Praygraj: Inside the Maha Kumbh Mela*
Let’s begin by tracing fingers down the tree bark. Through the cracks of time, to 1973, and the beginning of the Chipko movement. When foreign companies started logging the forests of Uttar Pradesh, a state below the Himalayas, there began a protest from the locals to stop it. They hugged trees. Led by Chandi Prasad Bhatt, many gathered, mostly women, to stick, to embrace, to cling, to bear weight unto bark. These decentralised and autonomous groups demonstrated a great capacity for ahimsa, in their non-violent protest towards ecologically destructive behaviour. Though direct power of land lay with governmental authorities, a 10 year ban on commercial logging was announced. The Chipko movement protected trees; homes, food, fuel and refuge.
When looking at language’s link to ecology, it is interesting to look at the verbs which stem from “roots,” such as this one, ‘uprooting’. Verbs are formed from the root, or stem, yet, rather than a stagnant place of certainty or fixedness, ‘to be rooted,’ they demonstrate an existence within a dynamic exchange of movement and change.
Uprooting, then, is a process of re-examining, or re-wilding what we think of as nature. An activity which renounces any objective permanence and refuses to stay still. There is thus no definite way to look at ‘uprooting,’ no definition to capture.
For me, it allows a means to look through layers of colonial history, thought or ways of being. In doing so, ‘uprooting’ requires an element of returning back to a soil more fertile with ecological harmony. This movement can thus gently dismantle the distance or degrees of separation to the earth imparted by modernity. It requires a closeness to the land and our being.
The idea of play (lila) can help to cultivate a richer relationship with our surrounding environment. In Hindu traditions, Krishna, a divine incarnation of Lord Vishnu, is regularly depicted as a sort of field frolicker, enjoying the pleasures and delights of the forest. As a cowherd, many scriptures combine his living in simplicity and play as both cosmic and joyous.
Entering into the body of landscape, such as ‘immersing oneself in sentient plants’ as a somatic practice is to experience ‘divine creative power’. Sugata Ray’s paper ‘Climate Change and the Art of Devotion: Geoaesthetics in the Land of Krishna’ depicts artistic works of Krishna taking pleasure in natural phenomena. In this sense, we can think of play and enjoyment within natural surroundings, as connection to Nature and thus a devotion or worship to the divine.
Rusa/ rasa is a concept in ancient Indian aesthetic theory which can draw back to feelings which arise when connected to the natural world. Roughly translating to ‘essence’ or ‘flavour’ where the inner self extends to outer mediums.
Perhaps the concept can be looked at in relation to Lorca’s forceful duende, used to encompass a surge of unexplainable, ineffable awe. Incorporating createdness in the forms of dance (nritya), music and joy, this phenomena can be applied towards different forms, according to art critic Ananda Coomoraswamy, rasa is ‘immediately applicable to art of all kinds’. Vishwanatha, a writer from 9th century India states ‘poetry is a sentence the soul of which is rasa’. Not just paintings, then, but this soul or spirit of creative passion and ‘aesthetic experience’ extends to dance, literature and poetics.
When looking at art particularly, Goswamy focuses on four fundamental ways of approaching Indian art ‘Visions,’ ‘Observation,’ ‘Passion’ and ‘Contemplation,’ which can provide similar approaches in our relationship to the environment, and can evidently be underlined by rasa almost as a religious experience.
Reference: B.N.Goswamy, The Spirit of Indian Painting: Close Encounters with 101 Great Works 1100-1900 (Thames and Hudson Ltd, 2014).
Some versions of the Ramayana express how Sita revels in the freedom and non- judgemental nature of the forest, which stands separate from social scrutiny and comforts her with food, shelter, liberty and peace. As Pattanaik states ‘he [Ram] remained trapped in culture, but nature set her [Sita] free’ as ‘culture excludes what it does not value, but nature embraces all.’ Sita’s Ramayana thus encompasses the tension between culture, a man-made force of social order, with nature, acting as an abundance outside hierarchical paradigms. In rejecting Ram’s request to return to the kingdom, and choosing to return back to the earth, the Ramayana shows how embracing ecology acts as a resistance to cultural and social repressions.
The ancient Indian epic Ramayana, contains the story of Ram, an incarnation of Vishnu, and his divine consort Sita. Many know of this story in its celebrations of good over evil, where lamps are lit for Diwali festivities marking Sita and Ram’s journey, back to their kingdom, through the forest after exile. However, it is also a myth rooted in ecological strength with mother Earth acting as a means for feminine defiance outside of social rigidity.
Upon the return from exile, the public doubt Sita’s chastity, suspicious that she has been made ‘impure’ during her captivity with the demon Ravana. However much she proves her purity, such as by walking through fire (Agni) the kingdom remains doubtful. In order to redeem his reputation and respect as king, Ram then sends Sita back into the forest. She goes, unresisting and loyal to her husband. When Ram returns to bring her back, asking her to once more prove she is pure for the eyes of his citizens, Sita summons the earth to swallow her, and, without another sound, disappears into the ground.
Quote from Devdutt Pattanaik Sita: An Illustrated Retelling of the Ramayana (Gurgaon: Penguin Random House India, 2013).