Gandhi as an Environmentalist

“The Earth has enough resources for our need but not for our greed.” This most often
quoted phrase by Gandhi depicts his concern for nature and environment. Almost a hundred
years ago, Gandhi has voiced his concern for environment. The concern was evident in his
speeches, writings and his messages to the workers. Pravin Sheth is right when he says that
Gandhi was the “World’s early environmentalist in vision and practice.” Much before any
modern environmentalist, writes A. Mukherjee, Gandhi had cautioned the world about the
problems of large-scale industrialization, which we are confronting today. His seminal work,
Hind Swaraj, written a hundred years ago in 1909 warned of the dangers the world is facing
today in the form of environmental destruction and the threat to the planet. Through this book he
gave warning against growing consumption, materialism and wrong model of development’

Gandhi’s views on environment consist of moral, spiritual and non-violent dimensions.

To him, the hallmark of development of man consisted not in materialism or consumerism but in
spiritual self-realization, a character heavily loaded with morality and non-violence. The craving
for materialistic wants was alien to him for it hindered the path to one’s realization. His simple
living and high thinking reiterated his love for all living beings, which is the very manifestation
of God’s creation. His concept of non-violence thus encompassed all living beings and embodied
the eternal values of life in his thought and actions. As Gandhi said, ‘My ethics not only permits
me to claim but requires me to own kinship with not merely the ape but the horse and the sheep,
the lion and the leopard, the snake and the scorpion…’

Bapu was greatly influenced by Adolph Jest’s book ‘Return to Nature’ that further
strengthened his conviction that if a man desires to live a wholesome life, he will have to share
his life with not only humans but all living beings - birds, animals, plants and the whole
ecosystem. Man must return to nature what he takes from her. He abhorred violence, in any
form, towards animals or other living beings. Gandhi thus expressed his sense of the unity of all
life. He wrote in Harijan in 1937, “I do believe that all God’s creatures have the right to live as
much as we have.”

Gandhi was a great believer in advaita (non-duality) and in the essential unity of man and
all lives (Young India, 1924). Thomas Weber brings an interesting perspective on how Arne
Naess, who was thoroughly influenced by Gandhian philosophy, interprets the link between self-
realisation and non-violence. Weber’s interpretation is as follows:

1. Self-realisation presupposes a search for truth.

2. All living beings are one
3. Himsa (violence) against oneself makes complete self-realisation impossible
4. Himsa against a living being is Himsa against oneself and.
5. Himsa against a living being makes complete self-realisation impossible (T. Weber, Gandhi
and Deep Ecology, Journal of Peace Research, vol.36, No.3, May 1999). The ancient Indian
religious philosophy, thought and action and practices point out to a harmonious relation
between man and other living beings. Gandhi was an ardent believer of this philosophy of
Vedanta, a combination of spiritual faith and scientific thought.

Gandhi was undoubtedly a visionary who could foresee the ill effects of industrialization
and modernization on environment. He was ‘an early critic of the dehumanizing character of
modern industrial civilization. It is in the context of new value orientation and the quest for
human survival threatened by environmental and ecological crisis that the re-discovering of
Gandhi’s warning of ‘industrialize and perish’ has to be seen’ (Savita Singh, pp.58-59). His Hind
Swaraj depicts his understanding of the chaos the modern civilization would usher in. Having
witnessed the human devastation that industrialization had caused in England, he warned us of
the impending dangers of an urban industrial society. He was baffled at the thought of India
being heavily industrialized and its culture eroded through dehumanizing. He wrote in The
Young India (20-12-1928), ‘God forbid that India should ever take to industrialism after the
manner of the West. The economic imperialism of a single tiny Kingdom (England) is today
keeping the world in chains. If an entire nation of 300 millions (India’s population in 1928) took
to similar economic exploitation, it would strip the world like locusts’. He further elaborates, that
‘to make India like England and America is to find some other races and places on earth for
exploitation. So far it appears that the western nations have divided all the known races outside
Europe for exploitation and that there are no new world to discover, what can be the fate of India
trying to ape the west?’

Father of the nation firmly believed that India lives in its villages. And to erode its
village’s culture and civilization via technology, machinery and industrialization, to him,
amounts to sin. He warned the youth not to be carried away by the glitter of the modern
civilization because ‘its defects are well known but not one of them is irremediable’. He
advocated village life as the goal, as India is an inheritor of rural civilization. Therefore, the
intentions of the youth may be ill founded if they were ‘to uproot it and substitute for it an urban
civilization’ (Young India, 7-11-1929). He was also against the use of machinery that is meant to
displace people from their livelihood means. He was thoroughly in favour of promoting Charkha,
hand machinery as against “the machinery that displaces the labour of those who cannot
otherwise be employed. What we must dread is huge machinery run not by hand but by non-
human power such as steam, electricity, etc’ (4-10-1929 in a letter to Shri Giriraj).

