ON CONSTITUTION, THE DEPRIVED AND VANDE MATARAM Pallab doesnt write or share much these days. When he used to, it was generally astute observations and from a point of in depth knowledge. Recently we exchanged on ecological topics. The article was on how disastrous the state of the ocean is. It was an article I had read but hadnt shared. I have stopped sharing on ecology and its precarious state. It is not something which interests many. Not when there are gorier or more titillating or more consternation generating news to follow. I told him so. He observed: You know the slow churn of what is happening to the environment (and drastically at that with the advent of the Industrial Revolution with the concomitant stages in developed and developing countries) can be sniffed out thru accounts of travelers and serious chronicling accounts of the explorers from Europe from 1500s onwards. A French traveler and photographer who had visited India in the 1880s (forget the name) has clearly mentioned in his detailed travelogue that the Mumbai (the city where I was born and brought up in) monsoon lasted from June 18th to October 18th and with a proper monsoon cycle of heavy, tropical rains with no respite during the entire season. Now in this millennium itself, I have noticed patterns of 2 week heavy rains followed by extremely dry spells thru only a 3 month cycle till Sept and with the rains totally tapering off in Sept end. A rainy spell in October is now considered freakish (and when it happens in October bang in the middle of the 10-day Navarathri festival, the Bongs in the Pujo pandals say Ma breeshti patieyeche (the divine mother has sent rains). Quixotically, this dry-wet spell during the changed Mumbai monsoon season actually enables Kanga League (the monsoon-only league which all Bombay school of batting stalwarts cut their initial teeth in) to complete their matches and not really abandon entire matches which used to happen in yesteryears. One can only imagine the effects of ocean currents abutting the Arabian Sea and the Mumbai coastline along with Mumbais horrendous unplanned growth and horrendous consequences of uncontrolled sewage entering the seas (apart from uncontrolled and unchecked dumping) of an unimaginable 30 million plus metropolitan area population on such a small land mass on Mumbais monsoon pattern. Then there was the account by French imperialist Samuel de Champlain when he was trying to establish New France in present day Canada: he mentioned the clear cut 6 month bleak winter season of unremitting snowfall in Quebec area. And now such a winter lasts only for 4 or so months and with not-so-consistent snowfall in the same province. Nature, our crucible, our womb, our provider, our mother is in a state of asphyxiation. The state of nature is caught in a debate. There are deniers even as there are those who are frantically pointing to the perilous state of nature. Mebbe it is cos we have relegated relating with nature to our intellects than to our hearts. For we can feel its churn, but if we can keep ourselves distracted enough we will be able to deny even this feeling. Arjun shared a quote of Ambedkar on the Constituent Assembly, which Ill paraphrase here slightly. How long shall we continue to live this life of contradictions? How long shall we continue to deny equality in the web of our life? If we continue to deny it for long, we will do so only by putting our existence in peril. We must remove this contradiction at the earliest possible moment else they who suffer from inequality will blow up the structure of existence which we have so laboriously built up. If the American and French constitution were milestone of human thinking, the latest paradigm shift has been put forward by Equador. Ecuador rewrote its Constitution in 2007-2008 and it was ratified by referendum by the people of Ecuador in September 2008. The new Ecuadorian Constitution includes a Chapter: Rights for Nature. Rather than treating nature as property under the law, Rights for Nature articles acknowledge that nature in all its life forms has the right to exist, persist, maintain and regenerate its vital cycles. And we – the people – have the legal authority to enforce these rights on behalf of ecosystems. The ecosystem itself can be named as the defendant. Someday the world will wake up to the farsightedness of this. Meanwhile we will sing Sujalaam, Sufalam and not know what it stands for. Nature was once divinity for us. But then we decided to turn practical and modern and withdrew relating to intellectual considerations. Yet, if there is a most deprived in our society...it, today is nature. Just a thought to consider, if you have been interested enough to read through this. The primal Mataram is very much Bande and we are her disregardful jailers.
Posted on: Mon, 26 Jan 2015 03:37:32 +0000
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