A lot of talk today happens about sustainability. And the need to move towards sustainable living. But can sustainability be achieved with only policy matters and without the education and backing of the people? Sustainability also needs to start at the grass-roots level.
Now, lets look at sustainability in our country. The very culture of our Bharatavarsha (not just India) was built around sustainable practices. We as a culture sen the divine in every being around us, be it humans, animals, plants, insects, birds. We as a culture have placed natural elements, plants and animals that provide us benefit on the pedestal of demigods or gods and revered them. This also meant we did everything in our hands to protect the nature around us. There are a lot of articles that talk about India and its sustainable practices.
My thoughts revolved on understanding, how we develop our people to have such beliefs and thoughts that helped us continue with sustainability? How did we lose this mindset to the demand for development ? Did our change in mindset that, the west was the best, take over?
Let's discuss this from the perspective of arts. But what did indian arts really have to do with sustainability and how are we losing these insights? Simple base being Indian arts reflect Indian culture and our thinking associated with it. But the arts were also used as a medium of education and awareness more in the ancient days than now.
The
first and foremost thing we do as dancers is to do a little namaskaara ritual
paying obeisance to parents, guru, audience and of most importance, to Mother Earth.
Samudra vasane devi, parvatha sthana mandale
Naatyam karishye bhoodevi Paadaghatha kshamasvame.
(Whose clothing is
the ocean. Whose body is the mountains and plains. We dance on you, Oh mother
Earth! Please forgive us for striking on you)
In a normal day we go around digging, stamping, running, dumping, or cutting, chopping, destroying everything the earth provides. How many times do we step back and say please forgive us mother? But that’s what is the first lesson a child learns who comes to learn dance. Shouldn’t we teach the child to extend this to our everyday life? To respect mother earth for bearing our harshness and forgiving us always? Even thinking of this earth as a mother who sustains us, will change our attitude towards her.
The Natya Shastra, also known as the fifth Veda, is an encyclopedia on India arts, that forms the foundation for all the dance, music and drama, classical or folk alike. The first thing the Shastra recommends is to offer pooja (prayers) to different gods. One important aspect to look at here is, that apart from the gods representing our wealth, knowledge, and our abilities, most of these gods represent one or the other natural elements that provide for us. Air, Water, Rain, Sun, Moon, Serpents (Nagas), Birds(represented by Garuda) are all part of this. So we are inculcating the importance of the need to maintain the importance of these elements and nature around us.
The poems/texts written in our land use beautiful similes to describe the features of men, women or gods. Typically these use the comparison to elements found in nature. Lord Krishna’s eyes are compared to lotus petals, or the lips to colour of tender leaves, waist to that of a tiger, etc. So when an artist is constantly enacting these comparisons, a sense of divinity gets built towards nature. An artist tends to look at his/her surroundings and appreciates the beauty of the smallest things. Further having the tendency to grow them, protect them and sustain them. Maybe thats the reason most of the artists tend to also have beautiful sustainable environments created around their gurukuls/classes/theaters.
If children are
introduced to Indian arts, they not just learn to dance, but learn to also
appreciate the nature around them, and feel the need to maintain and protect
nature.
Moving a little
away from learning, lets look at what art meant as a performance culture, especially
in the rural areas. The influx of television has also meant meaningless soaps, that
are consumed day and night by the folks now. Most of these neither have any eco
focus or moral focus. The folk-arts, dramas, which brought the community
together, emphasized on “the natural and
eternal way to live” have been relegated
to occasions. This way of life of India was built on sustainable practices that
our stories emphasized. Take an example of Yakshagana. Today Yakshagana has
become a 1-5 mins dance ritual used for its extravagant costumes to catch
attention of viewers especially in the urban context. But Yakshagana is
actually a dance-drama form that would run across the whole night, with the
actors dancing to stories from our ancient books that focused on the Dharma we
should follow. Every now and then, the orator and actors would get into a
dialogue interspersed in the act, that spoke of a problem of the current day
and talking of solutions and possibilities. This way the art also worked as an awareness builder. The costumes, the singing, the theatrics, dance kept the
audience engaged while also knowledge was spread. We didn't need street plays
for the same.
Padmashri winner
Tulasi Gowda became a viral sensation for her innocence and her reaction to the
President and her win. But do we understand the depth of the reason why she won
the award? She is a very rare lady who can identify the mother tree of a forest,
the tree from which the entire forest happened! And to also understand that she
comes from a community of Halakki Vokkaligas who have a song for every
occasion, every knowledge article, everything around us. The other Padmashri
winner Sukri Bomme Gowda was awarded specifically for this knowledge of songs. Imagine
how much information, the knowledge of the forests is stored in the
knowledge of the songs. If this art form isn't preserved, a whole lot of
knowledge in sustainability gets lost.
Everyone knows
the theme behind Kantara by now. But this is a story of almost every rural part
of India, where the deities signified nature and ensured coexistence with
nature. Garba for example has now become just an high energetic dance in many
parts of the world. But in the heartland of Garba, it's a mark of honor to the
regenerative powers of the divine. The dancer dances barefoot, bending all
down to almost reach the earth when clapping, as a mark of respect to the all
great Mother Earth. On similar lines, so many other folk, tribal, rural,
original art forms of our land celebrate nature and its regenerative giving.
Why do we then relegate these just for dance and not highlight the importance
of the sustainability thoughtfulness behind these?
Why do we lose
such beautiful arts and the immense possibility these arts and culture have in
building sustainable mindsets? Sustainability policies are needed, but
sustainable mindset, sustainable cultural practices need to revived more. Aping
the west is not the only way.
Let's revive our
culture and arts and use it not just as an art form, but to build the
sustainable mindset right from childhood. Let us bring more and more of our
children back to the roots with art.
PS: Thanks to my friend Sriharsha Grama for his review and inputs.
Photo credit: Name shown as Amit Bansal.
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