Regarding the urbanization, Gandhi expressed his views as follows: ‘it is a process of
double drain from the villages. Urbanization in India is slow but sure death for her villages and
villagers. It can never support 90% of India’s population, which is living in her 7,00,000
villagers (number of villages in 1934). To remove from these villages tanning and such other
industries is to remove what little opportunity there still is for making skilled use of the hand and
head. And when the village handicrafts disappears, the villagers working only with their cattle on
the field, with idleness for six or four months in the year, must be reduced to the level of the
beast and be without proper nourishment either of the mind or the body, and, therefore without
joy and without hope’ (Harijan, 7-9-1934).

To him the modern civilization, therefore, with its explicit or implicit stress on unabated
exploitation of resources, multiplication of wants, production for the market and consumption is
satanic (Hind Swaraj, p.33) The best practice, as he suggested, was ‘instead of welcoming
machinery as a boon, we should look upon it as an evil, it would ultimately go’ (Hind Swaraj,
p.84). Adopting this modern civilization and life-style negates one’s spirituality and morality. He
was concerned that ‘this civilization takes note neither of morality nor of religion. Immorality is
often taught in the name of morality. Civilization seeks to increase bodily comforts, and it fails
miserably even in doing so’ (Hind Swaraj, pp.32-33). Civilization, as he perceived it, is that
mode of conduct which points out to man the path of duty; to observe morality to attain mastery
over our mind and passions (Hind Swaraj, p.53). Having a moral and religious basis in our
civilisation, he expressed ‘there will naturally be progress, retrogression, reforms and reactions
but one effort is required and that is to drive out Western civilization. All else will follow’ ( Hind
Swaraj, p.80).

Nature, according to Gandhi, is a source and force of inspiration and not exploitation. In
one of his correspondence letters he writes, ‘Nature suffices for my inspiration. Have I not gazed
and gazed at the marvellous mystery of the starry vault, hardly ever tiring of that great
panorama? Beside God’s handiwork, does not man’s fade into insignificance?’ (Letter to D. K.
Roy, on dated 2 February, 1924) Contrary to this view, today, the relationship between man and
nature is that of a complex problem both at local and global level. Population, poverty and
unabated development have threatened the pristine nature. The unabated development had
extracted most injudiciously the natural capital- water, land, forests, etc. leading to a series of
environmental crisis like depletion of ozone layer, pollution etc. Thus man has set on the mission
of global environmental destruction that has reached alarming proportions. To express it in
Gandhian ideology and philosophy, man has adopted violent measures to take abundantly from
nature. Gandhi fervently appealed to men to desist from exploiting others and inflicting violence
on them. It pervades all living beings including nature and natural resources. Gandhi was against
disturbing the nature and ecological system that provides health and fertility to all.

Gandhi firmly opposed the western view of man’s conquest of nature. He warned against
man’s overpowering over nature that might result in his alienation to natures’ system. He also
cautioned against using nature for unlimited mass production and consumption purposes.
Gandhi’s vision of upliftment of all Sarvodaya, implies a healthy development and environment
than can be evolved by man to ensure his harmonious existence with nature and other living
beings. What he preached and practiced corresponds to what we today call as eco-friendly
measures and living in harmony with nature.
Gandhi’s approach to nature revolves around the concepts of ‘need’ and ‘greed’;
therefore the bounties of nature can be used only according to our needs. Gandhi was neither a
proponent of theory on nature and environment nor was an activist to protest against
deforestation or dams or nuclear reactors. But he did much more than this; he led a life which
was in complete harmony with his surroundings, with himself as with others, with his values as
with his environment. There were absolutely no contradictions in his thoughts and in his way of
life. He was very much concerned about the sharing of resources by all. As he said, ‘ I venture to
suggest that it is the fundamental law of nature, without exception that nature produces enough
for our wants from day-to-long, and if only everybody took enough for himself and nothing
more, there would be no pauperism in this world’.

Sources:
 Singh, Ramjee., the Gandhian Vision, Manak Publications Pvt. Ltd., New Delhi, 1998.
 Sheth, Pravin., Theory and Praxis of Environmentalism: Green plus Gandhi, Gujarat
Vidyapeeth, Ahmedabad, 1994.
 Singh, Savita., Global Concern with Environmental Crisis and Gandhi’s Vision, A. P. H.
Publishing Corporation, New Delhi, 1999.
 Gandhi, M. K., Hind Swaraj, Navajivan Publishing House, Ahmedabad, 1938.
 Gandhi, M. K., Nature Cure, Navajivan Publishing House, Ahmedabad, 1954.
 Ramjee Singh, S. Jeyapragasam and Dashrath Singh.,(ed), Aspects of Gandhian Thought,
Indian Society of Gandhian studies, 1994. Gandhi, Ecology and Environment, Gandhi
Centre, Visakhapatnam, 2004.
 Weber, Thomas., Gandhi and Deep Ecology, Journal of Peace Research, Vol. 36, No3,
May 1999.

Website Sources:
1. Pravin Sheth, The Eco-Gandhi and Ecological movements (http://www.mkgandhi.org/
environment/environment htm)
2. www.gandhi-manibhavan.org
3. Jha, Sreekrishna, Mahatma Gandhi – An environmentalist with a Difference (http://
www.mkgandhi.org/environment/environment.htm