Practise non-violence for the heating planet

Our love for pesticides has of course, annihilated several creatures and frankly, we don’t even care about the forests. Our cemented cities are testimony to our violent sensibilities.

Gandhi is the Father of the Nation in India. But looking around, one feels we treat this father like we treat many other aged people in our country: by casting them aside.

As we sit in the 6th extinction, on a heating planet, we must lean back on the founding values of modern India. (File photo for representation)

You don’t need too much evidence. Just read the news for a week. We’ve routinely hit elephants, often causing them to die an agonizing death. We’ve got rid of the habitat of so many leopards, the numbers might have dropped by as much as 70%. In any case, when they stray into human spaces, they are brutally beaten to death. Our love for pesticides has of course, annihilated several creatures and frankly, we don’t even care about the forests. Our cemented cities are testimony to our violent sensibilities.

I believe non-violence isn’t a strategy to be used only against colonial powers. It is for the most pressing crisis of each time. As we sit in the 6th extinction, on a heating planet, we must lean back on the founding values of modern India. Of the many, this small column focuses on only one-learning to reject violence as a way to solve challenges.

Clearly, this is not something we learn automatically. Just like we learn to appreciate technology, or learn literature of our own mother tongues, we must be taught why non-violence is a strategic way for us all to survive this environmental collapse. In class room curriculums and in practical action, Indians must learn that non-violence is an essential way of life today.

(The writer is the founder and director of the Chintan Environmental Research and Action Group)