnath was forbidden by tradition and a pilgrim after reaching there from the last post from where the final climb began had to return before nightfall. Only the priest was allowed to stay in the complex – no one else. A few Sants lived in the caves around and that was all. All this was a part of the mystique, and critical to its sacredness. All gone.

This is Hindutva as a flourishing industry, a perverse kind of commerce in pop religiosity, cheap calendar art iconography, mythology as Bollywood fantasy, raucous bhajans based on filmy tunes, filthy dhabas selling greasy ‘Prasad’ and travelers in hordes who treat this as a form of guilt free spiritual saturnalia.

In fact it is by adding to all this the layer of muscular, patriarchist, cultural nationalism that the new Hindutva identity is being constructed. It is an identity built on violence against nature and against humanity. There is nothing sacred about our Geography anymore. This is not Hinduism.

The sinking of Joshimath had to happen. Worse may follow.

Anonymous

India: Big environmental awareness rally by the Hindu Right [report from a Hindi Newpaper)

VHP और RSS के हजारों कार्यकर्ताओं ने पर्यावरण जागरूकता रैली निकाली

http://www.bhaskar.com/news/UP-KAN-vhp-and-rss-activists-environmental-awareness-rally-kanpur-latest-hindi-news-4793702-PHO.html

Laboratory of Fascism: Capital, Labour and Environment in Modi’s Gujarat | Rohit Prajapati and Trupti Shah

Laboratory of Fascism: Capital, Labour and Environment in Modi’s Gujarat

by Rohit Prajapati and Trupti Shah

We are caught in a false debate in which the reality is presented in an erroneous perception. Narendra Modi, the perpetrator of 2002 carnage is counter posed with Mr. Modi the “development leader”. We call it a false debate, since for us, who have lived and grown in Gujarat over the past five decades the two aspects are actually the same – that of fascist. And we use the label of fascist for Modi with utmost seriousness and with full awareness of what the term involves. Of course, we have a different situation in India today, compared to Italy or Germany in the 1920s and 1930s.
http://www.sacw.net/article5980.html

Review: Green and Saffron Vipul Mudgal (March 30, 2012)

Green and Saffron
Mukul Sharma
permanent black
Rs. 795 pp 300

Elbert Hubbard described a conservative as “a man too cowardly to fight and too fat to run”. But he said that a century ago, much before today’s conservative avatars gained respectability as neo-liberals and born-again fanatics. Mukul Sharma’s book is about a Hindu conservative reinvention of environmental politics in the age of globalisation. And to spice things up there is Anna Hazare, in the idyllic surroundings of Ralegan Siddhi.

The book evokes a serious question: What is wrong if the right-wingers adopt environmentalism as a doctrine? After all, with enemies like corporate giants and nuclear hawks, the cause of environment could do with some friends in high places. That is where the author’s field work comes in handy. He shows why there is a problem when a singular, Brahminical notion of tradition meets a sectarian social order, and when ecology is couched as anti-minority to anti-Dalit discourse.

The book has three meticulous case studies: Ralegan Siddhi’s watershed programme in Maharashtra, Sundarlal Bahuguna’s opposition to Tehri dam in Garhwal, Uttarakhand, and Vrindavan’s forest revival project in Uttar Pradesh. A bit of textual analysis, some ecological perspectives and some scrutiny of cultural keystones bring out an insightful story and an exploration of political meanings.
SEE FULL TEXT AT: http://books.hindustantimes.com/2012/03/review-green-and-saffron/

'Certain environmental movements express nationalist Hinduism'

From: The Times of India

Q&A 'Certain environmental movements express nationalist Hinduism'
Feb 27, 2012, 12.00AM IST

Even as a debate rages over whether in fact the anti-nuclear agitation at the Kudankulam plant is fuelled by foreign NGOs in India, environmental researcher adds another ingredient to the controversy - a link in his view between certain environmental movements and right-wing Hindu ideology. Speaking with, Sharma explains why he thinks green and saffron politics blend in India, why the Left is visibly absent from this mix - and how amongst others, Anna Hazare's ecological projects may reflect a 'feudal' attitude towards imposing moral codes: Mukul Sharma

Monobina Gupta

Please elaborate on your research concept of a possible convergence between green and saffron ideologies in India?

This essentially means that environmentalism and Hindu nationalism are not always discrete and autonomous. In the recent past, environmental issues have often been constructed and defined in new ways by Hindu nationalism. Complementing this, certain environmental movements and discourses, consciously or unconsciously, have expressed themselves in ways articulating revivalist and nationalist Hinduism - certain core components of Hindutva's ideology have become these movements' crucial rallying points. This explains how a particular political ideology is invested with multiple visions of nature, culture and nation.

Let's discuss specifics - while analysing Anna Hazare's Ralegan Siddhi projects, you see a certain moral authori-tarianism connecting with the environmental movement. If you're right, do you think this is a wider tendency in India's green movements?

Indian environmental politics is extremely heterogeneous. This heterogeneity offers hope. However, authoritarian environmentalism and its politics are found in various movements, in different forms. At least five principal inference points can be identified: ultra-nationalism, a yearning for Brahmanical Hindu religion and culture, emphasis on authority, social order and discipline, implicit hostility towards Muslims, dalits and Christians, and a pragmatic politics entailing communalism.

In different regional and organisational locations, from Anna Hazare's Ralegan Siddhi to conservation in Vrindavan, we find environmentalism allying with feudal attitudes to instil moral codes, rules and a discipline justified as central to the nation - this kind of environmentalism has made huge inroads into popular consciousness and gained a far wider acceptance in India.

But since it's so political in your view, how would you explain the absence of Left influence in environmental movements - quite unlike what we see abroad?

The Left has several problemsa¦the weight of inherited political ideology and institutions means its leaders are still speaking about the redistribu-tion of wealth rather than its redefinition. They long to get their hands on the levers of the capitalist wealth machine, rather than redesign it. Further, perceiving electoral politics as the be-all and end-all of things, Left parties have shifted to the centre where subordinate traditions like green, feminist and social movements rarely gather political momentuma¦

The Left should have heeded environmentalists sooner - but that would have meant accepting there can be no socialist economy without responding to ecological imperatives as well Alongside, many environmental groups think dominant left ideology and politics are part of the problem.

Considering its growing complexities, what kinds of studies of ecology are needed in India now?

India's environmental paradigms often render caste and dalit questions invisible. It needs to be recognised that caste is one of the central categories framing environment politics. In the past and present, dalit thinkers have had a wider critique of environmental articulationsa¦new ecological studies should also bring forth not just fresh dimensions about environment and people but also help in redefining their inter-relationships with polity, demo-cracy, justice and modernity.