Religious Conversion threatening Indias ecological heritage
Posted December 30, 2005
12/7/2005 Haindava Kerala CorrespondentTHIRUVANANTHAPURAMURLhttp://www.christianaggression.org/item_display.php?type=NEWS&id=1135988075
The ecological traditions of India, especially Kerala face serious threat in the form of religious conversion, according to noted environmental scientists, technologists andecologists. This was revealed here on Wednesday by none other than Dr NandithaKrishna, Chairperson, C P Ramaswami Aiyar Foundation.Delivering the introductory speech of the seminar on Conservation of EcologicalTraditions and Sacred Sites of India, with special emphasis on Kerala, Dr Nanditha pointed out that religious conversion happening all over the country at an alarming ratehas destroyed forests and holy groves (popularly known as Kaavus in Kerala). The proselityzers and the newly converts do not have any emotional attachments with theholy groves. In most of the cases, the newly converted people see to it that the holygroves are destroyed at the earliest, Dr Nanditha said. She pointed out with statistics thatmany dense forests and groves in north east India became the main target of the Christianmissionaries engaged in the harvesting of souls in the areas.Dr Nanditha said that the Kaavus, especially the sarppakaavus ( fanily temples where thesnakes were worshipped) were destroyed indiscriminately as a result of urbanization andreligious conversion. This is causing havoc all over the country. The team of scientistsfrom the CRP Foundation found to their dismay that Kerala, popularly known as GodsOwn Country, is fast emerging as a drought stricken state. The new generation among theHindus show scant regard to the traditional Kaavus and groves, Dr Nanditha said.Substantiating the findings of the CRP Foundation team were the revelations by Shri MAmrithalingam, a well known botanist and ecologist. Shri Amrithalingam, with more thantwo decades of research experience in the ecological system of south India told theseminar that unless and other wise something is done to arrest the destruction of the holygroves, the country is in for serious crises, like drought and shortage of water.While we had small sized forests attached to the Hindu tharavadus in Kerala,urbanization and religious conversion have denuded them. There were many scientificreasons for worshipping forests, animals and groves, Amrithalingam explained.Shri T Madhava Menon, formerly of the Indian Administrative Service spoke on theTribal Communities and Heritages of Kerala. Dr C R Rajagopalan, Dr S Rajasekharan,Shri E Unnikrishnan, Dr K P Thrivikramji and Dr Ashalatha Thampuran presented paperson the various aspects of ecology and environment.
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