The Good Earth

Dr Vishiesh Verma
April 22, is celebrated as Earth Day all over the world. In 1970 Senator Gaylord Nelson, Wisconsin (US) had initiated it. Now it is coordinated globally.
The planet earth is the unique gift of God to the humanity where fire and ice, water and air, plant and animal, man and cyborg have co-existed. The complex process of evolution occurred on earth only because of some unique environmental conditions that were present; water, oxygen rich atmosphere, a suitable surface, temperature etc. Life on earth can be found in myriad shapes and sizes from single celled bacteria to giant dinosaurs and it is the result of 3.8 billion years of evolution involving mutation, recombination and natural selection. Modern humans evolved about 55,000 years ago. Earth supports something like 5 to 10 million species of plants and animals.
Indian tradition has its source in Vedas. Vedic seers recognized the earth as living entity much before modern science began postulating on this aspect. In Indian tradition the earth is worshiped as compassionate mother goddess. Scientific evidence points out that earth is living being. Gaia is the legendary Greek concept of Mother Earth in which it was thought that the earth is a planet with life and which gives rise to various kinds of living organisms. Chronologically, the concept of Dharti Mata is found in ancient Indian Scriptures at much earlier date.
Indian traditional wisdom has always advocated reverence towards nature. Our Vedic and other ancient literature is full of prayers addressed to earth, oceans, mountains, trees, rivers and other forces of nature. Indian thought holds that since everything in the universe is composed of some basic elements there is thread of unity running through the world, therefore people must be respectful towards all forms of existence and realize that harm done to nature is a harm done to ourselves.
Indian philosophy gives a very high degree of esteem and honor to Mother Earth. In this context, following lines from Atharva Veda are quoted:
Your hills, O Earth, Your snow clad mountain
Peaks, your forests, may they show us kindliness ……….
Impart to us vitalizing
Forces that come, O Earth
From deep within your body,
Your central point, your
Navel, purify us wholly
Atharva Veda
Besides, the love and regard given to Mother Earth by Indians is conspicuous from the status given to patriotic song ‘Vande Matram’ – composed by Bankim Chander Chatterji in 1882. The song is all about the grace, beauty and compassion of ‘Earth’. All national meetings and functions begin with: Vande Matram.
“Sujlam Suphalam Malayaja sitalam sasyasyamalam Matram” Vande Matram in 1947 it was adopted as song of India.
In 1947 when freedom was achieved Pt. Jawahar Lal Nehru stated about it, ‘Vande Matram is obviously and indisputably remains the premier National song of India with great historic tradition’.
Unfortunately, our planet i.e., Earth which used to be a reservoir of nature’s wealth is loosing its resource because of the step-motherly treatment given by we human beings in the name of development. Industrial revolution led to two basic changes in human thinking,
* Nature is commodity
*  Nature is for human beings.
With this human thinking the objective of development has become affluence and prosperity.
As a result through out the course of civilization the earth became a victim of the onslaught of materialistic civilization and industrial revolution. As a consequence there is rapid depletion of natural resources- water, forests and land. Environmental pollution has reached an alarming level due to uncontrolled discharge of air pollutants, tree canopies acting as sinks of carbon dioxide and toxic gases are disappearing at fast rate.
As of 1995, only 17% of world’s land area remained truly wild with no human population, crops, road etc. Half of world’s surface area is used for crops or grazing, more than half of all forests have been lost to land conversion. Due to extensive damming, nearly six times of water is held in artificial storage worldwide as is free-flowing.
Life assembled in increasingly complex ways over the past 3.8 billion years is being wasted within a relatively short span of 10,000 years; our activities have been changing the character of the land, ocean and the atmosphere. Our pattern of resource consumption and population growth is founded on an illusion of unlimited resources and a forgiving environment. Everything we use to communicate, move, stay warm, stay-cool, sit, sleep, and refrigerate comes from the 15 billion tons of raw material that humans extract from the earth each year. Apparently, the ever rising world population has been exerting greater demands on earth’s resources. Behind all this is the idea of the Earth as an input, a set of discrete resources that can be separated, extracted and developed at a rate determined by the needs of the humans. It is not fair. Earth is finite, closed and not growing. There is natural limit to both of these critical functions. The capacity of the earth to provide inputs and to assimilate waste is limited. It implies that it is not possible to go on increasing production of goods and services using natural resources for ever.
How can we afford to be so callous not love the very source of our sustenance and survival. Every civilization in human history has died out for one reason or another but it has at least thrived elsewhere where the conditions were different. But there is no second earth to go to when we make our planet un-inhabitable.
(The Writer is a former Reader Coordinator of University of Jammu.)

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