Full support for your analysis on colonialism and environmental crisis as a reader of your book Nutmeg's curse.
No support for your disdain for your country's pre-colonial past though.
Come out of your Mukul Sharma inspired/induced "eco-casteism" lens for a bit.
I understand your liberal credentials will be at stake unless you take such cheap shots at caste system (with no substantiation whatsoever ofcourse).
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There is absolutely no evidence in our pre colonial past for this phenomenon you are attributing to upper caste environmentalism - craving for pristine nature and treating 'adivasis' as intruders, lowest rung etc.
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These attitudes are very coloniser like . Nothing native or Hindu about them. No need to attribute such malice.
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Infact if you read through our own Epics, Puranas (of all flavours) and other sources including lived experiences recollecting via oral literature etc you would only find evidence for harmony while acknowledging the need to nurture diversity all along.
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There is no dichotomy here between Ecology and Dharma. Between people of the forest and people of the plains. That relationship got messed up only after colonialism in this country.
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Also for what it is worth - kings, rishis also stayed in forests. Gurukuls were in forests as well.
Wait many of our Gods also stayed in forests!
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Grama (Village) - Nagara (City) - Vana (Forests) weren't in conflict with each other. There wasn't a parasitic/extractivist relationship amongst them unlike now.
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While your incisive analysis in understanding colonial roots of ecological crisis is good, it will really be helpful (for you as an environmental activist and your readers both) if you also do some serious reading and soul searching on pre-Colonial Hindu past of this land.
/End
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Yeah.
It is good to acknowledge the roots of this crisis in man-nature seperation, seeing nature as inert etc.
But from there he leaps into a territory to cite native American indigenous peoples as inspiration. Why only them? Why can't he cite Hindu genius instead? For once?
All living beings are born of food grains, which are produced from rain. Rains fall because of the performance of sacrifice, and sacrifice is born of the performance of prescribed duties.
I am not a practicing traditionalist in the sense that I don't participate in ritual and worship aspects of religion as much as I should be doing. I am trying to correct it. Like everything else it is a journey.
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However I am a self-identified traditionalist otherwise as far as my reading interests go and as far as my opinions on most contemporary topics go.
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Everytime i participate in elaborate rituals it feels like magic. I get this ethereal feeling when I participate in annual ancestral rites. There is nothing "rational" about this process. There is something else at play in that it continues to be very "real" even if irrational.
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One of the topics that has interested me this year is the treatment meted out to the Shamans of the indigenous peoples in Siberia by the then Soviet communist state.
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The tussle between Christianity and Communism back then is well documented. But this part of history is not as well known. Atleast no one told me.
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The famed telugu Marxist objective historians and authors seem to have ignored atleast two pieces from the Soviet chapter as they took inspiration from communism and perpetrated their hegemony in the telugu literature world
Our education system reminds me of తాంబూలాలు ఇచ్చేశాం ఇక తన్నుకు చావండి.
Translation:
Now that the betel leaves have been exchanged the wedding is solemnised and it can't be called off. What you do afterwards is your problem. We are done with our part of the deal.
At best the state can ensure education of some kind. What happens after that is between the invisible hand of the free markets and the individual. Some get jobs some don't.
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If some folks don't get jobs perhaps they aren't good enough. May be they lack merit. They should re-skill, upskill, fight it out. State is not your father or mother to provide for you. There is no free lunch.
"How can there be either arrogance or snobbishness where there is no social ambition? It is in a society whose members aspire to “white collar” jobs, and must “keep up with the Joneses” that these vices prevail"
This is a very modern day predicament. Not many understand this.
We live in the age of free will (atleast on paper).
"Go to a good school. Find out your passion. Work hard. Sky is the limit. The world is yours to conquer"
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That advertisement is very different from reality. But we don't blame the sales pitch. We tend to blame ourselves.
"I am unhappy or not rich enough or unable to make it big because I am not good enough"