As India and the world will observe the 83rd death anniversary of Gurudev Rabindranath Tagore on 7 August, one is reminded of the multiple hats he wore as a poet, philosopher, painter, and educationist and one of the earliest advocates of the environment. Tagore placed India’s ancient environmentalism within ideals of unity and harmony between man and nature. In his book Creative Unity (1922), Rabindranath Tagore spoke of unity between the “parts and the whole”, harmony between the “spirit and surroundings”. He argued that there is an ideal among men to break away from being a ‘living catalogue of endless wants’ towards Advaitam ~ a sense of unity and harmony.

So, while health symbolizes the unity of vital functions, diseases stand for disruptions in it. Any obstacle to this union creates separateness and misery. The relations with the universe according to Tagore can either be by conquest or by union, but emancipation of souls lies only in realization of unity. The Western and Indian civilizations, according to him, represented two fundamental divisions of human nature. The one contained in conquest and the other in the spirit of harmony.

Situated in this larger scheme of harmonious unity of parts and whole is the chapter ‘The Religion of the Forest’ that can be placed within the discourse of eco-criticism. The theme of this essay is to reiterate the centrality of nature and forests in Indian Classical Literature. Drawing a comparison between Western and Indian literature, Tagore suggested that Western literature, based on the principle of dualism tended to alienate individuals from nature and forest, and placed them in a dominating and conflicting relation to each other. William Shakespeare’s poems, for example, are shown in either conspicuous isolation from nature or in terms of mutual conflict. So, in The Tempest, Macbeth, Merchant of Venice, Hamlet, and Othello, nature occasionally peeped out but remained almost an intruder or an obstruction, or may appear as a malignant/malevolent force.

John Milton’s Paradise Lost, according to Tagore, seems to depict a man’s relationship with nature, where the poet describes the beauty of the garden, and animals living there in peace and harmony among themselves have been created for human enjoyment, sans absence of affinity between man and animals. The ideal of unity with nature, according to Tagore, runs through the Indian Classical literature by Kalidasa, Banabhatta, and even in the Ramayana. One can see nature and human culture as interwoven rather than separate sides of dualistic constructs.

Thus, in Kalidasa’s KumarSambhava, the love between Shiva and Parvati and the birth of Kartikeya is described vividly amidst a pristine forest. Kalidasa here metaphorically portrays the influence of nature on the creation of life. In Shakuntala, all through the drama, the contrast between the ostentatious heartlessness of the king’s court and between the warmth and natural purity of the forest hermitage is depicted. The opening of the drama with a hunting scene, where the king chasing a deer signifies the brutality of the chase, suggesting a clash between the spirit of the forest (sharanyamsarvabhutanam i.e. where all find their protection) and the spirit of the king’s life (valour and victory). Tagore further exemplified that Banabhatta’s Kadambari too showcased the collaboration between humans, nature, and spirits, representing essential spiritual unity existing between all forms of life through the existence of the same divinity in them.

Tagore continues that in the Ramayana, when in their exile Rama and his companions had to cross several forests, their hearts felt kinship with forests, hills, and rivers as they were not in conflict amidst these. Hence, Sita asks Rama affectionately about the flowers, trees, forests, and rivers, feeling in unison with nature. Also, when Rama dwells in the company of the forests, animals, and birds in the Chitrakoot, he forgets all his agony of leaving his family and capital. He thus is referred to as ‘giri-van-priya’ by Valmiki. Their exile in forests and hermitages united Rama and Sita not only to each other but to the universe of life. According to Tagore, when Sita was taken away, the loss thus portrayed, ‘seemed to be great to the forest itself’.

Also, Tagore examined the idea of wilderness referred to as the absence of humanity, a place beyond the borders of civilization, a bane, a threat, and a place of exile in Western literature. Wilderness is treated not as a place to fear, but as a place of sacramental value, a hermitage, a sanctuary and unison in Indian literature. In the wilderness, he says, ‘the chasm between man and rest of creation is bridged’. Tagore foregrounded the example of ‘wilderness’ from Kalidasa’s Ritusamharam and the Ramayana calling wilderness a form of pristine nature unadulterated by civilization, holding a promise of a dependable relationship between humans and nature similar to a balm of health and repose. In the essay, Tagore maintains the forest entered into a close living relationship with men, with their work and leisure, with their daily necessities and contemplations.

They never thought of surroundings as separate or inimical. Here we can find obvious similarities with eco-critical discourse concerned with the “relationship between literature and the physical environment” and with a view that human culture is invariably connected to the physical world. The discourse may be of recent origin, but its ideas of affinity between humans and nature, structures of energy, entropy, and symbiosis between nature and humans resonate with the Indian Classical Texts. The essay ‘The Religion of the Forest’ brings out eco-critical reflections from classical texts, like the centrality of the forest and nature and the idea of symbiosis, and a shift away from a man-centric to an ‘earthcentered’ approach. It upholds the notion of the forest as a metaphor for life, knowledge, reconciliation, and unity by placing it in Advaita Philosophy

(The writer is Assistant Professor of Sociology at MCNDAV College, Chandigarh)