Preventing gender based violence and protecting the environment this Sharad Navratri 2021

Navratri

A clear night one Navratri. Beautiful satsangh in a beautiful mandir. 

Mandir created as so many others in Guyana out of community desire for sacred space. Our Hindu ancestors came and land was set aside and made holy. Navratri celebrations are popular. 

We sang that night in the Ramayana Gole, like the ancestors. 

Young pandit, young people seem to be leading things. The blessing in connection, not so much to Shakti, the Divine Feminine energy, but to the ancestors who sustained belief in that Energy.

Come out at the back of the mandir to look at the sky. See the smouldering pile. 

Styrofoam boxes.. slowly burning.. huge pile.. plastic containers also burning. Wish I could say something. I don't know the people though. Host, guest relationship. Similar issues around as the generosity of the mandir hosts , the new technology of the disposable 'sanitary' , the noise, the murtis out of plastic, means around the world that Hindu festivals now create environmental problems.

Another Navratra, another Pandit pleads with the mandirs he will be preaching in, to reduce the garbage afterwards. 

Pandit Deodat Persaud a year ago wrote about doing worship without damaging the environment. He made reference to a 2015 Hindu Declaration on Climate Change which reminded Hindus that

Mātā bhūmi putro aham pṛthivyāḥ! The Earth is my mother and I am her child!”
— Atharva Veda (12.1.12)

This contradiction - Vedic philosophy reminds us that we are bound to the Earth, connected to all living beings but Hindus in their earnest desire to worship and live and make livings end up causing harm to Bhumi Devi, Mother Earth or elect leaders who have no problem in wreaking havoc in the environment in the name of 'development'

Worship of the Feminine Energy, violence against women and girls

Hindus have specific celebrations of worship of the feminine - and devotion to worship of the 'Mother'. Many countries where Hindus live and worship, India included, violence against women, girls and genders not considered 'man' or 'male' is dominant, celebrated too . In 2018, I appealed to my Hindu brothers, to not be like Rishi Kapoor and to do some things in addition to praying and fasting to connect their worship to preventing violence. Navratra is a good time to reinforce these calls, to realise that chanting Durga, Laxmi, Saraswati Chalisa in the night in the mandir would be strengthened by practically removing the violent sexist behaviour in the society and removing prejudices. 

Violence to the Environment, Violence against women and the feminine

"Vasudhaiva Kuṭumbakam (Sanskrit: वसुधैव कुटुम्बकम्)" - the world as one family.. is one of those phrases quoted by politicians and others who have no problem with violence in the family, while hoping that the wider world would live with them as one family.

The phrase though , cliche almost, reminds us that the world of human, non human life is connected. The Vedic verses go on to talk about detachment from material possessions. 

Detachment though does not mean the lack of connection. The lack of connection which does not recognise that harming vasudhā, Earth, will bring harm to us, or that the reason for harm to others, the vasudhā is as a result of the violence we have experienced and think is normal for ourselves. 

Or how we do not realise that burning Styrofoam and plastic after doing a sacred havan where healing items are burnt does not make sense. 

Or that thinking that burning fossil fuels is a blessing arising out of doing havan.

The work of Vandana Shiva and others came up in a recent discussion as we worked on connecting gender justice and environmental justice. The conversation was with women, a real Shakti katha for this season

We talked about how gender justice and environmental justice will come when we realise that we are interdependent and connected as living beings.  That capitalism which we see being celebrated as wonderful is not working for us.

That the tolerance for gender based violence, for all forms of violence is connected to the tolerance for the violence of the destruction of the Earth, the environment. 

For some of us who rely on spiritual and religious philosophies, we have to look back and see how those philosophies break up the kuṭumbakam - the family. And how we could reclaim those philosophies that keep us as nurturing healthy family.  That we learn to use those philosophies, or create new ones to help us heal from the violence of our histories and our present.

And so as we do our pooja, let us  recognise that the labour of looking for renewable and real easily biodegradable vessels for food,  the labour to call for and advocate for renewable energy instead of oil, to question the way in which the land and rivers are destroyed by mining and other industries ..to look at our relationship with others.. strangers and relatives.. 

to see that work, that  labour as part of the worship  , that labour as part of our eternal pooja, during this Sharad Navratri and beyond.

 

Image by playa1973 from Pixabay